Google can do this because they have too much cash on their balance sheet and the market demands a return on that cash. They need novel areas to invest for them to grow. But there is an alternative. I would prefer to see Google return cash to shareholders via a stock buyback and focus on their core: organizing the world's information.<p>This is not because I hold GOOG stock, just because I believe in that mission, think they still have a long way to go, and don't yet have the resources to tackle that problem myself.<p>I think as a smaller company revenue-wise and, ideally, as a private one they could have more long-term focus.
<i>Google says the algorithms have taught it valuable lessons...(start-ups located far from the venture capitalist’s office are more likely to be successful, probably because the firm has to go out of its way to finance the start-up.)</i><p>Disagree.<p>Try this: Google's analysis of the venture capital industry shows that companies do better when it's difficult for their investors to meddle in their business on a day to day basis.
Taking a look at Google's data set would sure settle a lot of arguments:<p>1. Does age matter?<p>2. How important it is to be in Silicon Valley?<p>3. Are biz devs really important?<p>4. Are cofounders really important?
It's mostly a journalistic device, but the notion of the next ______ (Google, Scorcese, insert popular thing) is flawed. There won't be a next ______, and that is okay.
the problem isn't finding "next" Google per.se. The main problem for a corporation at the life stage Google is at is to not allow the "old" (very successful, thus having a lot of clout, inertia and generally looking back instead of forward) Google to kill the "next" one when it is brought in.
Not surprising that Google would be on the hunt for the next hit among startups. We've seen them do it within their own products, ala GMail, Google Maps, Google Voice, etc. Tech companies don't tend to stick around unless they move with the times, and of all companies I'd bet Google knows it.
The next Google is "IBM's Watson" patched in through your smart phone so someone can punch in a natural language question and get back a reasonable natural language response from a simulated person with IQ of 5000.<p>If you can build even a primitive version of this deployed well, it would be the Google-killer. Have it answer everything from 'how do you make a for loop in php' to 'what cinemas near 32807 are playing Cars 2'? I don't want pages of links, I want concise understandable objective correct answers.
At Google's revenue aren't losses kinda a good thing? (tax right off) I mean as good as losses can be. Does this give them an advantage against other VC's? and if so any idea on how much?