Google is called many things, including The Evil Empire (a Star Wars reference which seems to suit their dogged corporate determination to get involved in all aspects of the media world), but it is often an unfair accusation.
Google, like Microsoft and like Facebook, were once the groovy kids on the block. Okay, groovy might be going too far (geeks is a better word perhaps), but not that long ago these guys were the typical team sitting in their bedrooms, with their computers, figuring out how to tame the internet.
And for fellow geeks, the Google search engine soon turned out to be the best. It allowed speedy searches and returned accurate results. So much so, that the term, “…Google it…” has now entered the Lexicon.
But then they had to grow up. Once a technology company becomes the next big thing and begins to attract external investment, in a way the old pioneering days are over. And once Google became a public company quoted in world stock exchanges, then the sense of the new kids on the block was gone forever.
Now the team at Google is one of the world’s largest companies and investors continually look to the management to produce a good and viable return.
The pressure is on to produce significant increases in sales and profits on a yearly basis and to do that, the company has to keep growing and ‘land-grabbing’ all that it can. So, it has to enter new areas and sectors to achieve that level of growth.
So, Google might now be seen as the Evil Empire, but that’s just a result of its company public status and the need to expand.