The Google Engima

Is Google a model internet company — or an anomaly?

“This decade’s most re­markable business story has been the rise of Google from the dot-com ashes. The company didn’t even exist 10 years ago — it was incorporated by its founders, Stanford University graduate students Larry Page and Sergey Brin, on September 7, 1998 — but it is today a juggernaut that is as feared as it is admired. The company’s growth has been dizzying, its revenues shooting up from less than US$500 million in 2002 to more than $10.5 billion in 2006. And despite a prolonged hiring binge, an aggressive acquisition program, and a multibillion-dollar investment in building data centers, Google remains robustly profitable, earning a net income of $2 billion on $7.5 billion of sales through the first half of 2007. Since the company’s initial public offering in August 2004, its stock price has risen fivefold.”

Read more at strategy-business.com

Dominating the Cloud

“Some people may be antsy about the consolidation of the world’s computing power into the hands of a few companies, but Google CEO Eric Schmidt sure isn’t one of them. He believes that the cost and the sophistication of the kind of enormous network supercomputer that his company is building present huge barriers to entry for would-be competitors. In a new Business Week interview, Schmidt says that becoming a giant of computing ‘is our goal.’”

Read more at roughtype.com.