Well, at least google does not shit on its employees. After salesperson Lauren Turner decided to push Google ads to big pharma to counter Michael Moore’s message in his flick Sicko and a lot of people went crazy, Google “allowed” Turner to do a follow up post and try to calm the storm.
I won’t get into her follow up post, but it’s nice to see that Google does not shit on its employees and lets them clean up their own mess. Or, maybe it was a long weekend and no one from PR wanted to fully take over so they had a quick meeting and this was the result. Still, not bad: sign of a good corporate culture.
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July 1st, 2007 at 5:06 pm
I have been an avid reader of your blog since coming across it on Om Malik’s blog. I enjoy your points of view and find them very insightful indeed. I am curious though that with so many posts devoted to the godly power you think Google now commands, do you hold a position in Goog, as you do in Yhoo? Thanks much! And keep the insightful posts come along!
Cheers!
July 1st, 2007 at 7:06 pm
Hey familguy, thanks for the kind words.
If I have a position in a company I always add it in the disclaimer either in the middle or at the bottom of the post, so no, no position in Google.
Trust me, I have bashed Google so much since I began to write on this site, this is just maybe a more moderate perspective, more than anything else.
I do think the company’s search and ad business is impressive (nothing new there), but its other units are far from godly.
July 2nd, 2007 at 10:41 am
A good corporate culture involves reminding people who do this sort of thing about what their primary role is within the boundaries of company policies and procedures. Ms. Turner’s actions went beyond the boundaries of good order and discipline and should be dealt with accordingly. After all, this story is only breaking now, the real repercussions won’t be felt for a few weeks, on Wall Street. My bet is that if Ms. Turner isn’t submitting resumes by week’s end, then she’ll be re-taking all of those corporate policies and provedures courses required of new hires, maybe even twice.
July 2nd, 2007 at 11:17 am
Dell, you are right. When I was writing this post this weekend, I made a point to add “it is after all a long weekend,” suggesting that HQ would look deeper into this this weekend, but nonetheless, at the time, they did seem to let Turner clean the mess. That does not mean, long term, that she won’t suffer any repercussions.
This is admittedly not about Sicko or Michael Moore, it’s clearly about Google becoming a media company, and not an agnostic tech company. This one will probably bite Google in the butt sooner than later.