A Google Appreciation Moment

[Darth Garth]

Eight years ago, Google didn't exist. Five years ago, it didn't have a business model. Now, it has a $10 billion revenue run-rate, $10 billion in cash, $4 billion of operating cash flow, 8,000 employees, dominant global market share of the fastest-growing and most profitable advertising business in history, and $120 billion of well-deserved (if still expensive) market capitalization. Google is already not only the largest Internet company in the world, it is the largest media company in the world. It is coming up fast in the rearview mirror of one of the largest technology companies in the world--a giant that, when Google was born, was the largest and most powerful company in the world (a giant that now, in part because of Google, is worth half of what it was worth back then, and, in Google's business, is little more than an also-ran).

What's more, Google has BALLS. Already this year, the company has spent about $1 billion on land, buildings, servers and technology, about as much as three of its biggest competitors combined. It is successfully attacking entrenched incumbents that in a decade of the industry history no one had been able to lay a glove on (Yahoo! in search, Yahoo! and Microsoft in email, Yahoo! in Finance, eBay/Paypal in commerce). It has stolen the industry's excitement, innovation, and fire, made everyone else look lazy and incompetent in comparison. It has announced, with pleasure (and a wink), that it is building the infrastructure necessary to support a $100 billion company--and with each passing quarter it is making this plan seem ever more sane. It has matured in its communications and decision-making. It has delivered a dozen spectacular quarters in a row.

Are there "buts"? Yes, of course there are "buts." But to focus on the "buts" is to miss the forest for the trees. There's no way to know how long Google can keep this up, but as long as it does, the only appropriate big-picture response is awe.

http://www.internetoutsider.com/2006/07/google_apprecia.html

 

[Sneeky]

Smaak it!

What would it take to convince Google to take say $400m USD and run a cable to Africa providing cheap bandwidth to who ever wants it. Liberate the continent from this so called digital apartheid.
a pipe dream I know.

 

[vespax]

It would have taken that other guy just as much. And he was in town a week ago blabbing about internet solutions in Africa.

If they really saw a market, they would go for it. Charity, well that's the NGO's business model not theirs.