We all can remember Jack and the Beanstalk, right? Poor family and a dull-witted boy trading his cow for "magic" beans which grow a stalk into the heavenly kingdom of the Giant? Remember the goose which laid the golden egg, and the magic harp?
So let's take a brief look at a modern day giant....
Has anyone else been blown away by the latest onslaught of Googletopia - Gmail, Analytics, Blogger (you are using it right now), Froogle, Maps, Reader, Desktop, Groups, Picasa, Talk, Toolbar, Translate, Earth, etc, etc......And now they are allegedly in the works to release a
GooglePC with Walmart, their own Operating System. WHEW! Is anyone else overwhelmed?
So before I say anything, let me pay due diligence to Google and say thank you!!! Thank you for making the web a better place.
Now that that is said I have to note a voice whispering to me in the recesses of my mind. It is reminding me of a little statement which my father would say to me, "Be careful you don't become a jack-of-all-trades and a master of none." In the last couple of years, Google has gone from a hacker's best search tool to an actual word in the English language, "just Google it." Nobody would have guessed that a company would become so absolutely successful and effective with a simply marketing scheme, wrapped around an effective search engine.
But what now? Now that Google has become a giant in the tech space, what does it mean? To be honest, I simply don't know. But what I can say is that there is an obvious law of diminishing returns. A company can only play in the dramatically wealth growing stage for so long. After a while there comes a point where the growth line flattens out a bit. That is where the rubber meets the road for a successful company (it would seem). After all, the seeds of failure are easily sown in the soil of success.
One would wonder if it might be wise to stick to what you know and not become all things to all persons. Getting new and exciting products out the door really isn't the difficult part. In fact I think that is the most enjoyable part of the process. The difficulty comes when you have to support that product. Then the lawsuits come, the intellectual property issues, the internal employee support concerns, etc., etc. All of a sudden a versatile and limber company becomes a behemoth unable to quickly respond to the market changes.
Either way I have to say that I have been a willing participant in Google's product lines. They have set the pace for much of Web 2.0's development. I only hope that Google is able to carefully traverse the entrance into the Giant world and remember that it only took a dull-witted boy to steal the Giant's treasures. And when the Giant followed pursuit it was his enormity that was his final downfall (literally).
