> And it probably can, eventually, indirectly, maybe eventually manage to achieve some of a company's goals.
The odd thing about this claim is that it depends fiercely on the question, "What are the company's goals?" I recently heard about a company whose primary priority was, "Maintain jobs," which I find quite reasonable.
Google's claim is about "organizing the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful"; Valve used to be about "making great games", but it doesn't look like they have a mission statement posted anywhere on their webpage or employee handbook. By both of these measures, I do not think that their employees' freedom is doing any kind of disservice to achieving company goals.
Google's goal of "organizing the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful" seems static to me, by which I mean that it's all about organizing existing data. I think that will lead to a company that is increasingly focused on defense.
Think about, say, street view. It's a huge project about getting that 'existing' data about the world into a digitized form, usable by a wide range of people and other projects. Data collection is a huge part of the problem space, with lots and lots of room for growth....
I get that, but the question is: how much money are they making from it? Would Streetview survive as a stand-alone business? I think that was the point of the original article.
The odd thing about this claim is that it depends fiercely on the question, "What are the company's goals?" I recently heard about a company whose primary priority was, "Maintain jobs," which I find quite reasonable.
Google's claim is about "organizing the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful"; Valve used to be about "making great games", but it doesn't look like they have a mission statement posted anywhere on their webpage or employee handbook. By both of these measures, I do not think that their employees' freedom is doing any kind of disservice to achieving company goals.