There's a limit to how effective companies can be at spending large amounts of cash. Uncontrolled growth can have negative impact. You can't simply make more acquisitions and hire more staff because you have extra money. You have to be as smart about spending $10Million when you have $30 billion as when you had $50 million.
It probably doesn't help that both MS and Apple are sitting on huge (larger than Google's) war chests. This kind of reserve provides a strategic advantage - being the kid on the block that doesn't could be disaster.
Also, billions are harder to spend than millions, because purchases that big change the environment.
For example: a small, unprofitable company makes purple widgets, even though no one else thinks it's worth it to make purple widgets. Owning these guys would give you a competitive advantage because their widget-making technology coordinates well with your sprocket-making pipeline, so you acquire them for $1B. Suddenly a flock of other companies will jump up to make purple widgets; they will get acquired by your competitors, who can learn from your widget-making mistakes. This all cuts down on the competitive advantage that made you buy the company in the first place.
I misread that as April 1st initially and discounted it. Wow indeed. My immediate reaction as a Google user is positive; my possibly uninformed sense is that Eric has a greater capacity for evil than Larry or Sergei.
I agree, I think the restructuring decision will be beneficial - ever since Larry and Sergey gave up their majority control (they now control less than 50% of the company, I think) Eric and the board have been taking Google down a slightly different road. With this change, it should give more control back to the founders while still keeping the excellent business decisions Schmidt has made in the loop.
What's happening is pretty self evident, esp with the knowledge that Schmidt is selling as much stock as he possibly can. He's cashing out big time.
He obviously has strong disagreements with the founders, and believes that their direction for the company is fraught with risk of some sort of cataclysmic failure.
If you're a shareholder and care about profits, you probably want the guy who can be 'a bit more evil'. The world is a crappy place, and nice guys don't often finish first. My money's with Eric on this one.
The sell-off of shares Brin and Page were going to make was supposed to be spaced out over several years, so I think they still retain the majority of the voting power.
Anyway, eventually they'll be keeping 48% of votes, which de facto still grants them full control over the company.
