Infoworld thinks Google's too big for its britches

Buzz Bruggerman pointed me to a short blurb from the pseudonymous Robert X. Cringely complaining that Google is trying to promise us the moon. He thinks the company will turn into a technocracy that will fail.

This is the same misunderstanding I hear from people who talk about Google becoming a "portal." A portal is an attempt to try to corral people into using only your services and reading only your content. It is designed top-down.

Google does things bottom-up. Google believes in the Wisdom of Crowds. It listens to what customers want, and what its developers want to design, and tries them out to see if they fly. It does not have some grand ambition for what a "portal" should be or what businesses it should get into over the next five years. It adds things as it sees the need and as it's capable of filling those needs. It leverages its strengths to provide them.

That, my dear Cringe, is exactly the right way to grow a company.