Google on verge of becoming Silicon Valley's biggest….but getting dumber too?
Google, the giant search engine in Mountain View, is about to surpass Cisco to become the valley’s most valuable company.
It has passed IBM to become the third most valuable technology company, behind Cisco and Microsoft. Google’s stock is above $475 per share, bringing its total market worth ($475 x total number of shares) to $145 billion, surpassing the total value of IBM at 139.5 billion. Now it is breathing down the neck of Cisco, which has a value of $147.5 billion.
And you thought last week’s Googleplex solar power announcement was big? — Google just announced a 1.6 MW solar system it is building for the Googleplex. That makes it the largest corporate installation in the U.S. Now we learn Google really wants to install 10MW, to make the company “carbon neutral.” There’s a good summary of Google’s other goals via a leaked internal memo at the Google-watching blog called Google Blogoscoped.
But….Google is dropping its hiring standards — In the U.S., everyone graduates from college with a so-called GPA. A 4.0 is perfect. A 3.0 is pretty good. The rap on Google is that has required a 3.0 GPA for its applicants, as part of a notorious and excruciating set of high hiring standards. Until now. Google has dropped the requirement for sales people, according to John Battelle — apparently because it can’t find enough smart ones. Hmm, is Google saying something about sales people, or about the job market right now? Or that it’s just getting too big? We’ve pinged the Google press team to see what they say about this.
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About the Author, Matt Marshall
Matt launched VentureBeat in September of 2006, with the realization that no one else was covering the entrepreneurial and tech innovation scene with the velocity or depth that he was. Prior to founding VentureBeat, he covered venture capital for the San Jose Mercury News from 2001 to 2006. In 2002, Matt was awarded "Journalist of the Year" by the Northern California Society of Professional Journalists. Prior to working at the Merc, he was a correspondent for the Wall Street Journal in Bonn, Germany from 1995 to 1998, and a writer for the Washington Post in 1994. Matt holds a PhD in Government and an MA in German and European Studies from Georgetown University. In addition to VentureBeat, Matt is also the Executive Producer of DEMO, the leading launchpad event for emerging technologies.
