Web Search--Google Will an IPO damage Google's corporate culture?
Source: Guardian Unlimited Google must keep searching for balance
From the article: If the culture of the company is irreparably damaged, then it will suffer. Brin and Page insist they can retain the company's identity and please the moneymen. But for a cautionary tale of what not to do they need look no further than Alta Vista, the site Google toppled as the web's search engine of choice, and is now nothing more than an online also-ran. I think the author has a point about how an IPO could/will change the Google culture. Can Google be all things to all people? Are we starting to see this? The company does a good job these days making it appear that Google is just a bunch of people hanging out in California, running a company, having a good time. However, it's far from that. It's a big company, period. Will it be a bigger company if it goes to an IPO? Yes. Also, while AltaVista is not what it once was, I think calling it an also-ran is a bit much. In many respect's AV plays in the same league with Google. For the power searcher, AV technology often beats Google.
+ The AltaVista's News and Image Search databases are first rate.
+ In terms of pure search power (what the database is capable of) AltaVista is still more powerful than Google. AV allows you to nest searches (Google doesn't), AV allows truncation (Google doesn't), AV allows more than ten search terms (Google doesn't). What Google does and does better than anyone else is market their product. To overtake Google the war would be as much about the marketing of the product as it would be with the search technology.
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