Search: chutzpah
'Google is not a conventional company. We do not intend to become one."
Two sentences into the letter Google's two founders wrote to all those potential investors panting to get a piece of maybe the most highly anticipated IPO in history, and I am already gagging. Hey, I love Google, too, but maybe Mom and Dad (or their investment bankers, at least) should remind Larry Page and Sergey Brin of one thing: Like many smart people who came before them, they are running a company. They are not saving the world.
''Don't be evil. We believe strongly that in the long term, we will be better served -- as shareholders and in all other ways -- by a company that does good things for the world even if we forgo some short-term gains. This is an important aspect of our culture and is broadly shared within the company."
These guys, who started Google as an academic exercise to find a better way of finding stuff on the Web, sound as if they belong as co-presidents of the student council, not co-presidents of a company worth maybe $20 billion. Google is a strong brand and a profitable business, but it has been around exactly five years. Page is 31; Brin is 30. Thomas Edison and Henry Ford they are not. The word humility, useful in all of life's endeavors -- business most definitely included -- does not come immediately to mind as I read through their letter. Piousness, on the other hand, does.
''We aspire to make Google an institution that makes the world a better place."
The only thing Page and Brin are missing are a secret handshake and a company song. ''We want to teach the world to sing, in perfect harmony." That one's taken, but they are no doubt working on one even better.
The Founding Googlers have been fabulously successful up to now as a private company, but the stock market is a big place. You take the money -- the billions -- as Page and Brin and their early investors will, and you play by the rules of the game. Google's distinct culture is a great competitive advantage, but its obsession with control and secrecy is not. Being a public company has never been more challenging. Google could be in for a culture shock.
Once upon a time, not very long ago in fact, Lycos Inc. was a hot tech play. At the height of the Internet madness it was sold to a Spanish conglomerate for $12.5 billion. Today it is back on the market, expected to fetch something like $200 million to $400 million.
As smart as Page and Brin are -- as Brin tells us in the letter, ''By investing in Google, you are placing an unusual long-term bet on the team, especially Sergey and me" -- other smart people are taking dead aim at their niche. Yahoo Inc. and Microsoft Corp., to name two, are investing heavily in the search business. You don't read a lot of this prattle from Bill Gates. Or from Warren Buffett, a hero to the Founding Googlers, for that matter.
Strong values are to be admired. But they are better lived, preferably lived through a couple of business cycles.
Neighborhood news Boston's city unions may be threatening to turn the Democratic National Convention into an embarrassment if they do not get contracts before July, but not all of their union brothers and sisters are turning their backs on the convention or the mayor.
Tom Menino had building trade union leaders in for breakfast recently to pitch them on helping to fill the $6 million convention shortfall, and it is yielding results. David Passafaro, president of Boston 2004, the Menino pal who is heading the local convention effort, said the carpenters' union has donated $100,000, the first union money raised so far for the convention. He expects other unions to follow. ''We are having good conversations with two or three others for about the same range," he said.
Steve Bailey is a Globe columnist. He can be reached at bailey@globe.com or at 617-929-2902.
