Our culture often counters success with the rebuke of pridefulness, the font of tragedy. News.com reports from a Stanford MBA panel, where a Google exec (Salar Kamangar) gave the reporter, search beat veteran Stefanie Olsen, the sense that he was “downplaying the looming threat of search competition from Microsoft, saying his company doesn’t expect to see a credible product from the software giant for years.”
I dunno if this was a misinterpretation, but…this reminds me of what Marc Andreesseen said lo so many years ago (the famous quote where Windows was dismissed as buggy device drivers…). Also, new Google recruit Anna Patterson dismissed MSFT’s search in this story a month ago. A trend? Probably not. But it’s not beyond many to call it so.