Now Google. GOOGLE!
The first part of what Google’s spending cuts mean is what we all have known, but which is now confirmed in the most dismal of ways: even the most successful, optimistic, hopeful, iconic company in the land must bow to the new realities.
Indeed, the Google share price is down 65% like everybody else’s share price. This economy has no stars and no favorites and no exceptions.
The other part of what this means is more historic—and hence will sound, especially to people living in the Internet moment, overstated—but this is sort of the end of Google. That is, no more engineers chasing wacky ideas means not only a downsizing of the Google culture, but that the company hits a technology plateau—and, in fact, begins to fall backwards.
Yahoo never recovered from having to curtail development during the 2001 downturn; AOL died when Time Warner squeezed its engineering talent; MySpace got old when News Corp. cheaped out on investing it its technology bonafides.
You fall behind, new companies run by just-out-of-school and more-up-to-date talent jump into business ahead of you.
Poor Google.
