Condemned
The Google IPO was launched just as I was finishing Dot.con, an interesting if understated book about the Internet-driven bubble. The book's 300+ pages provide a wealth of detail about the key events and dates during the late 90s frenzy, with plenty of commentary along the way about how investment bankers, analysts, the Fed, television, and magazines acted hand-in-glove with a ravenous speculatory nation that led inevitably to a crash of historical proportion.
The timing of my reading could not have been more ironic. As I scanned the headlines this morning, I saw that Google, a day after its IPO, is now valued more highly than either General Motors or Ford Motor Company.
Have we learned nothing from the past few years? Have two of our most popular glib utterings, Warhol's and Santanyana's, morphed into a hybrid universe in which everyone forgets the lessons of history in 15 minutes?
To be sure, the morons at CNN were giddy. Of course, their depth of knowledge led them to be prompted by a producer as to what a "googol" was, and even then they had no clue that the company's name is spelled differently than the original word, why this might be the case, etc. But I digress.
As my career has been spent in high technology marketing and communications, certainly it's in my interest to approve of any good news in our blightened industry. So I certainly hope that Larry, Sergey, and Eric can execute well, profit mightily, and lead the Valley into a new and prosperous era.
But will someone please tell me how a company that sells classified ads around free Internet searches is going to maintain a valuation higher than that of major automotive colossi? Does Google have significant tangible assets? How defensible is its market position? How leading-edge will its technology be over the next five years? Will Google ever make anything or distribute anything? How mature is a management team that didn't have the sense to avoid Playboy magazine, for crying out loud?
Well, once again, I guess I don't "get it." I certainly hope that Google either "gets it" soon, thereby nipping another nascent bubble disaster in the bud...or that somehow this New Economy business is real after all.
12:33:58 PM 
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