Joy's Law: "No matter who you are or what company you run, the majority of smart people do not work for you."

Google rejects hiring loads of "the best hackers" every day through their way-too-high standards.

Then when inevitably some of these "not quite the best" hackers build a popular site, Google is forced to come crawling back and pay several million to acquire the company, instead of the several hundred thousand they would have payed them as salary.

The smartest hackers are too smart to work for the man. In fact they are too fringe to even be recognized as the 'best'.

Wouldn't they be able to copy any web based product within hours? Yesterday I read that even Guido van Rossum is on their payroll - basically anybody who has the slightest amount of fame is on their payroll (have they hired Linus yet?).

So either everybody else can just go packing, or all those brilliant people will somehow get lost in the Googleplex and never be heard from again. Perhaps it is actually good for "the rest of us" that Google buys so many talented hackers. Perhaps they will never create anything useful again in their lives (a bit like the stellar scientists retiring at Princeton), and we have so much less competition left.

No matter how hard Google tries to create an environment where people are creative and get things done there's no way to truly duplicate a few really smart people getting together, coming up with an idea and making it.

As I think PG mentioned in another thread, when companies buy a startup they are not only buying the code but the founders too. This means that in essence, they are still hiring the best people out there.

And you will never work as hard as an employee as you would when you're working for yourself.

No matter how much you like the company you work for.

A static snapshot of a web-based product may be open to easy copying. What is hard to copy and compete with is the dynamic trajectory of listening to users and rapidly adding features.

Google hasn't hired all the best hackers. They have hired the best hackers that don't have the balls to start their own company.

Good ideas and companies are not always created by the best hackers in the world.

Because there is more to building a tech business than just tech?

I'm sure its not just the talent they acquire but they acquire the ability of a team who can execute on a concept which has traction.

The intangibles of execution can't be repliated like market share, customers, brand loyalty, UI design.

I mean look at how much street cred Google Video has compared to Youtube - not enough to just slap a google logo on it and wait for the world to beat a path to its door.

Forget about inventing new stuff, Google has problems keeping the current apps running: http://slashdot.org/articles/07/04/26/2030239.shtml

Because they didn't.

There are too many of them to be hired by one company, regardless how big google is getting.