Talis CEO Dave Errington pointed us to Nick Carr’s latest post this morning, commenting ‘good analysis’.

The post is quite a short one, but points to a longer piece of Nick’s in strategy+business magazine. Refreshingly for a print publication, the usual pay-wall doesn’t appear to be in evidence, at least for Nick’s article. So hop on over and have a read.

As Nick writes in his blog post,

“I argue that the wide scope of Google’s interest and activity is a natural and inevitable result of the fact that everything that happens on the internet is complementary to the company’s core business. When looked at in this light, Google’s strategy is revealed to be at once simple and extraordinarily unusual – so unusual that it’s probably of limited use as a model for other companies.”

From the article itself,

“Whenever a company becomes wildly successful in a brief span of time, it naturally becomes an object of fascination for corporate executives and even the general public. More than that, it comes to be presented as a new model for business success. Reporters and scholars scour its history and its practices, looking to distill general lessons for other firms to copy. Google is no exception.”

and

“But business executives have at least two reasons to think twice before leaping aboard the Google bandwagon. First, for all its success, Google is still a young company, and it has yet to be tested by adversity. We don’t even know whether its approach to management, and in particular its approach to innovation, is a cause of its success or a product of its success — a crucial distinction. Second, we don’t know how well Google’s example applies to other businesses. Google is certainly a different sort of company, but is it so different as to be anomalous? Is the company an exemplar or a freak?”

Carr takes a good look at the diversity of Google’s endeavours, both core and complementary, clearly identifies the main source of actual hard cash, and comments;

“The economics of Google’s business may simply be too different [to that of you/us/anybody]. By following its lead, you may go broke.”

He goes on to suggest that most of Google’s recent ’successes’ have been acquired rather than developed, postulating that;

“When it comes to creating hit products, Google may actually be hampered by its unique economics. Because the cost of failure is so low, it can experiment in all sorts of areas and rush new services to market in the early stages of their development. That kind of freedom brings many benefits, but it can also lead to an erosion of discipline. In the absence of strong economic pressures, it’s easy for companies like Google to put off making the hard choices and difficult trade-offs that lie at the heart of long-term business success.”

There’s plenty more, so have a read and think about whether or not he’s right…

Technorati Tags: Nicholas Carr, Google, Talis, Web 2.0, Web 3.0