Nicholas Carr takes another dump. Unfortunately, you have to bear witness!
To see the author of “IT Doesn’t Matter” – “Does IT Matter?” – write on the power and impact of Google’s innovative business model is cathartic. A company cannot be more “IT powered” than Google, Mr. Carr. So, how does your world of finance, sports, and media…look without Google? Does IT matter?
Then you wake up and realize you are witnessing another public intellectual defecation. The sight is rude, and the stench is unbearable. One does not know whether to be envious of the stuff he is smoking or commend him for his insatiable drive to establish himself as the intellectual midget of our time.
First, he questions the durability of Google’s business model. After all, it has not been time-tested. Agreed. Now tell me, why should I doubt that this business model will not be able to withstand the winds of time, Mr. Carr? That is where your brilliance as a management guru can shine through, not in stating the obvious that Google is a young company!
Then one has to read past the excruciating discussion of “complements” to get to this gem: “Google wants information to be free” There you have it, folks, the wisdom of the Socrates of our times, bottled in a simple statement. It ranks way up there with “buy low, sell high” – both in ubiquity and meaninglessness. Well, in more ways than initially thought.
Google wants information to be “free?” Really? Is that what you got from their attempt to ensure that all 6 billion inhabitants get their information from the internet? And how would they make money if the information was “free?” By selling advertisements, of course!! Does this guy get how intellectually incapacitated he is?
Here is a simple solution to beat Google. GE should give free radios to all of Earth’s inhabitants. Then they can make money selling advertisements on these radios. Simple, isn’t it? But then, who will produce all the programs for these radios? Well, give everyone a microphone and recording devise. Simple again!
It is too much to read the rest of this drivel, so you do that on your own time. It is even worse to educate Mr. Carr on the simple concept that powers a modern economy: “information.” (You know the information economy!) But it may be time to break this to him: Google has taken free information and made money off it. Gobs of it. Endless streams of it. They will make money forever.
Yes, forever, because it is not the digitization of information but its fundamental need that drives modern business. To think of Google as an advertising network is to call Caviar “rotten fish eggs.”
I am sure there is another nifty idea percolating in Mr. Carr’s beautiful mind. As he reloads, should we tell him he has run out of feet?
