General

An Internet company, all grown up

googleFor a time, it seemed Google was pulling in more money than it knew what to do with.  The company perks, like the free cafeteria serving breakfast, lunch and dinner, were many.  The projects it launched were diverse, even strange. Engineers were pushed to pursue their own side-projects.  Things were great. Last year, the stock was over $700 a share and rising. But all that has changed. The stock is now around $270 and Google is putting the breaks on its free-spending ways. It’s cutting back on workers and dialing back the projects. “Google employees already are joking that it’s getting easier to find a spot in the company’s crowded parking lots,” notes the Wall Street Journal today. 

Google is  running into some not uncommon problems: trying to match the impossibly high growth rates of its early years. It is still in relatively good shape, but it’s now having to deal with some real, grown-up problems. See the full WSJ story.

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