This article raises some good thoughts as to the pace of innovation and how one company can scale quickly; become a leader and then slowly decay. Creating a second great act is very hard indeed. Kudos to Apple Computer as I believe they are truly the only company that has successfully reinvented themselves. Managing for Wall Street and investors instead of customers always make innovation more difficult. Size slows you down. Great employees will always follow the next big thing and the brain drain at the big companies becomes more and more pronounced as the years go by.

The four year reign is pretty accurate, isn’t it? Having lived through AOL’s heyday, we had a four year run where the company had massive hyper growth based on a dial-up ISP related business model but the second act of becoming an ad based business, while a good and pragmatic one, is just not a breakout innovator first mover one. So what is Google’s second act? That is the big question.