A $1 Trillion Market Cap for Google?

Sorry, but I simply don't believe Google will reach a trillion-dollar market cap. Don't get me wrong, Google is an incredible company. One of the things that I like about them is their relative modesty, something that is not often seen by management of companies that have grown quickly. Two very good companies regretted their hubris. Naveen Jain was CEO of InfoSpace when he predicted that his company would grow like Jack's beanstalk. It has had a tremendous run, but the credit goes to its current management.

Similarly in early 2001, Forbes did a cover story on Cisco in which CEO John Chambers did not dispute that his company could grow at 15 percent a year for the forseeable future. The timing was unfortunate in that Cisco has yet to recover from the technology slump that began in earnest when the Internet bubble burst in February/March 2001.

This is an old story. Andrew Tobias wrote a marvelous book in 1970 after serving as the 22-year-old marketing vice president of National Student Marketing Corporation. "The Funny Money Game" was the true story of a company that Wall Street analysts were told would grow at 300 percent a year through acquisitions. As I recall, the book started with a (fictional) description of the National Student Marketing Corporation pavillion at a World's Fair dwarfing that of General Motors' next door. I don't have to tell you what happened to National Student Marketing.

Google is not going to go down the tubes. In fact, I believe it is helping to change the very nature of directional advertising, reaching shoppers when they are ready to buy. But articles suggesting that Google will be a trillion dollar company hurt the search business more than they help it.