The death of Google
I thought Lauren does a good job here of distinguishing between the people who work at a company, and the emergent behavior of a company based on profit motive or other incentives.<p>Larry Bossidy wrote a book on confronting reality[1] which I found interesting because it tackles some of the issues facing Google today. Basically when you compare your new businesses (Google X, Other bets) to your monster business (Search Advertising) they look puny and weak. But sometimes if you considered them on their own they would look like good things.<p>One of the PMs I knew at Google told me (as he was leaving) that Google was the only place he knew where you could get fired after creating a $100M/year ARR business. That is only $25M/quarter which was only a .3% increase in revenue, so a loser right? But how many people would love to be in charge of a business generating $100M/yr in revenue? Lots!<p>The reality Google is missing is that there isn't another "search advertising" business but there might be 100 other smaller businesses that they could invent/run just as profitably. But it is hard to see that.<p>[1] Confronting Reality -- <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Confronting-Reality-Master-Model-Success-ebook/dp/B000FC2JN4/" rel="nofollow">https://www.amazon.com/Confronting-Reality-Master-Model-Succ...</a>