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Does Success in Tech Come at a Steep Price?

Does the tendency of tech giants to lag represent the price of success?

I’ve read a couple of recent articles about what you might call “peak Google” – a nice piece in The New York Times by Farhad Manjoo, and another via the Financial Times – both of which argue, in effect, that Google’s past success is turning it into a dinosaur.

Mr. Manjoo writes:

“Old kingpins like Digital Equipment and Wang didn’t disappear overnight. They sank slowly, burdened by maintenance of the products that made them rich and unable to match the pace of technological change around them. The same is happening now at Hewlett-Packard, which is splitting in two. Even Microsoft – the once unbeatable, declared monopolist of personal computing software – has struggled to stay relevant in the shift from desktop to mobile devices, even as it has continued to pump out billions in profits.

“Now Google is facing a similar question about its place among tech’s standard-bearers.”