curiouscat

Google / YouTube - Best M & A Ever?

I agree it was a good acquisition. It may well have been even better for YouTube than Google. It is very possible lessor companies would have failed to make YouTube financially successful.

Is Execution More Important than Vision?

You need both. management.curiouscatb.../ Doing the right things poorly is probably better than doing the wrong things well, but you really need to do the right things well. Good execution is in many ways easier. You don't need to invent new things. You just need to practice what has been known for decades but so many fail to do so that if you just follow good advice from Deming, Ackoff, Ohno... you can clean up on those that fail to adopt sensible management practices.

About That Google Earnings Beat...

Good post. I have long pointed out how often "unusual" losses are "excluded" from "operating earnings." The volume of such "non-reoccurring" losses are so frequent as to make the claim of excluding them as "extrodinary" ludicrous. Occasionally that can be a valid claim but most often it is just earnings manipulation by taking frequent sources of losses and categorizing them as "extraordinary."

Internet Companies Can't Manage - So They Must Be Taken Over

I would also point out Amazon and Google are two of the best managed companies bar none. I would actually rate the management of internet companies in general higher than an average company but it is much harder to manage new companies in emerging markets. Therefore, they may have many more failures than other companies do, but when you are selling soap, or electricity or even cars you really should have a pretty good idea how to do that well after 100 years.