Categories: Articles

Fortune Magazine Looks At The Chaos At Google

One feeling that is creeping back up on me is that of a new dot com boom. I’m much more confident this time around that the venture capitalists and the companies who will benefit from their windfalls of money can actually deliver on the promises. This will be a good thing.
One of the reasons I’m feeling this is from quickly glancing at the magazine covers at my local newsstand this morning. BusinessWeek had a cover story on click fraud and Fortune Magazine for the month of October has Google CEO, Eric Schmidt, on the cover with title, Chaos @ Google – The inside story of anarchy at the $125 billion money machine. And why it’s all part of the plan.
Two key learnings:
One: always look online before buying a new magazine. It turns out that the whole article is available free online here: Fortune Magazine – Chaos By Design. Sure, I like having the glossy color pages, but I also have no issue reading a printed out version of a web page.
Two: $125 billion dollars. Let me frame this. Google started around 1998. That would be about eight years ago. They’ve built this massive empire in under a decade. If you’re thinking about the opportunities to truly create something unforgettable, think about Google. If they could… you can.
I have not read the full story yet, but at a quick glance, it seems to be a management piece on how Google is able to be so innovative. If I start seeing beanbags and Foosball tables in there, I just might retract my first comment about how this is probably not going to be like the first dot com boom (or bust).

Mitch Joel

Mitch Joel lives at the intersection of technology, business transformation and consumer culture. He is the Executive Director of Next Era Institute, a strategic intelligence platform helping leaders understand the forces reshaping business, technology, culture and society. The Institute identifies which shifts matter, explores their wider significance and translates them into strategic direction and momentum. Mitch is also a globally recognized keynote speaker. He has delivered thousands of presentations across both B2B and B2C industries to organizations including Google, Walmart, LEGO, Shopify, Microsoft, Procter & Gamble and Unilever. Strategy Magazine has called him “one of North America’s leading visionaries.” Mitch built his career by working directly inside the waves of change that reshaped modern business. He founded and built a digital marketing agency that worked with some of the world’s largest brands and was later acquired by WPP, where he served as President of a firm operating in 25 countries with almost 3,000 employees. Mitch is the bestselling author of Six Pixels of Separation and CTRL ALT Delete, and the host of Thinking With Mitch Joel, one of the longest-running business podcasts in the world. His writing and commentary appear in outlets including Harvard Business Review, Fast Company and Inc. Magazine. He is a member of Dr. Marshall Goldsmith’s 100 Coaches and was named to the Thinkers50 Radar. Mitch also hosts Groove – The No Treble Podcast, documenting the oral history of electric bass players. Mitch is also Co-Founder of ThinkersOne, a platform that enables companies to bring personalized thought leadership from world-class experts into meetings, events and off-sites in focused 15-minute bursts.