hubris
Lately, there's been a downturn in the ad market. Even online advertising isn't growing as fast as it used to. But don't expect these macroeconomic trends to effect Google's second-quarter earnings report today. Google isn't a bellwether for the economy, CEO Eric Schmidt
told reporters in Idaho last week. "We make our own weather," he said. With those remarks in mind, we'll let analysts like Citi's Mark Mahaney —
who created the useful cheat sheet above — tell you what kind of numbers to expect today. Our forecast for today's earning's call instead? A downpour of arrogance and gutters full of gloating.
hubris
Jake Orion, the guy in charge of Android development at Sprint, says that while "Google’s confidence, vision and self assurance are refreshing and innovative," Google needs to " to appreciate and address industry fundamentals more pragmatically." Specifically,
Orion told AndroidGuys.com Google needs "a more proactive and direct linkage to the carrier’s network and service requirement" — which we think means Google hasn't yet made Android friendly to how Sprint runs its network. Details, details! Who needs to worry about that when you're busy being self-assured and confident?
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hubris
John Sterlicchi, writing for the U.K.'s
Guardian, just emailed me asking for my thoughts on "
this Google daycare fiasco." (The short version: Google closed an outsourced daycare facility in favor of one run in-house, and hiked prices 70 percent, far above market rates; Googlers with kids in the facility, and those on the waitlist, are furious.) He asked: "If someone outside the environs of Google and Silicon valley was looking at this, what should they think? Is Google moving away from 'do no evil'?" Good questions. Here's what I just wrote him:
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sergey brin
Joe Nocera of the
New York Times has
taken note of
Google's childcare crisis. A brief recap: After taking its childcare programs in-house, at the behest of Google executive Susan Wojcicki, the sister-in-law of founder Sergey Brin, Google hiked its rates 70 percent. Parents were infuriated not just at the price hike but, accustomed to Google's culture of analysis-driven consensus, at the imperious way the decision was handed down. Nocera's reporting reveals more numbers showing just how incompetent Google is at daycare — and how comfortable Brin's PR handlers are at lying on his behalf. How, in other words, Google has become just like any other company in corporate America.
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hubris
Shareholders will likely be relieved by Google's
standout performance in the first quarter. The stock, which had been sinking like a rock, will almost certainly rebound. And Google's self-satisfied executive team will congratulate themselves once again. Hubris, reinforced by the numbers, reigns at the Googleplex.
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hubris
"Google's Search Party," Ken Auletta's 6,264-word
opus on the search engine's grudging embrace of D.C. lobbying, has proved tough to condense. Until I reread it again this weekend, and realized it can be boiled down to the final observation made by CEO Eric Schmidt:
What kills a company is not competition but arrogance. We control our fate.
Control fate, or
tempt it? Google, improbably, is managing to do both.
Valleywag
rocketboom
