Netizen: Has Google Been Able To Scale Well?

Monday, May 17, 2010

Has Google Been Able To Scale Well?

Image representing Google as depicted in Crunc...

Image via CrunchBase

Google was voted the Company Of The Decade. The 2000s belonged to Google, and for good reason. A company like Google you get a few at best in a generation. Google not only tackled the most fundamental problem on the web - search - but it also spewed a novel corporate culture. It became the best place to work.

A company at 100 is not the same company at 10,000. As a company grows big, it is no longer a startup, and it ends up losing much of its lustre. Has that happened to Google as it has gone on to a market cap of over 200 billion dollars? Yes, and no.

No because it is unrealistic to think every cutting edge idea year after year will come out of the same company. Google could not have birthed Facebook or Twitter, or have bought them and digested them - it tried with FourSquare and failed miraculously - any more than Microsoft could have bought Google, an entity Bill Gates is on record having wanted to buy "at any price."

Yes because Android and Chrome OS will end up being almost as far reaching as search in scope as the original gift: Google Search. And the two have barely begun their journeys. We don't even have our hands on the Chrome OS yet. And by now to me Firefox feels the way Internet Explorer used to feel when I was a Firefox user. Chrome zips by, it is fast, it is not in your face. It stays out of the way of the web experience.

The answer is Google has been able to scale extremely well. Its notable failure has been social. But I am going to argue it is not possible to be a great information company and a great social company at the same time. The best information/knowledge I want do not reside with people I already know. It is not who you know, it is what they know. Google should do more of what it does well, and that is information. There is no point in getting envious of Facebook. Google has not become smaller. It is just that Facebook also has become big. Maybe people are watching less TV instead of performing less searches.

I am an avid user of Gmail and Blogger, and both of those could see some innovation. I love Google the way some people love Apple. This was the very first post at this blog: Google: Poised To Be The Number One Software Company In The World. I have never bought an Apple product in my life. My first smartphone is going to be an Android device. I am an openness kinda guy. I skipped the whole iPhone brouhaha. Wordpress never tempted me. I have stuck to the Blogger platform. And I can't wait to get my hands on the hardware that accompanies the Chrome OS. That is going to be my iPad. I have held an iPad in my hand, but I have yet to touch its screen.

If Google has scaled well, you have to ask, how has it done it? How has it been able to defy conventional wisdom? I can take a few guesses.

(1) Three

Google seems to think three is as big as a team should get. I think that is a magic number. Two would be too few, four or even five might get too big. They got something there.

(2) 20% Time

That is the Google humility. We the founders and top management don't know everything. Maybe you do. That attitude has turned Google into a large incubator. It is a cauldron of startups on its own. Take away that 20% time provision and many more engineers would have quit Google over the years.

(3) Thinking Big

Granted Google started out by wanting to "organize the world's information" - they might as well have said they want to take over the world and all its living creatures - and that was a really big thing to say for a small startup, but as it grew bigger it made a point to want to tackle big problems, problems so big that small startups might not even look in those directions. Google has behaved like a big startup in many ways.

(4) Married To The Web

Microsoft is a PC company, it is about Windows. Google from day one has been a web company. Apple's iPhone apps have been a throwback to another era, but even there Google is betting on the web reigning supreme. Google is a web company and this is the Internet Century. Google is in the right pond. And it has no other focus than the web.

(5) Buying StartUps

Google has been buying startups at a healthy pace. It recognizes that no matter what Google has become a big company, and at that size you miss out on small streams of information. And so they stay on a lookout and they buy what they have not built internally.

(6) Corporate Culture

Google is a fun place to work. That has made a huge difference. I hope some of the Google practices spill over into the rest of the corporate world. Google does child care and free lunch good.

(7) Do No Evil

This has been a simple, powerful message. Google wants to help you move all your stuff from Blogger to Wordpress, if that's what you want. Google wants to pick a fight with China. This attitude makes the company stand out. If corporations are citizens, Google is a global citizen. It sure has a hugely diverse workplace.

Sergey Brin's Is The Right Stand
The Google Corporate Culture

Google has done very well this past decade, but the 2010s are a whole new ball game. But it is heading into that second decade well armed with Android and the Chrome OS. I have a feeling Google's second decade will also be swell. I would not call it a mature company. Mature for a tech company is not a term with positive connotations.

And there is so much left to do in search itself. Google's competition is with itself.

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