When you consider that Google’s net income in 2006 was well over $3 billion, it becomes apparent that individual customers don’t matter much to the company’s overall business. Google may be trying to change that, however: yesterday and today, it’s holding a special sales meeting with “nearly 200 federal contractors, engineers and uniformed military members.”
After all, who or what has deeper pockets than the U.S. government? The Washington Post’s Sara Kehaulani Goo and Alec Klein, while writing about the meeting, noted that “Google has ramped up its sales force in the Washington area in the past year to adapt its technology products to the needs of the military, civilian agencies and the intelligence community.”
According to Goo and Klein, Google executives are extremely optimistic about their chances of deepening those relationships. That’s nothing new – I can’t recall a press release or official statement in which a company expressed anything resembling doubts – but impartial onlookers agree that the odds favor the search engine corporation.
Stephen E. Arnold, a technology analyst and author of a book about Google, gave his opinion on the matter. “Most federal agencies have trouble with information technology. They don’t really talk about it very openly,” he told The Post. “Google is in a unique position to do these large-scale, back-office functions. . . . That’s really what they’re up to.”
In addition to being good for Google’s balance sheets, the two-day meeting will probably give conspiracy theorists something else to whisper about. After all, Google has already worked out deals with Lockheed Martin and NASA . . . who knows what’s next?
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