The Ignorant Investor

We all know Google. We all know what it's done for searching the internet and all the ancillary businesses it's bought over the past couple of years. For one thing, Google allows its users to post blogs like this one free of charge, using a program so simple and automatic that even someone as lazy as I am can manage to easily get one up and running. So around the main headquarters of the Ignorant Investor (cubicle no. 12, by the copy machine), we generally have good things to say about Google.

Yet recently I found a wrinkle in the warm fuzzy blanket of my feelings for the company. After using their search engine for years, I realized that its basic functionality hasn't changed from the user's perspective for years. Has it been that long, I asked myself. To which myself answered, Why are you asking me? I don't know. That's why you asked the question in the first place.

The conversation then turned dreary and very metaphysical, and I won't bore you with the details, but the point I want to make was that although Google has increased the amount of information that a user can retrieve with its programs, it hasn't increased the user's abilility to filter through that information. Basically, a google search is still a very simple key word search, despite the millions of dollars the company is burning through in acquisitions and other research projects.

The company now offers satellite maps, blogs, picture editing software, and God knows what else to its users- but the technology underling Google's core business, the internet search, appears stagnant. And isn't that a little like General Motors deciding that they don't need to make a well-designed, reliable car so long as they offer it with a really good stereo or leather seats or bigger tail fins? Ask yourself how that attitude worked out for GM over the long term, then look over at Google's $280 share price and wonder if it's worth all that that money.

So the company known as the current wundkerkind of Silicon Valley seems to be relying on the same piece of software it was using five years ago. Maybe the company isn't doomed, but for a tech company five years are like 50 years in dog years (if you want it people years divide that figure by seven).