Google on verge of becoming Silicon Valley’s biggest….but getting dumber too?

October 27, 2006 | Matt Marshall | Comments | |

googlelogo.gifGoogle, 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.

google giant.bmpBut….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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Matt Marshall is editor and CEO of VentureBeat. Follow him on Twitter at @mmarshall, and follow VentureBeat on Twitter at @venturebeat.

  • rick gregory
    um... 'dummer'?
  • Touche! Fixed. I'm not revealing my own GPA.
  • Well, regarding the hiring standards, maybe they've realized that GPAs aren't everything. Especially in sales, certain abilities and skills simply can't be measured in numbers.
  • Vivek
    I certainly agree with Richard. Sales and marketing requires skills which cannot be measured only by GPA. It must be considered, but it can't be the deciding factor.
  • Alpha24Seven
    Hiring by GPA is a stupid practice. Emotional intelligence is more important. How many of us have worked with the brilliant guy that never washes his hair? -- same guy has no idea the difference between a dinner fork and a salad fork and thinks wearing an emoticon T-shirt to a business dinner is appropriate.

    Furthermore, I've hired two Harvard MBAs. One was fantastic and the other was brain dead but had impeccable academic achievement. I'm serious when I say this guy couldn't find his car in the parking lot at the end of the day.
  • Elpert
    Are you attacking the parking-lot-challenged?
  • BC
    With any GPA standard they wouldn't have hired Bill Gates or Michael Dell and numerous other verry savvy tech execs who didn't even finish college. College does not teach you to be 'savvy'.