Looking For a Dot-Com Winner? Search No Further

People thought Eric Schmidt was nuts when he went to Google. Not anymore.

[skibum]

Excellent Google Article [fortune.com]

2001 revenues of 70 mil
2002 rolling in at 2x that rate.

Earning more than 15 mil annually, gets 7 mil/year from YAHOO!

3x as profitable as Ebay was after 3.5 years in business.

Processes 1800 searches/second

...In effect, it ranks Web pages not by how many times keywords appear, which is what most search engines do, but by how popular and relevant each page is....

Simplicity + Brains + Common Sense = Google success, any way you measure it.

[chiyo]

And also might i add, while dinosaur and old economy trained business strategists were castigating them for "not having a business model"..

Google is an excellent example of innovative, street-smart long-term customer-oriented strategic planning.

[SmallTime]

Until they IPO, then all that long term, customer orientated planning goes away.

[brotherhood of LAN]

Its all already been said

Google is a benchmark for any discerning webmaster to aspire to!

[chiyo]

Hi Small time. Plenty of public companies still focus on the customer.. they have to...

I do agree that it is harder to be innovative and fast as a public company as you have a lot more stakeholders to placate - decision making slows, conservatism increases as in any large group with many interests, so they will lose that advantage if they IPO.

But they can still (and must) stay customer oriented.. its just they have a lot more owners to consider as well as those now that can probably just sit around the google board table in one room munching tofu burgers ala Grateful Dead.

[WebGuerrilla]

I think the most interesting part of that article is the fact that they are now leaking actual numbers. In the past, all they would say is that they were profitable.

You've got to give the Google PR machine credit. They seem to have a very well thought out plan. Google's biggest challenge is convincing the public to take another chance on a dotcom. Articles like the Fortune piece will play a major role in making that happen.

[Abrexa_UK]

The big question is whether Yahoo will renew with Google. That hasn't been decided yet has it? And it could see the turn over drop by $7M.

[caine]

good write up.

[ciml]

I agree, WebGuerrilla, the PR is spot on. Like successful politicians, Google get to have the same stories several times each, with slight twists, and a little more information.

[vitaplease]

400 employees and no CFO.

I like companies without a CFO.

A good bookkeeper is fine - call him or her accountant if your wish.

CFO's remind me of funky SMO(Stock Market Optimilisation)
and creative-pre-dot-com crash overvalued companies.

but that's an engineer speaking..

[Go60Guy]

I agree with Smalltime. Once Google goes public, there will be a shift from customer oriented strategies to shareholder oriented strategies. This quarter's bottom line becomes the holy grail. Its the American way.

[Chris_R]

Google is already making a profit. This is rare. I think those that invest will be a little more conservative than before.

Google doesn't need to doa pump and dump. They will be here for the long term.

There is no reason that their current strategies aren't in the best interest of shareholders.

[Abrexa_UK]

Chris, I think that you are underestimating the greed of shareholders. Once a company goes public, it is only about the money. Any and every way of making money from Google will be considered :)

I would think that we will see an optional Pay-for-inclusion scheme in the near future. And many people will gladly pay to have their site properly spidered and guaranteed to be in the index. Google can't lose on that one.

[Chris_R]

Greed is fine, I just think long term greed is better than short term.

There is no way they are going to turn google into a portal - or anything like that - it would be shooting themselves in the foot.

I plan on buying a lot oof google shares.

I'll just have to buy enough to make sure this doesn't happen. Anyone want to loan me a couple hundred million?

[jdMorgan]

How about we all buy just a hundred shares, and all we insist on is that GG keep reading these forums and doin' what he do? :)

[weisinator]

I'm not casting any doubt on Google's long-term, but how much debt do they carry?