Google’s on the cover of Fortune again, this time with the come on that the company is in chaos! No, wait, maybe that’s a good thing…yeah, in fact, it is a good thing! Fortune turns it into a cover package on “managing chaos” that might well have been a Business 2.0 cover….three years ago. Funny that B2 has as it’s cover “The New Disruptors” (just got it in the mail, not online yet)- Google, apparently, is the old disruptor, as Fortune represents the status quo, and B2 the upstarts.
I dunno, but after reading the piece, which was reported as well as is possible given the access given, I felt like I had read the same story I’ve been reading about Google for the past three years – the piece turns on the interesting question of “Do They Have a Plan?” and then fails to answer it definitively (Marissa says Google has a plan, but the evidence ain’t overwhelming). I’m starting to think that maybe we are all asking the wrong question. I’ve been asking that one for some time now, and now I’m thinking there are more interesting ones out there. (There are good tidbits in the piece, for more see Read/Write Web’s write up…)
With that in mind, Eric Schmidt has agreed to be the first keynote interview at this year’s Web 2 conference. I’ll be interviewing him, and I’d love all of your input on what you think I should ask him. What are the interesting questions to ask Google these days?