SKIRMISHER

Steven Tyler hit it right on track: we’re all livin’ on the edge.

Perhaps the most terrifying news we hear everyday is all about global warming. But hardly anyone pays attention (re: Kyoto Protocol).

In that case, maybe that’s not terrifying after all (for now).

But what if we think of a scenario, say, the death of the internet? Or –egad– the fall of the almighty Google hath finally cometh? Would everyone sit up and take notice?

Meanwhile, how true is it that Brin and Page’s Googlers are just goofing off?

“They fester. Google has designed a working environment that provides almost everything their technical people need except a guaranteed sense of satisfaction. By design each worker is no more than 100 feet from a bathroom or food and drink (at Google the food is always free). This creates an environment where people tend not to go home, which Microsoft discovered and leveraged decades ago. But nobody works every minute they are AT work, which means the Google Geeks are constantly talking with each other, team building, bonding, and goofing off. And for 20 percent of that goofing-off time I’ll guarantee you that many of these people are discussing their pet projects, 99.75 percent of which have been REJECTED by the company.

“While it is possible that a few Google Geeks may talk about how lucky they were to have been saved from their own bad idea, most of them will take exactly the opposite approach, seeing the company as misguided.”

Lucky assholes. And also, it appears that an onslaught of ideas, or the lack of it, are bound to pound Google into smithereens:

Say the Google Geniuses come up with 4,000 business ideas or technologies per year, which is probably around the current number. Let’s guess that one percent of these ideas are truly great — boffo ideas that one could easily build a company around. That’s 40 world-beating ideas. And after the 40 absolutely top ideas, let’s say there are another 360 ideas that are pretty darned good — certainly good enough to pitch to the venture capitalists on Sand Hill Road. The remaining 3,600 ideas are, of course, crap, and can be forgotten by everyone except their inventors…

…But this doesn’t really matter because the larger question is: How many good ideas can Google pursue vigorously per year? The number isn’t 40. It isn’t even 20. The number of ideas that a company the size of Google can throw all its weight behind per year is about 10, of which five will probably not be the right ones.

If this “corporate” analysis of Google is accurate, it appears that Google could be on the brink of doing another dotcom bubble — on itself. But this time, it appears the bubble burst will come from the inside. Google’s self-destruction is in the offing.

So enjoy it while it lasts. And in the meantime, let us keep an eye on these nerds whose ideas don’t have enough breathing space, curing themselves of the disease they mistakenly call life.

What was that again?

via THE PULPIT

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