StupidScript - 11:24 pm on May 3, 2006 (gmt 0)

You guys really think that? Hmmm ...

Let's say that they realized at least two years ago (pre-IPO) that their storage needs were growing exponentially. As a business owner, how much money would you allocate for storage needs if you were Google, two years ago? 50x your current budget? 100x? More than likely you would allocate a number that reasonable accountants would agree to, like say 10x.

As soon as the money is allocated (and even before), you begin drawing up plans for the expansion that include any sort of known technology and even tech that was rumored to be on the horizon but not yet available. Has that resource pool changed at all over the past two years? Oh, yes. You bet it has, both in terms of what is available and in terms of how much it costs.

Then you grab all of the IT folks you can find to get the plans implemented. How about that metric? Up or down since 2004?

Then you've got to find property to hold all of those servers (10,000 before they stopped reporting it), in some of the most expensive parts of the planet to buy real estate ... unless y'all figger those IT folks are going to move to the puckies. What do you think? Have real estate prices gone up or down in the past 2 years?

Someone noted that G could probably purchase several existing data centers at rock-bottom prices, but are they of the quantity, quality and in the locations that G absolutely must have for their setup? Dunno. Maybe.

Frankly, I think a likely scenario is not one where G was caught flat-footed, but rather one in which the financial system and its increasing complexity since the IPO have stood in the way of performing the tasks they very well knew were necessary to complete, and have hampered G's ability to provision the required storage.

It's always fun to giggle at the boss when their fly is open, but if anyone actually believes that G's business plan is the problem here, well, you're not paying very close attention to the company you're giggling at in this case. G has been anything but in disarray, or forgetful, or floundering.

With regard to the other services (Earth, et al.) ... your suggestions are to forget about all of that shinola and go back to being a simple search engine? Have you learned nothing from the past?

Stagnation = Death.

My tuppence.