3 ms·

Apart from a CEO shift, what evidence if any exists that Page will be a Wartime CEO? The analogy with Jobs looks baseless to me, Google is making huge profits a

by zyfo 16y ago

Apart from a CEO shift, what evidence if any exists that Page will be a Wartime CEO? The analogy with Jobs looks baseless to me, Google is making huge profits and with 6000 new employees coming in 2011 they are hardly in a war. Obviously they have their challenges, like being late in the social game, but their core product is still unendangered. The whole text, while captivating and well written, feels like a plastered on narrative.

ascendant 16y ago
About 7 years ago Google was the rising star, and there were stories all over the place about them poaching employees from the previous generation of tech companies (ie Microsoft). Now Facebook is the "star" and you hear about Google making outlandish salary offers to keep the best and brightest on board. While Google is not at the level of stagnation and decay that Microsoft is in, one doesn't have to really look too deeply to see that Google doesn't "get" social and that's the world we live in. I guess the TL;DR is: You don't have to be at the doorstep of "war" to move in that direction. I guess Page sees it on the horizon and is moving to prepare now, instead of when it's upon them.
- jdp23 16y ago
  Totally agreed with the similarities between MS' situation in 2006 and Google's situation now.
- locci 16y ago
  While I agree that Facebook is commonly perceived as "star which smart people gravitate towards nowadays", I really fail to see why that is. Did suddenly all the techies buy in the "social" buzzword? I don't really think so: what infrastructural and, in general, technical challenges would Facebook be facing which aren't faced at Google too? I tend to perceive Google as the technical innovator, bringing magic (1 gB email??? watching the world from above??? and free???) to the real world, whereas Facebook, despite it's cool API and Cassandra, is just vendor lock in. But I digress: maybe the problem is that Google's already solved the problem leaving no space for new ideas? Why would Facebook appeal more smart techies?
  - entangld 16y ago
    Agreed. It's hard to see Facebook's vision for the future. Is it their notion that privacy is overrated? Google is organizing the world's information like it said it would. Most of the draw of Facebook is their 500mil users. I see popularity more than greatness. Google has and continues to do amazing things (unfortunately none of them in social). Google moving into "social" is like a nerd learning to dance. With enough work they can do it. They'll be awkward at first. Facebook is hosting the dance because they have the biggest house. Facebook is good but mostly because it's the biggest. They don't offer many reasons for users or advertisers to be there other than "everyone else is". They can still become a lesser version of their current glory a la Myspace.
pedalpete 16y ago
I think if you look at it from a competitive aspect it makes more sense. During Schmidts reign, competition was mostly irrelevant for google. They came on the scene and just won everything. Search, huge market share from nothing very quickly, introduced gmail and people quickly abandoned yahoo and hotmail. They bought YouTube and instantly owned the video market. They haven't really been a competitive company until the last few years. Now Bing is making inroads into Google's search market, and Facebook is in some ways re-wiring the way we manage information (Googles goal). Though they may be leading in numbers with Android now, they have some very serious competition.

by zyfo 16y ago

ascendant 16y ago

About 7 years ago Google was the rising star, and there were stories all over the place about them poaching employees from the previous generation of tech companies (ie Microsoft). Now Facebook is the "star" and you hear about Google making outlandish salary offers to keep the best and brightest on board. While Google is not at the level of stagnation and decay that Microsoft is in, one doesn't have to really look too deeply to see that Google doesn't "get" social and that's the world we live in. I guess the TL;DR is: You don't have to be at the doorstep of "war" to move in that direction. I guess Page sees it on the horizon and is moving to prepare now, instead of when it's upon them.

jdp23 16y ago
Totally agreed with the similarities between MS' situation in 2006 and Google's situation now.
locci 16y ago
While I agree that Facebook is commonly perceived as "star which smart people gravitate towards nowadays", I really fail to see why that is. Did suddenly all the techies buy in the "social" buzzword? I don't really think so: what infrastructural and, in general, technical challenges would Facebook be facing which aren't faced at Google too? I tend to perceive Google as the technical innovator, bringing magic (1 gB email??? watching the world from above??? and free???) to the real world, whereas Facebook, despite it's cool API and Cassandra, is just vendor lock in. But I digress: maybe the problem is that Google's already solved the problem leaving no space for new ideas? Why would Facebook appeal more smart techies?
- entangld 16y ago
  Agreed. It's hard to see Facebook's vision for the future. Is it their notion that privacy is overrated? Google is organizing the world's information like it said it would. Most of the draw of Facebook is their 500mil users. I see popularity more than greatness. Google has and continues to do amazing things (unfortunately none of them in social). Google moving into "social" is like a nerd learning to dance. With enough work they can do it. They'll be awkward at first. Facebook is hosting the dance because they have the biggest house. Facebook is good but mostly because it's the biggest. They don't offer many reasons for users or advertisers to be there other than "everyone else is". They can still become a lesser version of their current glory a la Myspace.

pedalpete 16y ago

I think if you look at it from a competitive aspect it makes more sense. During Schmidts reign, competition was mostly irrelevant for google. They came on the scene and just won everything. Search, huge market share from nothing very quickly, introduced gmail and people quickly abandoned yahoo and hotmail. They bought YouTube and instantly owned the video market. They haven't really been a competitive company until the last few years. Now Bing is making inroads into Google's search market, and Facebook is in some ways re-wiring the way we manage information (Googles goal). Though they may be leading in numbers with Android now, they have some very serious competition.