Bloogle and Ev; Dave joins the Old Farts' Club
So the new blog-meister of Harvard unloads some baggage from the Valley past onto the Blogger/Google deal, gets called on it by Ev, and squirts a little PC ink on the whippersnapper. Before getting down to substance, I'd like to award Mastodon (you ask him) a well deserved membership in the Old Farts' Club of this blog, with badge #2, no less. Now to it:
No, dude, it's not about age, it's about attitude. Yes, growing companies in the Valley necessarily suck in some of the same recycled folks we met in our last lifetime - we seldom give up and leave. But a company is an organization with a life and continuity and value system all of its own, and it does matter. The starting vision, the shared goals, the people mix, the inside jokes and little rituals are part of how we build and replicate culture here. Not many of us are given hits, and not many of those products and companies last for more than a cycle. All I'll ask is: What did they do with the time when they danced in the sun? Did they make the lives of their users and people more interesting, productive, challenging, awesome? Because of Ev and his Godforsaken yoyo servers I've met the Instapundit, the Pejmanpundit, the Blogger of Baghdad and a host of others, and I'm the richer for it. Google was a breath of fresh air in a portal business besotted with rich media and stickiness, and they've held to that vision. I've been repeatedly awed looking at a results page and realizing that they are running algorithms in production that qualify as cutting edge research. They've earned every freaking bit of share the hard and honest way. So this Old Fart wishes well upon the marriage and its fruits. Mazel Tov!
It won't last, of course. Schumpeter lurks round every corner out here, in the headhunters, the bogus mergers and bad hires, and down at the Repo Depot. Maybe what Dave means is they will get you in the end, and maybe sooner. Yeah. But how will you dance in the meantime?