Brian Gongol
Google has too many chances to get things wrong
Google may remain the darling among technology stocks for many stock-market speculators, but the company faces an almost impossible task in making the next ten years of its existence as productive as its first ten. Google's former CEO (and current "executive chairman") admitted in a recent speech that the company had dropped the ball on social-networking services. And he's right. Google does fine work in the sectors it presently dominates (like search engines), but it faces an almost insurmountable task in trying to do as well in any other area of online services. Google needs to start reinvesting its excess profits in non-Internet businesses where technology can make a good business better. Unfortunately for the shareholders, it probably won't. And as it faces new challenges that cross the line from conventional business-competition matters into issues of international diplomacy and espionage, the company will be challenged less by what its computer scientists can do than by how it strategically navigates laws, consumer sentiments, and a million hidden threats.
