Google: The immaturity of huge masses

Over the past few months Google's power has become increasingly apparent. From its humble roots as yet another search engine to becoming the coolest search engine to selling advertising along with searching to mapping Earth and to its spectrum of innovative services, Google's evolution was a slow (by some standards) but an extremely measured path.

During this evolutionary process Google attracted much attention, and its stated corporate philosophy, "Do no evil," was taken seriously by employees and the market. The company innovated and managed to stay more or less below the market's moral radar.

So why is it that Google has become such a force to reckon with? Some would say that beyond its smart marketing and cool technologies, being up to its butt in cash has something to do with it. But that misses the point.

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Over the past few months Google's power has become increasingly apparent. From its humble roots as yet another search engine to becoming the coolest search engine to selling advertising along with searching to mapping Earth and to its spectrum of innovative services, Google's evolution was a slow (by some standards) but an extremely measured path.

During this evolutionary process Google attracted much attention, and its stated corporate philosophy, "Do no evil," was taken seriously by employees and the market. The company innovated and managed to stay more or less below the market's moral radar.

So why is it that Google has become such a force to reckon with? Some would say that beyond its smart marketing and cool technologies, being up to its butt in cash has something to do with it. But that misses the point.

What really happened was that as the company has grown, it has gained mass from the weight of its corporate power. Its corporate power is the sum of all the little bits of power the company has accumulated through a combination of hard work, great selling and an iron will to explore strange new technologies, to seek out new markets and new sales opportunities, to boldly go where no company had gone before (and maybe to wildly split infinitives in the process).

Google's mass is actually the most important issue. Just like stellar bodies, there comes a point at which the gravitational force of a successful business's accumulated mass becomes so enormous that it starts to collapse into a different realm of business physics.

Depending on the initial conditions, businesses, like stars, can collapse under their own weight, becoming black holes that effectively (as far as we know) drop out of the "normal" universe and sit there sucking in anything that comes within reach. (I'm sure I could beat this stellar metaphor to a pulp, but frankly I've had enough of it.)

The real question is this: Is Google really like Microsoft? Sure. Google is almost as powerful, but what it isn't, so far at least, is willing to bend the rules in the ways that Microsoft has. And so far, it has kept its behavior clean and fair.

At least, it had until the CNet thing blew up. In case you missed Buzz on Aug. 15 and 22, Google seemed to lose its collective minds recently and got annoyed with CNet for (so it is claimed) Googling Google's CEO, Eric Schmidt. In fact, Google was so annoyed that it decided to not talk to CNet for a year. So there CNet, take that.

If that were the complete story I would be appalled that Google could be so childish, but unfortunately I don't have the complete story. I've read everything I could find about the fracas and it simply doesn't make any sense. What was it about the information revealed that Google considered inappropriate? Why won't Google explain its thinking? Anyway, if Google indexed that information, how private could they have considered it to be? Questions, questions, questions.

As neither side in the dispute has come clean on specifics, we, the great unwashed, can have no opinion. It is simply a spat between two companies, both of which should know better. In CNet's case, its lack of a real explanation is bizarre. In Google's case, its actions and lack of explanation are bizarre and indefensible, but quite in keeping, returning to our stellar metaphor, with having gone over the business event horizon.