DOGGED COVERAGE
The Washington Post has yet another "Google is Great" article in it's Sunday edition, titled ominously "What Lurks in its Soul?"
If you're amongst those who've been following Google with avid or even semi-interest for years, there's little new here for you except hyper-ventilating, almost sycophantic prose:
"The soul of the Google machine is a passion for disruptive innovation".
That line continues with the treacly follow-up:
"Powered by brilliant engineers, mathematicians and technological visionaries, Google ferociously pushes the limits of everything it undertakes. The company's DNA emanates from its youthful founders, Sergey Brin and Larry Page, who operate with "a healthy disregard for the impossible," as Page likes to say."
This language and much more like it can be found here, from the paper that helped bring down a wayward US President.
The piece then doggedly goes onto summarize everything Google, including the origins, the technological advantage, the culture, the mind-set of the founders, and their enviable success at every level.
News flash to the mainstream media:
GUYS, WE GET IT! GOOGLE IS PRETTY COOL AND INNOVATIVE. THEIR EMPLOYEES LIKE WORKING THERE. THE FOUNDERS ARE SUPER-BRIGHT AND HAVE MADE A LOT OF DOUGH.
Now, move on, nothing more to see here...explore other stories, maybe new, unexplored facets of the same story. I'll even take another story on what Microsoft is doing about Google, for instance...
But don't give us more and more of the same with every more syrupy language. I don't think there's anyone in the world who doesn't know how successful Google has been to date.
Give us something else...something we don't know...
After finishing that brief, mental rant, I re-scanned the article to see if there was any tidbit about Google in there that hasn't been discussed in some other publication, somewhere before, in recent months.
And then, this caught my eye about Googly's policies at the "Googleplex", espousing a:
...a culture encouraging Go oglers to bring their dogs to work. (No cats allowed.)"
NO CATS ALLOWED? Wait, stop!
Why not? Yo, Washington Post editors...this is a ground-breaking observation. Please...dispatch some reporters to get to the bottom of this.
Why are cats the lower-class Googlizens vs. dogs? To be sure I hadn't missed coverage on this policy already, I quickly investigated...with a Google search of course! I even scanned the pictures of happy Googlers at the "Plex", on Google's site...sure enough, found one with a Google dog, even a Google baby (below)...but...no cats.
So, nothing, nada...not a peep about the dog and cat policies at the Google campus to be found anywhere, except of course in this now ground-breaking article by the Washington Post.
If what the Washington Post claims is true, then it needs to be investigated much further...at once.
But in the meantime, Guys, please, snap out of it...and spare us these dog days of Google media adulation.
Comments