Google is a start-up. That’s the very focused message that Google CFO Patrick Pichette offered up for the multi-billion dollar search giant.
Speaking at Fortune’s Brainstorm conference on Wednesday, Pichette rejected the notion that Google needs to be producing new revenue streams around its newer products, whether Google+, Android, Chrome or even YouTube.
“Everybody’s all nervous about the fact that it’s been 36 months since the Android launch and you only have search,” said Pichette. “Just relax. We are selling 550,000 devices every day. Think about the opportunites that provides to Google.”
It’s an attitude that makes some sense for a company with a $194 billion market cap, which just soared further with the launch of Google+ in the last two weeks.
But Pichette insisted it’s part of the fresh attitude at the company, since Larry Page took the CEO position from Eric Schmidt this year.
Google does not think short-term, he insisted.
“That’s not the way Google thinks. It’s not the way Larry thinks or Eric thinks. We don’t have an obsessive mind set of the next 30 days. Then you can really dream about how you want to change the world.”
Lofty thoughts from a company that is still dominating in search, but that gets some heat for being a one-trick pony. (Not me — I’m still fairly in awe of what they’ve built.)
But it is certainly hard to continue dreaming innovation 10 years in, with thousands of empoyees and Wall Street scrutiny. Pichette insisted that Google’s great advantage with Android is its commitment to remaining open source, so that innovation can come from outside entrepreneurs and developers.
Pichette also countered the notion that Google is struggling to hang on to its engineering talent. He said the company has the lowest employee attrition rate ever in the first half of this year, and there is a “wall of applications” coming at the company.
“We have the luxury of cherry-picking the very best,” he said.
Pichette said the recent reorganization that followed Page’s reentry is driven by the ethos of acting like a start-up. That ethos feels much more organic to the mind-set of an maverick like Page over the more staid Schmidt, who he replaced.
So that’s the message, and Pichette is on it: “It’s a young company, we’re in start-up mode, we’re here for the long term,” he said.
