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Should Google Buy Sprint?
« on: 2007-11-20 14:52:50 » |
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Should Google Buy Sprint?
ARTICLE DATE: 11.19.07
By John C. Dvorak
There's been a lot of blogosphere buzz recently on the possibility of Google buying Sprint—now that Sprint is out of the wireless Internet deal it put together with Clearwire. Everyone seems to think that Google is going after the 700-MHz spectrum coming up for grabs shortly and available for use supposedly after 2009 when broadcast TV goes all-digital. And Google has already announced a new mobile phone platform and is trying to cajole developers into doing something with it.
So you can see how the idea of Google buying Sprint would come into the conversation.
I have mixed feelings about whether this is a good idea or not for Google. Generally speaking, when tech companies and companies that have made their living from various Internet ideas dabble in "real" brick-and-mortar companies, they don't do well with them. The reason is simple: These are businesses that tech folks do not understand.
For one thing, such businesses are a lot more work than sitting on your duff watching the money roll in after you've done little more than invent some code and rent cheap labor from India to tweak it over the years.
Real work will have to be done if Google (or any Web-centric company) wants to get involved in a real business. Here are some of the hurdles that Google will have to clear if it wants to assimilate a company like Sprint:
1) Redistribution of time. Less time can be devoted to redesigning the Google 767 interior. Will there be time to shop for a new LCD TV for the plane if a structural engineer comes over to discuss the cell-tower corrosion in Des Moines caused by cow-flop vapors?
2) Endless meetings. Brick-and-mortar "real" companies such as Sprint have endless and mostly meaningless meetings about minutia such as logo dimensions. Should the "S" in Sprint be kerned tighter to accommodate the column width in a proposed advertisement in the New Yorker? Would that be a violation of the "don't edit the logo" rules established by a committee some years back? This will be followed by a meeting as to whether they should dissolve the "don't edit the logo" committee. In that meeting it will be discovered that nobody even knows who is on the "don't edit the logo" committee, and all evidence indicates there never was any committee in the first place--just some manager in the marketing department who put the rule in place. It will be discovered further that the only reason she put the rule in place was because that's what someone else did in the company where she worked before as a secretary. This rigmarole will take up most of a day. The next day will consist of meetings regarding unauthorized modifications to the Google-Sprint letterhead and whether or not the executive correspondence paper should be standardized as 12-pound ivory laid or plain cotton rag. The brightness factor of the paper will call for a second meeting.
3) Endless re-orgs of Sprint. Much of the wasted time will be spent interviewing dozens of consultants who will do a company survey of Sprint so that it can be reorg'd to fit in better with the Google corporate culture, which the consultants will also have to analyze, causing great consternation within the ranks of Google, since most Google employees know they are coasting and constantly fret about being "found out." Some might actually get transferred to Sprint, which will eventually be seen as a death camp for the slackers in Mountain View. Much time will be spent in the various cafeterias grousing about how the company isn't what it used to be. Generally speaking, this will focus on various items such as the overpriced bottled water and the exotic fruit that used to be free and one day disappeared. After the amenities are done away with, some executive will get a promotion and the employees will be convinced that their free fruit was killed so that the executive could get a raise. Everyone will hate the executive, who will be forever baffled by the animosity and need company-paid counseling. The counseling will cost ten times more than what was originally paid for the fruit and water.
4) Dealing with stiffs. The worst part about these sorts of mergers is that the "gray men" of the old corporate guard arrive. These are humorless robotlike drones who suck the very life force out of a room (seriously, they can actually darken the room upon entering). All the phone companies are crawling with these guys. Many are golfers. Nobody knows how the Googlers will act in the presence of these forces. I would expect screaming and nervous breakdowns if these folks appeared too often. Apparently the Googlers' effectiveness at beating some sense into these types of people and turning them into normal humans is nil. (See my upcoming essay on Eric Schmidt.)
5) Toxic memo environment. Big companies with their ant-like efficiencies rely on the ubiquitous memo to get things done. Google relies on the Nerf ball gun. This is a culture clash if ever there was one.
I'd advise Google to get off this track as fast as it can. It's the road to ruin. AOL went in this direction, and look what happened to that company! One day everything was fine. The next day memo-centric corporate blood-suckers were running AOL, and now look at it.
Buyer beware.
Copyright (c) 2007Ziff Davis Media Inc. All Rights Reserved.
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