Is Google's Cash Pile a Sign of the End of Technological Progress?

What Theil seems to be saying is that Google seems to have no clue with what to do with 50 billion in the bank. Can Google just hire a lot more programmers and give them something to work on? Can they just gobble up a lot of startups and with the cash horde turn them hugely profitable. At least from what Schmidt says in the interview, it looks like there is no easy answer to the question of what to do with the money. I guess even companies like Apple will have this problem. Lots of money, no idea what to do with it. Even things like self driving cars and google glass are really peanuts in terms of investments when it comes to googles finances.<p>Things like Space, energy seem too risky and biotech, medicine etc. seem to be too regulated. While I have no idea who is right or wrong, I was certainly surprised that Schmidt did not dismiss Thiel's comment about not having a clue about what to do with the cash.<p>I am not an economist, but I feel scared when the wealthiest people have no idea how to rapidly grow the money they have gathered. Coz they own most of it... and if all they can do is slosh it around from account to account and not directing it towards making employees/machines produce "stuff that matters", we will rather stagnate quickly. Once the developing countries catch upto the west and we automate whatever we can easily automate, the whole world will be left with stagnant economies. A whole planet with nothing much to do apart from fighting over depleting resources.<p>I desperately want google to be able to spend that cash heap on making something people want. Something that will give it a good profit so that it keep this going on until it remains competitive. Else I want capitalism off the face of this planet. I hate to live in a world where money keeps leaking out of my pocket in mysterious ways and the guys who get it from me, stop doing anything that will indirectly improve my life.<p>And please do not buy 50 Instagrams with that cash horde :(. Open question to the hackers over here... If you were chairman of Google what would do with 50 billion dollars to create maximum new wealth(<a href="http://paulgraham.com/wealth.html" rel="nofollow">http://paulgraham.com/wealth.html</a>)?

No. And Thiel's argument is ridiculous. People are so desensitized to technological progress that they don't know it when they see it any more. Yes, Google is primarily "just" a search engine. If by search engine you mean "storing all of the world's data regardless of type and enabling instant access to any of it." Enabling that is Google's art and hobby, but it doesn't always pay, so they have a part time job on the side waiting tables, essentially. Has Thiel taken a tour of Google, Apple, Intel, Microsoft, and every other company with a few billion in the bank and concluded they too are stagnating because they are iterating core products? Does he have some kind of inside information? Or is his argument, in fact, just an excuse to try and make Google look small?<p>And Reason's headline - jesus christ.

No. (<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridges_Law_of_Headlines" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridges_Law_of_Headlines</a>)