Achoogle
Google is antisocial?
Do Tell. I wonder how News.com discovered this little piece of insight?
Maybe it's because for all the rah-rah/blah-blah egalitarianism, anything that starts from the top in Silicon Valley is suspect.
The salary slaves who show up for work every day around 9 after driving an hour, then leave work feeling guilty at 8 p.m. wondering what their kids names are? They're the ones who drive this valley. Fer fuck's sake - you can't touch a house anywhere within 70 miles for less than 3/4 of a million dollars. It ain't the guys who can afford old jetliners who make things happen around here.
Does it surprise anyone that Google might all be built on a well-engineered but reliably shaky house of cards? Hell, anyone can come up with good ideas - and anyone can write software.
But Google is cool, right?
Google is very cool. Shit, they were the only ones hiring around here during 2002 and 2003. A job is very cool.
I think they're little more than just another dot-com - but carrying lessons and pacing. Google's like the nerd at the beer bash who admits a DUI several years later. These days, that nerd will get on a good drunk with everyone else, but stick around the office reading e-mail until sober has one "r".
--
Sure, the Google guys "get it" to a degree. Just like I "get it" that bringing an easy to use, lightweight, distributed load search engine to market is a good idea.
Google has a lightweight, geek-friendly corporate interface. They hire cool folks and all their cool friends. They have a stock price that coincides with their new toys' cruising altitude - which means that most of their employees will be able to buy homes, even when interest rates climb another few basis points. But I don't think Google has it's fundamentals in order - and I think that's illustrated all too well by the founders' choice and handling of executive transport.
--
S.P. Jobs has it almost right - he apparently shouts down employees he doesn't agree with, but he knows their names - and contrary to popular belief, he doesn't fire them without good cause. He also has good friends like A.C. Markkula and Larry Ellison, who clearly know something about style, class and how to combine the two in an aircraft purchase. Larry and Sergey might take a lesson.
This hubris shows up in their choice of personal airframe.
Any dipshit...er anyone with an extra $30 million to throw away can toss it on a 767-200 in need of an FAA "C" check. Only the truly discriminating choose to shy away from the equivalent of a V8 Suburban with wings and a 10-gallon gas tank.
In the south, we used to call discriminating aircraft buyers "old money". To paraphrase John Houseman..."Old money multiplied dollars the old fashioned way...they earned it".
To put it in terms even Dell support employees can understand, one can safely assume that the wrinkle-infested, sour-faced inhabitants of the corporate skies understand the value of restraint. Google, the entity embodied by this aircraft, doesn't get it.
Fer chrissake - having a couch delivered to the office so you can test it's fitness for a 20-year-old twinjet in lieu of what sounds like a fancy screw-sling? I hope you hired a bunch of smart people to run your company, guys. Enjoy the proceeds.
--
This is the culture that has lead to Orkut's failure as a connection space. Hell, everyone in this valley has dealt with "teh richendfamis", whether at the Plumed Horse, or during a double-take while being passed by a license plate-free silver Mercedes on 280 South. They know they're better than you - the number on the back of their car is bigger - don't you see?
They're smart - they have the money to prove it! If you build a corral and invite only a bunch of purple people to it, it's no wonder that no brown or orange people show up. And that's why Orkut is going over like an Andrew Sullivan book-signing event in the Castro.
--
But hey - you're wondering about the Googleplane and it's shameless owners.
Given the same, ah, liquidity, I'd have gone for a BBJ, which is much more thrifty, and nearly as big for all practical purposes. Maybe it's the frugal Lionheart in me.
As an added benefit, the BBJ or Gulfstream 550 has the advantage of not being 20 years old, like the airframe the "Google bois" bought into. Those jets also have the advantage of not needing extensive, hangar-renting teardowns soon - because they're new and small - not big and old like the Googleplane.
(Did I mention that these guys didn't seem to bother to buy a 767 that could actually make it from the west coast to the U.K. or Europe? Their 767 as outfitted can only fly about 3900 miles, while later versions of the 767-200, -300 and -400 can easily fly over 7000 miles.)
The Googleplane seems more and more like a Hummer H1 that flies - with a hole in the gas tank. In keeping with the 767-200s 1981 heritage, I guess.
If you were Larry and Sergey, why not cut your worries and just borrow Steve's sweet little G5? At least get your own G5 jet at a fraction of the cost per operating hour of a first generation 767-200.
Maybe I'll blog more on that in a later post, but the hubris of buying an specific version of an airliner that was not so efficient to begin with, hiding it somewhere as if Q was putting a missile shield aft of the APU, and getting sued over decorating the whole mess with places to have sex...uh, relax... is starting to look like Google has an Achilles heel in the two Stanford-bred fellas who fell into a great idea.
Achoogle? Goochilles? Hubris? What do you think?
Yeah, and if you've gotten this far - I'm seriously jealous. I want a 777 with GE90-115s. Because if you're going to waste gas on a flying party barge, don't wuss out.
Do Tell. I wonder how News.com discovered this little piece of insight?
Maybe it's because for all the rah-rah/blah-blah egalitarianism, anything that starts from the top in Silicon Valley is suspect.
The salary slaves who show up for work every day around 9 after driving an hour, then leave work feeling guilty at 8 p.m. wondering what their kids names are? They're the ones who drive this valley. Fer fuck's sake - you can't touch a house anywhere within 70 miles for less than 3/4 of a million dollars. It ain't the guys who can afford old jetliners who make things happen around here.
Does it surprise anyone that Google might all be built on a well-engineered but reliably shaky house of cards? Hell, anyone can come up with good ideas - and anyone can write software.
But Google is cool, right?
Google is very cool. Shit, they were the only ones hiring around here during 2002 and 2003. A job is very cool.
I think they're little more than just another dot-com - but carrying lessons and pacing. Google's like the nerd at the beer bash who admits a DUI several years later. These days, that nerd will get on a good drunk with everyone else, but stick around the office reading e-mail until sober has one "r".
--
Sure, the Google guys "get it" to a degree. Just like I "get it" that bringing an easy to use, lightweight, distributed load search engine to market is a good idea.
I have a name for Google's next product:G'Duh! The Google Product Predictor!
By using G'Duh I know that they'll do something obvious in a roundabout, colorful and belatedly cool fashion.
Google has a lightweight, geek-friendly corporate interface. They hire cool folks and all their cool friends. They have a stock price that coincides with their new toys' cruising altitude - which means that most of their employees will be able to buy homes, even when interest rates climb another few basis points. But I don't think Google has it's fundamentals in order - and I think that's illustrated all too well by the founders' choice and handling of executive transport.
--
S.P. Jobs has it almost right - he apparently shouts down employees he doesn't agree with, but he knows their names - and contrary to popular belief, he doesn't fire them without good cause. He also has good friends like A.C. Markkula and Larry Ellison, who clearly know something about style, class and how to combine the two in an aircraft purchase. Larry and Sergey might take a lesson.
This hubris shows up in their choice of personal airframe.
Any dipshit...er anyone with an extra $30 million to throw away can toss it on a 767-200 in need of an FAA "C" check. Only the truly discriminating choose to shy away from the equivalent of a V8 Suburban with wings and a 10-gallon gas tank.
In the south, we used to call discriminating aircraft buyers "old money". To paraphrase John Houseman..."Old money multiplied dollars the old fashioned way...they earned it".
To put it in terms even Dell support employees can understand, one can safely assume that the wrinkle-infested, sour-faced inhabitants of the corporate skies understand the value of restraint. Google, the entity embodied by this aircraft, doesn't get it.
Fer chrissake - having a couch delivered to the office so you can test it's fitness for a 20-year-old twinjet in lieu of what sounds like a fancy screw-sling? I hope you hired a bunch of smart people to run your company, guys. Enjoy the proceeds.
--
This is the culture that has lead to Orkut's failure as a connection space. Hell, everyone in this valley has dealt with "teh richendfamis", whether at the Plumed Horse, or during a double-take while being passed by a license plate-free silver Mercedes on 280 South. They know they're better than you - the number on the back of their car is bigger - don't you see?
They're smart - they have the money to prove it! If you build a corral and invite only a bunch of purple people to it, it's no wonder that no brown or orange people show up. And that's why Orkut is going over like an Andrew Sullivan book-signing event in the Castro.
--
But hey - you're wondering about the Googleplane and it's shameless owners.
Given the same, ah, liquidity, I'd have gone for a BBJ, which is much more thrifty, and nearly as big for all practical purposes. Maybe it's the frugal Lionheart in me.
As an added benefit, the BBJ or Gulfstream 550 has the advantage of not being 20 years old, like the airframe the "Google bois" bought into. Those jets also have the advantage of not needing extensive, hangar-renting teardowns soon - because they're new and small - not big and old like the Googleplane.
(Did I mention that these guys didn't seem to bother to buy a 767 that could actually make it from the west coast to the U.K. or Europe? Their 767 as outfitted can only fly about 3900 miles, while later versions of the 767-200, -300 and -400 can easily fly over 7000 miles.)
The Googleplane seems more and more like a Hummer H1 that flies - with a hole in the gas tank. In keeping with the 767-200s 1981 heritage, I guess.
If you were Larry and Sergey, why not cut your worries and just borrow Steve's sweet little G5? At least get your own G5 jet at a fraction of the cost per operating hour of a first generation 767-200.
Maybe I'll blog more on that in a later post, but the hubris of buying an specific version of an airliner that was not so efficient to begin with, hiding it somewhere as if Q was putting a missile shield aft of the APU, and getting sued over decorating the whole mess with places to have sex...uh, relax... is starting to look like Google has an Achilles heel in the two Stanford-bred fellas who fell into a great idea.
Achoogle? Goochilles? Hubris? What do you think?
Yeah, and if you've gotten this far - I'm seriously jealous. I want a 777 with GE90-115s. Because if you're going to waste gas on a flying party barge, don't wuss out.
Labels: Archived
posted by Doug at 12:34 AM
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