Monday, November 5, 2007

Can Google stay Google ?

There more than a few well-known and important people driving product teams at Google.

In the past months, quite a few have left the company for a variety of reasons, most with the entrepreneur bug, and a couple, simply for a change of pace.

There's some history here, particularly with Microsoft. They started off young, nimble and ambitious. Managed to stay ahead of the pack by being able to change courses in a moments notice. Then they got large, the 'corporate manual' came into play (mostly for legal reasons), and a lot of employees cashed-out over time, and left.

Tee shirts turn to ties, sneakers to shoes, and all of a sudden 'Where am I working?'.

The one really interesting item of note with Google is, they don't have a tag line. "King of search". "The best algorithm". "Our ads are on EVERYONE'S website".

I seriously doubt Google has a 'lack of direction'. They're keeping their options open
should the entire landscape change overnight.

Corporate culture and opportunity is everything in this market. Google needs to stay on focus regardless of how many websites they're indexing or how many servers they have around the world.

Watching whether or no they do, which 'worlds' they decide to take on, and how many Googlers simply cash out at this stock level will be something to keep an eye on in the coming weeks and months.

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