Google, She Is Dying

I dig Robert Cringely. He’s essentially a conspiracy buff with a brain and likes to predict stuff that will happen with Apple, Microsoft, and the big boys in his PBS columns. So this one is a doozy. He’s basically looking at Google and saying that with all the PhDs hanging around making great business ideas, Google will soon hemorrhage talent out onto Sand Hill Road.

I’m down with throwing stones at giants, but I think the crux of his argument — lots of good ideas, brains, and vested employees wandering out into the sunlight after being thwarted at every turn — ignores the tribal aspect of working at a place like Google. When you start a business you need to sit on that business for years, working like a dog for little payoff. Why do that when you can roll into the Googleplex with your dog and drink free soda? There’s something to be said about hanging in a fancy office. It’s not like IBM employees went hiking off into the New York woods as the company lost relevance. There are still plenty of MBAs and PhD milking the corporate cow for all its worth, much to that corporation’s eventual benefit.

What think you all?

The Final Days of Google: It is going to be an inside job. [PBS]