As anyone who has looked at more than 2 of my posts ever can tell. I love Google and love even more to write about it(I still honestly think Wave didn’t get a fair shake). So the news of Larry Page taking back over as CEO has me interested on at least a couple levels.
First, as a future Academic, one of the areas I’m interested in researching is innovation. It seems like Larry(if any of the 18 million articles written on the subject are remotely accurate) wants to return Google to the company that insanely innovates and has the talent to do so. From a purely Academic perspective, I’d love to build a data set around before and after he’s back as CEO (and potentially when he was CEO before) to see if there are any indicators that the company is more innovative when he’s CEO than someone else.
From more of a pragmatic perspective I’ll be curious to see how Larry may be able to turn any of these innovative ideas into successful business ventures. I always fall back to Xerox Parc where they had many of the most innovative ideas in the history of the home computer, but weren’t the ones that actually monetize the ideas. So I’m wondering if Google will (or maybe already has to some extent) fall into that trap. Or if they’ve found a way to monetize the products, even if others are also making money off their ideas. It’s really a fascinating situation.
The other thing I’ll be interested to see out of this whole situation is how Google tries even more to get into the social media game. Their ventures in Wave and Buzz have been fairly unsuccessful and it’s yet to be determined with the +1 endeavor. I have some other ideas of how Google could become relevant in this game (although I’ll keep them to myself for the time being), but I really wonder if Google really even needs to be in this game. I know they want to be, and Page seems to be extremely motivated to get here, even if I’m not 100% convinced that they need to be directly involved in social media to stay relevant. I guess time will tell.
Regardless on what Google’s social media direction turns out to be. I think Page may make this an extremely interesting few months and potentially a few years. Especially in a time that is so crucial to the future viability to Google as a company.
