The other day I wrote a post titled-

End of an Era and … The Man Who Won as Others Lost – Plus Social Media doing Good in the Recession?

In my post I mentioned that …..

“…..What if Google started laying off people? Then you’d really know it’s bad.   Well, I predict, that’s going to happen – maybe not next week – but I bet, it’s going to happen within the next year.   It makes sense, the only thing they make real money on in AdWords and AdSense -everything is advertising based.  Can you imagine if Google fired a bunch of marketing people – it’s not so far fetched.  But what does that say about the rest of the economy.   I shudder to think – I don’t think we want to know – but, unfortunately, we probably will start finding out soon.

Guess what?   We don’t have to wait that long – Google is already contemplating laying off some of it’s employees – according to Silicon Alley Insider Henry Blodget -  probably the Ad People I mentioned…… Google: Yes, If Revenue Craters, We’ll Fire People

read this analysis from Blodget::

“…. Last week, we posited that Google might eventually have to start firing people to offset slowing revenue growth, shrinking profit margins, and a weak economy. Sales chief Tim Armstrong recently suggested that the company is, in fact, prepared to do that:

[L]ast week Tim Armstrong, president-sales and commerce, Americas, told a group of travel advertisers that the company is “watching the economy closely and making sure our expenses and revenue are very much aligned.”

Tim didn’t specify firings, and, in truth, we imagine that Google’s people would be the last costs to go. Google has grown so quickly and is reportedly so undisciplined on internal cost controls that we imagine the company could find hundreds of millions to cut before it let a single Googler go.

That said, we don’t think a small headcount reduction would be such a bad move.

I know that anything can be spun an number of ways – and honestly, Henry Blodget is right – Google has so much extra money that it could get rid of a lot of the “fringe” expenses before having to lay off anyone …..

…but ….. much of what makes Google the kind of company it is …. are those fringe benefits – and the culture around them – mark my words  – it’s all about the culture …. about Google and Manifest Destiny (the same force that drove immigrants across America to travel west, dislocate the Indians, and settle the country during much of the 1800′s.

Part of the reason Google is an attractive place to work is that it seems to defy the laws of physics and make money when everyone else is losing it – that it seems to defy the odds and expand when everyone else is contracting ….. all of that because the minds of it’s engineers are superior, that it’s search engine is superior, that it has covered all the bases, even at NASA and the US Goverment.

However, what if ….. in an Obama Administration, which is looking more and more likely, Google and other search engines, but mainly Google is “Regulated”?

Well, at tonight’s BrandHacker Meetup in Manhattan (http://marketing.meetup.com/277/calendar/8539631/) Kevin M. Ryan said that

“…… it’s a certainty (inevitable) that within the next two years Google will be subject to some kind of regulation that will disrupt part of it’s business model.”

That’s right – even if the economy doesn’t take down Google a few notches - the Government, Democrat or Republican, will - people will – there’s more and more, a perception that Google needs to be regulated (much as the Wall Street needs to be regulated, much as Banks need to be regulated).

Google’s “Search Equity” is more “real”, if you think about it, than the Sub-Prime Mortgages that aren’t good enough to wrap fish in (to mark an old expression) which in turn was regulated by a “Shadow Economy” that took up credit swaps.

In a lot of ways, Google operates above the law – it makes it’s own rules and defies gravity – but not for that much longer – it’s inevitable the age of Google’s infallibility will end, probably sooner than later.

I can almost … almost see it now … the very same minds that built the Financial Algorithms (Computer Models) that ran Wall Street – many of them, are of the same elk that program Google’s Search Engine (another set of Computer Models).   Take this post by Saul Hansell in the New York Times Bits blog – How Wall Street Lied to Its Computers:

“….. The people who ran the financial firms chose to program their risk-management systems with overly optimistic assumptions and to feed them oversimplified data. This kept them from sounding the alarm early enough.

Top bankers couldn’t simply ignore the computer models, because after the last round of big financial losses, regulators now require them to monitor their risk positions. Indeed, if the models say a firm’s risk has increased, the firm must either reduce its bets or set aside more capital as a cushion in case things go wrong.

In other words, the computer is supposed to monitor the temperature of the party and drain the punch bowl as things get hot. And just as drunken revelers may want to put the thermostat in the freezer, Wall Street executives had lots of incentives to make sure their risk systems didn’t see much risk.

“There was a willful designing of the systems to measure the risks in a certain way that would not necessarily pick up all the right risks,” said Gregg Berman, the co-head of the risk-management group at RiskMetrics, a software company spun out of JP Morgan. “They wanted to keep their capital base as stable as possible so that the limits they imposed on their trading desks and portfolio managers would be stable.”

When the story of the Financial Meltdown becomes more and more solidified – much of the blame will fall on the “assumptions” that were overly optimistic, programmed in a way to mimic human financial behavior – but were unable to predict what happened last month – or correct for it – with an estimated 60 Trillion dollars of Reverse Credit Swaps out in the World Economy, not to mention all the Sub Prime debt that’s also bad (which it turns out is the least of the problems we have).

Now…. let’s spin this forward a little – we know a lot of people are afraid of Google, the resent Google for taking unfair advantage, for being, in a way, monopolistic, but most of all, people of jellous of Google’s success.

As the Financial Downturn continues – and people become more aware of the Financial Computer Modeling that enabled the Banks to fail – together with resentment that is already solidifying against Google …. where do you think the anger will point to …. in the future …….. who of all corporations is most like Wall Street?

Google.

In a way, if Google were even smarter than smart, they’d anticipate the upcoming changes and take themselves down a few notches – in other words, humble themselves more – open up in other ways than those they’re accustomed to.

Sure, Google has done a lot to make certain things they do more transparent – such as Google Webmaster Tools – but that’s only on Google’s own terms – they don’t actually ever want to have a conversation with anyone where they may end up being on the wrong side of it – and I suggest, they should allow themselves to be wrong more often.

And hire customer service people for Search – people you can talk to, for anything.    Look – we’re getting sick of dealing with Computer Algorithms – look what happened on Wall Street.

You know, people, as dependent as they are on Google, can easily morph a hate of willful manipulation that wiped out their savings and retirement funds – largely caused by a series of computer programs that were programmed, or over programmed – to Google, which runs on much the same kind of algorhytms for Search – both paid and organic.

Don’t think it can’t happen – people are going to be getting very emotional – in the not too distant future – there will be alot of angst to go around – some of it may end up on Google’s doorstep – and I suspect, some of it, belongs there, too (at least, that will be the perception).