Nexus One. Google Wave. Google TV. Google Buzz. What do these four products have in common? They were all listed in Business Insider's 15 Biggest Flops in Tech for 2010. They've declared that "Don't Be Evil" never was a real motto, engineers are fleeing the company for Facebook, and they've even (gasp!) lost search engine market share to Microsoft. What's going on?
Simple. Just like every empire business or otherwise that's ever preceded them, they got big. And slowly that muscle that once defined them turned to fat. Bureaucracy sets in, and the geniuses leave for greener pastures where they don't have to report to a manager every time they want to use a for loop instead of an if statement.
We're still bullish on this stock, though. They are one of the gatekeepers of this not so far-off world in which the Internet is tamed and mostly ruled by corporations. Their earnings growth has accelerated moderately in the past year, and the fact that they're coming up with new products to flop indicates that they still retain the daring to try new things. Still, they're going to have to trim some of that fat if they want to stay ahead of their competitors. Remember when people made movies about AOL? Remember when only people in graphic design bought products from Apple? Cataclysms can come suddenly in the tech world, and Google will have to continue to innovate if it wants to stay alive, not just profit.
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