An article on Silicon Alley Insider accuses Google of bribing NASA to acquire land for expansion. To quote:
The bummer about owning 767s and G-Fives is you need somewhere to land them, preferably close to your office so you don’t have blow hours stuck in traffic with all the plebes. Thankfully, resourceful Google has already solved that problem–by cutting a deal with NASA to use the government’s private runway next door to the Silicon Valley Googleplex. And now Google has made the deal even more convenient, by signing a broader deal to rent 42 acres of NASA land for 40 years on which to build a new Googleplex.
Drawing a parallel in India… Infosys’s land acquisitions make big news here as well.. talks of bribery, short changing land owners are common, as is this one on Rediff.
Infosys is today said to be the largest owner of land among IT companies in India, and not everyone is happy about this. Last year, former prime minister H D Deve Gowda took on Infosys, levelling charges of ‘land grabbing’, accusing the company of doing little for Bangalore’s growth as an IT hub.
Not too long ago Google was the David against the Goliath that was Microsoft. In the same vein Infosys was India’s own Blue Chip Company. I guess when you get big… you become a bigger target.
I am not justifying anything here.. just interesting to note the similarities.
June 5, 2008 at 7:53 am |
The IT companies are not doing anything for the state???? I guess Mr Gowda should read this
June 5, 2008 at 10:02 am |
Pot calling the kettle black. Murthy being accused of landgrab?
Muhahahaha
June 5, 2008 at 1:28 pm |
Just like puppies on the street are cute and street dogs are bad!
Growing up to be big is bad… so it appears to be!
June 5, 2008 at 2:02 pm |
I guess if Deve Gowda has accused Infy, then I’m sure he’s up to no good! Must be another of his filmy dramas! We should find out who was the journalist who wrote the piece on rediff and see if he/she is related to Deve Gowda!
June 5, 2008 at 5:35 pm |
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June 5, 2008 at 6:15 pm |
It is a natural tendency that people throw stones at the trees having fruits and not the bare trees. so as the organizations grow large, they become target such things, I think.
-Ram
June 5, 2008 at 10:15 pm |
As the organizations grow larger, they tend to be more bureaucratic and less efficient. INFY is still a great company as is Google, but both are making mistakes. We kicked out INFY and got in Accenture (who was kicked out pre INFY — go figure..). I know of 2 other projects they lost in the midwest. Reason : bad quality of deliverables and not the usual suspect — price war. Google with it’s foray into anything and everything is not able to provide the quality you expect from Google. Blogger and Orkut are prime examples. Sure they are popular, but code wise and user experience wise they are so sub standard.
The change in stance of Google is evident in how they are bending over backwards vis-a-vis China and it’s content filtering. A turning point with INFY was when they threatened to jump state over infrastructure when they owed a large part of their success to the city ; failed in their attempt ; came back with expansion plans in the city…
And on Gowda who sleeps at the wheel (or was it thinking ?!) and drags everything into the mud (maybe because he is monnina maga ? ) , why even bother discussing him ? He wouldn’t recognize a good idea if it hit him between the eye. He is busy making his millions ..
June 7, 2008 at 3:33 pm |
hmmm.. lot of positive response.. Being an employee of one of the above companies you mentioned, I won’t comment on the matter. But I am happy that most of the above are positive comments.
June 8, 2008 at 6:05 am |
i think you should have drawn more parallels
just mr.gowda’s accusations ,come on! that guy is always changing sides even before we can blink !