Of expectations and Google

It was weird to me the other day how when Google‘s stock took a dip how everyone in the media started squawking about how this might be the end of the line. Some outlets like CNN took a more realistic view of the dip (Silicon Valley unfazed by Google’s earning miss), which I was glad to see. Google still has a lot of fight left in it, and something minor like this bump in the road is really not worth getting worked up over.

But when money (or in this case BIG money) is involved, every scrap of common sense seems to go out the window. Some strange combination of perceived high stakes, one or two person’s opinion, and a volatile crowd always seem to lead to events like this. Fortunately the hot-head attitude of the media hasn’t spread to the markets and everything has stayed pretty steady.

And that is a good thing. Google is a pretty solid company, they’ve got great ideas and so far they have shown that they have a good handle on how to run things. Personally I think Google stock is over priced (other sites think GOOG is a good buy), but I’m not a stock expert by any stretch of the imagination.

A little bit of education goes a long way I suppose. People who are knowledgeable about Google and the internet as a whole seem to have more realistic expectations than those on the “outside”. Critical Thinking and Common Sense. Those are two things that are in short supply these days.