I think the Economist have seen right through the mystique of Google:
Now valued at more than $80 billion, Google has left in the dust the other three internet WunderkinderâYahoo!, eBay and Amazonâand even passed media stalwarts such as Time Warner. How does Google do it?
At least in part by shrewdly manufacturing a winning mystique. No outsider today can prove definitively that Google is not an office park full of geniuses who could at any moment announce, simultaneously, world peace and a cure for the common cold. That is because no outsider today can say anything definitive about Google at all. This is intentional. Google makes itself totally opaque by camouflaging itself with lots of what journalists call âcolourâ?.
Comments
2 responses to “What a lot of wheatgrass”
there’s quite a few people begining to “see through” google at this stage – see http://www.siglamag.com/features/0504/Google.php
In fairness, Google have potential because they could achieve what Netscape tried to do – bypassing the Wintel alliance entirely by running off the Internet.
And they could actually do it. A lot of the pieces are already in place (Google Search, News, Gmail, Blogger, etc.) and others are coming (whatever they’re up to, hiring Firefox developers).