5/26/2007

Microsoft -> Google -> what's next?

Among many things, there are so many indications of how similar Google's growth compared to former Microsoft. It had always been in my mind that what is going to kill Google like how Google killed Microsoft.

Microsoft is still somewhat growing strong company. However, when you look at it deep down and follow the news, it seems like Microsoft is trying desperately to somehow beat Google. With such a huge resources that Microsoft has, they've been trying for many years now but for some reason they are not being able to catch up on innovation that Google have shown.

While I was reading through articles, the The Final Days of Google: It is going to be an inside job from I,CRINGLY jumped out of the crowd. I think it is the most likely scenario of how Google can crumble on it's own feet. If you read through the article, the reason for Google's demise can be categorize in three folds:

The flaw is simple and is composed of three parts. First there are those thousands of ideas and technologies that are being developed by Google employees in the 20 percent of their week devoted specifically for that purpose. That number of new ideas is far too high to be practical and too high even to be considered safe.

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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.

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Now a word about stock options and vesting. Google employees get stock options that vest over a period of four years. In any high-tech company there is an employee change of attitude that comes with being fully vested. At Microsoft in the 1980s some people wore buttons that said "FYIFV," which stood for "F**k You I'm Fully Vested." At companies that have gone public, as Google has, there is often also an outflow of employees around that four-year anniversary. We'll see that at Google, too, no matter how cushy it is to work there.

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