Ok, Ok, Ok, Google has another winning quarter (just as it was busy lowering every one's expectations) and profit grew 30% year to year according to a post on Search Engine Land - Google Beats Forecasts With 30% Increase In Profit.
It seems to me that Google's employees have increased quite a bit in the last 2 years - when I made my statement that one Googler = 35 IBMer's (when I was still working for IBM I actually tracked that).
"...Google has already increased the number of employees they have hired. As of March 31st, Google employed 19,156 full-time employees, up from 16,805 full-time employees on December 31, 2007."
But at the same time, I have detected the sentiment from a few people I've spoken to recently, that Google will be history in about 5 years - there's a perception that building a company on only one truly profitable product, Search, is not a formula for a sustainable, long term future.
No doubt, that's probably why Google has diversified so much - getting into many areas that aren't really profitable for it, in and of itself, were it not for connecting those areas with Search. Google's strategy works as long as Search is the center of the universe - should that change, or grow less important - the company will probably sink. And the perception I pick up is that - this is eventually going to happen.
I'm also noting that while the economic situation in the United States continues to worsen and spreads throughout the world, the Stock Market actually seems to go up - which I find both interesting and puzzling - it's almost as if the financial markets are so complicated in how they operate that they may actually behave in a way opposite to how one would suppose.
And with Google, having soaring stock prices doesn't seem to reflect the widespread dissatisfaction people are having both with Search and Google, in particular.
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