Can Google master what other gigantic corporations couldn’t?
I’ve held my breath today, as I’ve read that some study at TU Graz has demanded for Google to be split up. It turns out, it’s all about Google “throwing privacy on the waste heap” and thus endangering the mankind, yadda yadda. This is however not something I’d have in mind when it comes to splitting up Google Inc.
It’s a rather known fact, that Google is the best place to work. The benefits are the best known in the industry and thus only the best engineers work there. However, in the recent months the situation has changed a bit. Google is still good, but apparently it lacks its startup atmosphere it used to have, otherwise it would be difficult to explain many Googlers leaving for Facebook. Google is big now, big enough to get trouble keeping up the innovation pace it once defined. Therefore, Google’s next challenge would be an economical one, not technical: they will have to decide how to split themselves up into small pieces each attractive enough for bright minds looking for a startup to join and still be a gigantic corporation with all the benefits and power. As far as I’m aware, no corporation has ever managed to do that. As you are getting big, every additional management layer adds marketing and development constraints, you can’t follow startups’ “when it’s done” principle anymore. Is it possible to expand without adding too many management layers ontop of your development teams? This is the question Google will have to answer sooner than later.