Surviving the Bubble

Is the culture that Google perpetuates one that resembles those of the bubble years? And I think the answer is, in some ways, yes. Like, people who walk into Google say, wow, it looks like the bubble never burst here. But there's one key difference, which is that Google makes money. And I know, right? Like, I think that there's. That's a key thing that people forget about, because I know you guys were all really young when the bubble happened, and maybe you didn't experience this, but there were a lot of weird things, like selling pet food on the Internet at wholesale prices. But it turns out pet food is just really heavy and it really shouldn't be shipped, and that doesn't make a lot of economical sense. You really should buy it at the grocery store right down the street. There's things like that that just didn't make sense as business models. And I think that we've been really committed to having a business model that works from the very beginning. Sergey used to joke that he needed dates in 2000, and he had to do something to differentiate himself from every other losingmoney.com president. So we were very focused on becoming profitable from a very early time, which was not true of most of the companies in the bubble. And I think when I think about the bubble bursting, I've often compared it to a forest fire, which is. Forest fires are, in fact, healthy. They clean out a lot of the brush and the overgrowth and all that. And the trees that ultimately survive the forest fire and repopulate are, in fact, healthier, because there was something that was healthier. And I think that that's ultimately what you see at Google. I think a lot of the good things that happen in all the small companies and startups. So the bubble persists, but there are a few key differences that caused it to actually survive the forest fire.