Companies have a mission statement and most of them have a philosophy on how they and their business approach the world. Google is no different in that respect. They’ve had both those in place for some years now but sometimes, companies must adapt statements to suit necessary changes. Google is also no different there either.
About a month ago, Slashdot picked up on Google’s changes in philosophy. Our own Jason Lee Miller covered the story then as did a number of others. Search engine phenom, Danny Sullivan, after digesting the information for a while offered his own insights into Google’s alterations of their strategy.
Back in August, when a number of industry news groups were covering the change in their point 2 of “Ten things Google has found to be true” section, everyone reporting on it pointed out that change and extrapolated a bit. Sullivan goes much further in his editorial. A point mentioned in all the stories is the disclosure statement at the bottom of the statement.
* Full-disclosure update: When we first wrote these “10 things” four years ago, we included the phrase “Google does not do horoscopes, financial advice or chat.” Over time we’ve expanded our view of the range of services we can offer — web search, for instance, isn’t the only way for people to access or use information — and products that then seemed unlikely are now key aspects of our portfolio. This doesn’t mean we’ve changed our core mission; just that the farther we travel toward achieving it, the more those blurry objects on the horizon come into sharper focus (to be replaced, of course, by more blurry objects).
He suggests a number of those ten “things” have changed also including comments about “democracy one the web works,” “It’s best to do one thing really, really well,” and “Focus on the user and all else will follow.” He says these have changed so much, particularly the descriptions with them that they’re not really valid as written anymore. He goes so far as to say that the whole page should probably come down because honestly Google’s growing up.
Google is starting to mature a bit and while word of mouth and other things are great for a while, Google, on its international scale is starting to run ads for their product and you will probably see more. They’re adding lots of “portal” features and doing things now they said they wouldn’t do in the past. While some may become disillusioned with Google over this as they embrace whole-heartedly the concept of “big business.” Some of that goes with being publicly traded. They have a whole different set of standards now and revenues are necessary to keep stockholders happy.
One final note, Sullivan points out Google is far more than just a search engine now. They sell ads, publish blogs, have Google Talk, mail etc. Is this all truly classified as one thing? In some ways, Google is just another company, out to make a buck. They’ve set a high standard for themselves and other, driving with their vision. One point that does seem to stick out still is “One can make money without doing evil.” That’s one in the end, they must maintain.
John Stith is a staff writer for Murdok covering technology and business.
