A Google Appreciation Moment

Before losing the Google forest for the quarterly trees, I need to express nothing short of amazement at what this company has become. 

Eight years ago, Google didn't exist.  Five years ago, it didn't have a business model. Now, it has a $10 billion revenue run-rate, $10 billion in cash, $4 billion of operating cash flow, 8,000 employees, dominant global market share of the fastest-growing and most profitable advertising business in history, and $120 billion of well-deserved (if still expensive) market capitalization.  Google is already not only the largest Internet company in the world, it is the largest media company in the world.  It is coming up fast in the rearview mirror of one of the largest technology companies in the world--a giant that, when Google was born, was the largest and most powerful company in the world (a giant that now, in part because of Google, is worth half of what it was worth back then, and, in Google's business, is little more than an also-ran).

What's more, Google has BALLS.  Already this year, the company has spent about $1 billion on land, buildings, servers and technology, about as much as three of its biggest competitors combined.  It is successfully attacking entrenched incumbents that in a decade of the industry history no one had been able to lay a glove on (Yahoo! in search, Yahoo! and Microsoft in email, Yahoo! in Finance, eBay/Paypal in commerce).  It has stolen the industry's excitement, innovation, and fire, made everyone else look lazy and incompetent in comparison.  It has announced, with pleasure (and a wink), that it is building the infrastructure necessary to support a $100 billion company--and with each passing quarter it is making this plan seem ever more sane.  It has matured in its communications and decision-making.  It has delivered a dozen spectacular quarters in a row.  It has...

Are there "buts"?  Yes, of course there are "buts."  But to focus on the "buts" is to miss the forest for the trees.  There's no way to know how long Google can keep this up, but as long as it does, the only appropriate big-picture response is awe.

Comments

[benny blanco]

hey im first

[KING TROLL]

Fuck since when do you post at night Henry. FUCKKK I was on all DAY I knew you would post about google. Why not wait until the morning.

Second bitches!

[KING TROLL]

Ok yeah Henry but you don't own the stock. So you missed the forest for the trees.

[hack]

If I wanna read a google puff piece I'll go buy a copy of Wired, thanks.

[Steve]

Finally it happened. Even long standing nay-sayers have fallen into love with Google. The hype must be all time high.

[Victor]

Great post henry. I'm in the same camp of people who feel awe at what google has become. As you say, it's a behemoth, both feared and loved and it has done it in 8years. one thing i recall hearing E Schmidt say is that over the next few years companies are going to be able to get to scale faster and faster. In 10 years he thinks that a company will be able to become a multi-billion dollar company in 2-3 years instead of 8. With globalization going apace and the internet connecting billions of buyers and sellers, i tend to agree

[TLC]

There's no way to know how long Google can keep this up, but as long as it does, the only appropriate big-picture response is awe.

Is awe the same thing as putting money int the stock at $400?

[enronisstillastrongbuy]

kinda like Enron, awe then shock.

Too many holes in the good ship google.

[Lee]

They've got good moves, but nothing better than anyone else in the industry, check out Cisco's history if you want to see how G will mature or die.

[Andrew]

Google truly is an amazing company with their constant innovation and forward thinking mentality. They seem to be on the cutting edge of every service they can get their hands on. It will be fun to see where they take the company in even five years.

[Tomi Ahonen]

Hi Henry and readers of the Internet Outsider

Good posting. Google is growing really fast. But it is not the largest internet company by revenues. If today (mid 2006) Google has reached the 10 billion dollar annual sales level, it is still running 6 months behind that of the world's largest internet company by revenues.

It is the internet arm of Japan's biggest mobile phone operator, NTT DoCoMo. Its i-Mode internet arm (in Japan alone, excluding its international revenue streams) earned 10 billion dollars of revenues last year, 2005.

Yes, Google is very big and growing very fast. But the future is mobile. And the world's largest internet company by revenues is the wireless internet arm of a mobile operator. In fact Google's new CEO Eric Schmidt said just this May in his big thought piece in the Financial Times, that the next internet is on mobile phones.

more about these themes at our blogsite www.communities-dominate.blogs.com

Tomi Ahonen :-)