Marc Hedlund at O’Reilly’s (excellent) Radar site has a great comment about whether Google is hiding something:
…the tone [of Google communications] just feels all wrong. It’s akin to watching comedy from a foreign culture; you can see that the director and the editor think this next part should be funny, but it’s not.
What I realized about this is that it feels exactly like misdirection, and that makes it seem like they have something to hide. I’m not saying they do have something to hide; in fact I think just the opposite, that their numbers show an amazingly strong and growing business. But they’re acting just like they would act if they did have something to hide. Don’t look over there; nothing up our sleeves.
I’ve said the same thing many times. The trouble with Google is not that the company has misfired technically and is going to be gone in five years. It is that they have a strangely alienating approach to investors and analysts, and so they risk being dropped savagely if/when the inevitable hickup happens in the company’s sales trajectory.
Related posts:
The only investors who feel strangely alienated by GOOG are the ones who sold it 150 (100, 50, 25, etc.) points ago. I recall one former software analyst stating that investors who were willing to pay the $85 IPO price were “unhinged” … is he feeling strangely alienated now?
Just Waiting For An Angel Investor
It’s the latest new innovation: Google Content Blocker. Thanks to Jordon Cooper for the pointer. And here are some more…
I think what Google is hiding (on the business development side) is that they are going to roll all their various Lab and other projects into a Google Personalised Portal and go head to head with Yahoo. They won’t care who laughs and they won’t care that it will look copycat – they have to do it because Yahoo is a threat to them.
Google seems to have a secretive culture (run by Russians
– remember the guy who was fired over his blog?