From the “Get a Clue” Department…

Cash Cow Disease: The Cognitive Decline of Microsoft and Google: “Meanwhile, at Google, the cash cow is search-driven advertising. That allows the company to encourage engineers to waste 20% of their time on ‘projects’, like Google Wave.”

I’m no Google apologist but it is incredibly shortsighted to slight the company’s geek culture that encourages cultivation of the sort of right brain attributes (purpose, autonomy, purpose) Dan Pink postulates makes for better employees and in turn a better product.

Not only that, but what web using person would argue with the idea that GMail, Google Calendar, Google Reader, Google Docs, Android or a whole host of “wasteful” side projects that were cultivated during the 20% time actually increase Google’s bottom line by causing more people to rely on web apps (full of Google ads) over desktop apps (devoid of Google ads).