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Google: The Shark Has Just Jumped?
First, Google censoring China search results. Then a BusinessWeek article. And a shredding from Barron's leading to stock price drop. Now the cover of Time, which I just got done reading this evening. In it, Time went searching for the real Google. What did they find? Larry and Sergey playing with Legos while workers are getting free massages and haircuts and Eric wondering why there is a London telephone booth in a hallway with no phone in it. All nice imagery to have when you're trying to measure cool work environments...if you can get it and have a market cap of $100 billion, $6.1 billion in revenues and $1.5 billion in profit.
Let's face it, Google's success is a big deal to new media watchers and users. And when Google makes a rare misstep, it gets noticed. For nearly all of Google's amazing run, the news and buzz has nearly always been good.
But, you know the movement has peaked and the shark has jumped when the princes of "Do No Evil" who've spent 8 years trying to stay in the garage and out of the spotlight now are spending more time as coverboys. Is that time now?
According to Wikipedia, here's the definition of "jumping the shark""A metaphor used by US television critics and fans since the 1990s to denote the moment when a television series is (in retrospect) deemed to have passed its peak. Once a show has "jumped the shark," fans sense a noticeable decline in quality or feel the show has undergone too many changes to retain its original charm...It alludes to a goofy scene in the TV series Happy Days when its popular character, Fonzie, is on water skis and literally jumps over a shark...The term has also evolved to describe other areas of pop culture, including film series, music or acting celebrities, or authors for whom a drastic change was seen as the beginning of the end."
Mark it in your iCals and look back at Google a year or two from this week and see if Google still has the lock on searching. Sure, Happy Days stayed popular for several more years; it just wasn't the same.
My guess is Google's effort to expand so rapidly into new territory (doubling their workforce in the last year) will suddenly create a cumbersome management structure unwieldy for effectiveness. Google's past strength has been market agility and below-radar savviness. Doing the covers means that Larry and Sergey are doing exactly what they fine employees for doing -- stock ticker watching. That was the concern when they Dutch Auctioned their IPO -- when would they put Wall Street ahead of the end user? Is that now?
Of course, I could be wrong...Google is still my most used webpage and search tool; it's even my homepage when I launch Firefox and it is the search tool here on the Jointblog. I love Google and what it does. I just don't want it spoiled or ruined; I want my user experience to remain great.
This recent series of articles and expansion controversies make it appear like this may be one of those watermark points for something massively successful in pop culture suddenly going against its coolness rep. Is it possible Google can keep their position growing and figure out new advertising leadership positions beyond search and smart linking? What's their next move?
And, more importantly, if someone typed in a Google search for "Google jumps the shark", will Google actually show it in the results? At the time of this posting, only 111 results show up. So far.
TIME.com article
posted by Unknown @ Wednesday, February 15, 2006,
