Been there, done that, bought the tee shirt.
30/04/2004
Welcome to the other side, Google
Much as they resisted selling out, Google finally filed their IPO plans. Welcome to the world of short term revenue, and slow sinking beauracracy. Hope you make it.
Right, I know what I say anywhere about Google would probably be tagged sour grapes, but I’m confident I can be objective enough to dish good stuff. I still like Gmail, their ugly excuse for a free email service (well, 1 gb of storage can be very convincing), Orkut was fun for a while, and when you get them to define a term in the search box (eg: define googol) the result isn’t truncated like Y! Search‘s is. And they even have time for a quirky sense of humour.
What does get on my nerves is how the wannabes like to refer to Google like it’s the best thing invented since sliced bread. Yes they’re a great search engine, yes, they set their priorities right and I’ve no doubts they’ll potentially build fabulous world dominating products. Especially since everyone at Why-bang is busy writing documents and having meetings about why they should be doing this and that instead of doing it.
Yes, they’re now a Cultural Phenomenon. You’re a smartie pants savvy internet user if you Yahoo!ed way back then, and want to go to Google today.
<div align=off-tangent>
MSN should just give up the race now. Hotmail is an inferior piece of crap (2mbs of storage? What – Bill can’t afford the extra disk space? Or does the OS take up too much of it?), MSN Messenger is a promise of something better, but mostly fails to work for me because I didn’t do my stupid Windows updates. They should just do the honourable thing – get out of the market while they still look scary.
</div>
What a difference a couple of years makes
Look, the point is, Google isn’t the first Internet pin-up, they aren’t the first Internet company mentioned on TV, yeah they’re now a verb. But they’re not the only ones with founders from Stanford who found a better way to organise data on the internet. In the beginning, there was Dave and Jerry.
<useless trivia>
From 40 under 40: Richest (Fortune Magazine, Sep 15 2003)
#5 David Filo
#6 Jerry Yang
#7 Sergey Brin
#8 Larry Page
That article also highlights these facts:
1. “Chief Yahoo!” sounds infinitely better than “President”
2. The Google dudes took the spaces held by the Yahoo!s the year before (though this year they’ll probably blow the whole list out of the water)
3. Jeff Bezos is doing really well for a guy who’s not showing any profit
4. Michael Dell looks like Richard Kind from Spin City
</useless trivia>
And it’s a load of crock that Google “took the internet out of geekdom and made it cool”. In my book, instant messaging and Napster did that.
Lest we forget how the road to hell is paved with good intentions, lemme put this out there. They all started the same way – wide eyed, hopeful that they’re working on great inventions, products that will change and define the way people live.
To me, the real question is how long they stick to doing no evil.
Oh and by the way, no one really knew who they were until Yahoo! used them to power a previous incarnation of the Yahoo! search engine.
So there. Take that. Send your little bots and index this page or do I have to post this on blogspot (watch out for the exciting nasal spray addiction ads)?
