I’ve been interested by the industry hoopla surrounding Google’s vaunted approach to development. Maybe “interest” is the wrong word. Because whenever the innovator books worship a company’s policies, I get suspicious.

It appears these suspicions may be well founded. Bloomberg reports that Google is acquiring companies to drive growth because internal developments aren’t delivering. Interesting. In fact, 2nd quarter results for Google show a 22% increase in internal development spending – probably hoping more money will solve the problem. Something ain’t quite right in Silicon Valley Heaven.

I’ve suspected development problems at Google for years. A lot of outsiders worship Google’s current development ethos. But that process isn’t the one that led to their highly successful initial development. And their current process works on some flavor of the theory that anarchy creates profit. (Reviewing several millennia of history doesn’t uncover historical precedent for this idea.)

To cap off this mix, Google never communicates the few developments that somehow rise through the anarchy to deliver significant potential value (as I noted in this article).

So, let’s please stop suggesting that Google’s discovered some unusual development magic – it’s clear they haven’t.

Only the internal team at Google can estimate the effectiveness of this new increase in spending. But, it appears it will only payout if their executive team can rein in a corporate culture that appears ready to party straight into the ditch.

Copyright 2010 – Doug Garnett