I’d taken a self-professed oath that I wouldn’t blog on google for a few days. But hafta break that. WSJ has this op-ed praising google. The commentary basically extols all that is good in google, identifying the usual culpris of 20% time, flat hierarchy and the like. Nothing unusual. But what’s surprising is the author himself. He of core competence fame, Gary Hamel ! Now. Hamel is universally acknowledged as a guru in strategy and for his varied theories. As such seeing someone of his stature going overboard on google definitely is surprising. While google surely has a lot of things going for it, it also is having to contend with more than its share of business dilemmas. Ofcourse, sitting on huge piles of cash does help in allaying fears ;) The Op-ed immediately saw more than its fair share of criticism… Paul kedrosky of Infectious Greed and Om Malik of Gigaom, have both pointed out the pointlessness of Hamel’s over-the-board praise…Google’s good. It might be a damn good company. But end-of-day, it still is a company with a set of disparate products that needs to identify ways of generating more money and increase shareholder value. In all this web 2.0 rush, viewing every other development/company through a google-tainted lens, isn’t exactly the ideal situation. I may be weak in identifying core competencies of companies, but for a person like Gary Hamel to be dishing out unreserved praise for a company whose core competency, to date, seems to be to not have one, is pretty interesting ;)

And yea, the customary launch of a new product by google is here.

ps: Amazing quote by Hamel in that piece , While fidelity is a virtue in marriage, it’s a handicap in business. :)