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I suppose the reason is related to the cliche "companies just do whatever they can to maximize shareholder value"; it is instead that they don't actually act to
by maxander 8y ago
I suppose the reason is related to the cliche "companies just do whatever they can to maximize shareholder value"; it is instead that they don't actually act to maximize shareholder value, they act to maximize future expected shareholder value. I'd imagine that the guys leading the Google push into China are well aware of how things will go, and they've likely even reported it to the top brass. But shareholders probably aren't as well-informed, so they'll happily bid up the price on GOOG on the back of stories about an imminent takeover of the Chinese search market... which has roughly the same financial impact of actually achieving something, at least temporarily.
- skybrian 8y agoI would spin this a little differently. There certainly are a lot of ambitious people at Google. Googlers have a lot of stock options and/or RSU's and care when it goes up. There was also Eric Schmidt's slogan, something about more revenue solving nearly all problems. But, the company was founded by idealists and is immune from takeover. It attracts idealists (or at least, it used to). Everything is justified in terms of helping users somehow. Justifying things in terms of getting a short-term stock boost generally isn't done, at least not where ordinary employees can hear about it.