The Economist (January 18, 2014)
“With a string of deals the internet giant has positioned itself to become a big inventor, and reinventor, of hardware.” Google is becoming “the next GE,” with recent acquisitions spanning Nest Labs, Motorola Mobility and Boston Dynamics even as Google’s in-house engineers are “busy working on driverless cars and wearable gadgets such as Google Glass.”
Tags: Acquisitions, Boston Dynamics, Driverless cars, Engineers, GE, Google, Google Glass, Hardware, Inventor, Motorola Mobility, Nest Labs, Wearable gadgets
The Economist (September 21)
“Nine of the world’s ten most valuable firms are American.” A rising stock market and the euro crisis are partly responsible, but the reasons go deeper. “First, America’s mix of resilience and renewal. Three of its nine biggest firms have their roots in a 16-year period in the late 19th century—Exxon, General Electric and Johnson & Johnson. Their durability reflects their powerful corporate cultures. But the country still does creative destruction, too. IBM and Intel have slid down the rankings to be replaced by Apple and Google. Chevron, an energy firm, has gone from a laggard to a world-beater. Success has been anything but parochial. Six of the nine biggest firms sell more abroad than at home.”
Tags: Apple, Chevron, Corporate culture, Creative destruction, Durability, Euro crisis, Exxon, General electric, Google, IBM, Intel, Johnson & Johnson, Rankings, Stock market, Success, U.S., Value
