"Google 'should stand for a beauty, technological purity of innovation and things that are important to people,' he said. It should also be a trusted brand, he said."
I love this statement, I just hope Google means it. I have a feeling Page does, as you never hear other big tech CEOs speak like this, but the "innovation" and "trusted brand" bits are debatable. Yes, Google is extremely innovative, but they show time and time again they're not above copycatting others' innovations, a concerning thing especially for startups. If you reach a point, it's either sell to Google or Google will enter the market and become your competitor (Dropbox is next up apparently). That's neither innovative or trusted.
To be fair, people have been talking about gdrive since way before dropbox. It's just that now is the right time, they have a successful mobile OS, google docs is taking off and chrome OS people need a hard drive. It was a given that they were going to release something like that if only for Chrome OS.
>Yes, Google is extremely innovative, but they show time and time again they're not above copycatting others' innovations, a concerning thing especially for startups.
I agree that it's not nice to have that happen if you're the startup in question, but it can be good for users, and I'm not sure it contradicts Larry Page's statement. In order to innovate in a given market, you have to be in that market first. If someone else dominates that market, their features set the users' expectations, and copying them can help your competitive service get a foothold.
Google - a company I admire - relies heavily on monetizing all of its web assets through online ads and they are sometimes copying or are giving away for free or opening up all other services not in their core but in some other company's core business. They are the most prominent company to play well the open web ideas;
But they are vulnerable too, one such threat is the robads.org ad standards; which wants to standardize how ads are defined and published on the web in a simple manner. If robads.org gets traction, and people start to publish their ads online, Google may face a vulnerability in its core business too.
I'd much rather have an "arrogant" CEO who is aware of how internal processes slow down and spend time thinking about it than someone who don't know or care. Obviously, some companies are better at this than others (as you yourself hinted at in another comment). Page just wants Google to be best at this. Ambitious, perhaps. Arrogant, not so much.
That is not true. Why internal problems don't dominate Amazon? Why interal problems don't dominate Oracle (100K+ people)? Google is not so big and old to claim that is the problem. I think Google's problem is lack of leadership and vision.
Economists talk about this under the heading of transaction costs.
That is, if a perfectly free market is the ideal way to allocate resources, how do we wind up with companies? Remember, a company is essentially a little island of command economics in the wider sea of the market.
In the 30s Coase proposed that companies form because it is cheaper to do some things in a command fashion than to pay the "transaction cost" of continuously searching the market for an optimal solution to your problem.
For example, it might be cheaper and easier to hire a programmer than to continuously manage a set of programming contractors working on a dozen different little projects.
The interesting thing is that it's not a fixed relationship. Information technology reduces the cost of both internal and external transactions: thus we get larger megacorps and more entrepreneurs.
[+] [-] jhdavids8|14 years ago|reply
I love this statement, I just hope Google means it. I have a feeling Page does, as you never hear other big tech CEOs speak like this, but the "innovation" and "trusted brand" bits are debatable. Yes, Google is extremely innovative, but they show time and time again they're not above copycatting others' innovations, a concerning thing especially for startups. If you reach a point, it's either sell to Google or Google will enter the market and become your competitor (Dropbox is next up apparently). That's neither innovative or trusted.
[+] [-] patrickaljord|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] eurleif|14 years ago|reply
I agree that it's not nice to have that happen if you're the startup in question, but it can be good for users, and I'm not sure it contradicts Larry Page's statement. In order to innovate in a given market, you have to be in that market first. If someone else dominates that market, their features set the users' expectations, and copying them can help your competitive service get a foothold.
[+] [-] diminish|14 years ago|reply
But they are vulnerable too, one such threat is the robads.org ad standards; which wants to standardize how ads are defined and published on the web in a simple manner. If robads.org gets traction, and people start to publish their ads online, Google may face a vulnerability in its core business too.
[+] [-] tlogan|14 years ago|reply
Google's biggest threats are Apple (mobile front), Facebook (social front), Amazon (cloud front), and Microsoft (search front).
EDIT: of course I will be downvoted. But this is my honest opinion I would like to somebody explain me why think this not an arrogant statement.
[+] [-] yesbabyyes|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dennisgorelik|14 years ago|reply
Microsoft is more "mature" corporation and they have much more severe internal problems.
[+] [-] tlogan|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jacques_chester|14 years ago|reply
That is, if a perfectly free market is the ideal way to allocate resources, how do we wind up with companies? Remember, a company is essentially a little island of command economics in the wider sea of the market.
In the 30s Coase proposed that companies form because it is cheaper to do some things in a command fashion than to pay the "transaction cost" of continuously searching the market for an optimal solution to your problem.
For example, it might be cheaper and easier to hire a programmer than to continuously manage a set of programming contractors working on a dozen different little projects.
The interesting thing is that it's not a fixed relationship. Information technology reduces the cost of both internal and external transactions: thus we get larger megacorps and more entrepreneurs.
[+] [-] chugger|14 years ago|reply