When I pick up any of the local community magazines handed out for free at the pizza store, I find it annoying when the pages of local advertising are interrupted by the occasional article.

HA! I know someone who hates that the Super Bowl is interupted by Football....

If thinking includes soliciting the thoughts of others so that your own thinking is expanded, then I would very much agree. Having read your post as well as the article, it seems that biggest mistake Google made was not being open with their staff and more specifically with the staff who would be most affected by this decision--parents. If they had opened discussions they may have been amazed at the wisdome of collective problem solving and may have designed a solution that worked for all involved without hard feelings or negative publicity. This however, works best in an environement where management is trusted, which does not appear to be the case with Google based on the NY Times article.

I like the sentence, “Indeed, at one meeting, Ms. Wojcicki, a multimillionaire herself, told the parents that she planned to keep her own children in Google day care, despite the higher cost.” That encapsulates what Google really is. A behemoth that is disconnected from truth, decency, and responsibility - only numbers matter. After all, at Google they don’t judge the data, just deliver it. There are plenty of examples of this. Google knowingly ignores data veracity in exchange for user inputs (i.e. politically misplaced towns on the core layer Google Earth when looking at Israel), or their ranking system which continuously gives prominence to hate sites who hired good SEO consultants, despite Google knowing the source and dishonesty of the data on the sites (Google “Jew” for an example). Repeatedly Google’s solution is simply a disclaimer abdicating responsibility and the ability to fix this problem. Yet with China, when their entry into the market was threatened, somehow they managed to judge the data and not deliver it – data that is true and accurate. But some people are thinking. Companies like Peer39 has come up with a technology that far surpasses Google Keyword Matching in ad-to-page accuracy, though it would take a Microsoft or Yahoo to embed it globally and challenge Google. And plenty of people are finally realizing that the lack of a functional overriding moral doctrine at Google, along with their storehouse of data on everybody and everything is actually something to be concerned about.

Again -- I see this as a metaphor for future success. If you agree that tyranny, ultimatly, limits creativity then the implications are clear. PEER39 and others have a bright future....

Maybe it's unkind to claim it, but I think Google was very lucky - a single good idea (better approach to search) and a good name. They are vulnerable to the next better methods to link knowledge and seekers. Of course this was no secret to Google, so their conduct after the "big bang + inflation" period has been to shore up all the cracks in the business model. The tyranny (and arrogance) has two explanations, both of which may be true. Maybe more than two explanations. #1: "Power corrupts" (or, ultimately, all powerful orgs fall to temptation). #2: Tactlessness or immaturity in dealing with people (and society). Who is missing? Who could stop their folly? Will they fall? What is a better model that protects? Tom.

They are vulnerable to the next better methods to link knowledge and seekers. I recently spoke to some low level people at facebook and Yahoo. I wanted to run some (surprisingly obvious to me, but) slightly different types of campaign with them, which would have brought me great results. Both said they didn't have the technology in place to run campaigns that way (which surprised me even more). Sometimes you just miss what's in front of your face, because you are looking in the wrong direction. (I'm saving these ideas until I can figure out how to capitalize on them).

On the other hand, quite often you see really, really dumb ideas getting flooded with investment money, and you wonder to yourself if ideas must be truly stupid to convince VCs and investors to invest. (Or do you simply need to make bold, audacious and completely improbable/impossible claims, that make investors are too nervous to ignore you). ...and then 2 or 3 years later, you find your initial thoughts justified, when yet again another startup company with a dumb idea tanks, often after never even making it into production, and taking the investments down with it.

Coyote (and Roadrunner) and ACME. Breaks me up, big time! Real break-through ideas have a similar effect. Bit more sublime. Steps in between can be a bit tedious, quite a bit. But who cares. Tedious is penance for not working it out sooner and simpler. Tom.

As always -- the truth is always somewhere in the middle -- lots of ideas that sounded funny were in fact dumb -- its part of the game to figure it out