"Large companies are somewhat like me - once they get used to a certain behavior, they develop a certain culture and a set of procedures, processes and a work environment that defines them and their future. These define their corporate DNA. It is hard to change. You can't buy new DNA, and companies can't acquire their way into new corporate cultures. Furthermore, companies that lack that self-awareness of their DNA and behaviors, in the end, find themselves extinct.

The Corporate DNA

DNA contains the genetic instructions used to build out the cells that make up an organism. I have often argued that companies are very much like living organisms, comprised of the people who work there. What companies make, how they sell and how they invent are merely an outcome of the people who work there. They define the company."

source: https://om.co/2011/02/11/change-is-good-but-its-also-really-...

"You can't buy new DNA and companies can't acquire their way into new corporate cultures." - Om Malik

Is there any other way a company could acquire "new DNA"?

151 "virus" wn "WordNet (r) 3.0 (2006)"

virus

n 1: (virology) ultramicroscopic infectious agent that replicates itself only within cells of living hosts; many are pathogenic; a piece of nucleic acid (DNA or RNA) wrapped in a thin coat of protein

diff -q googledna.2018 googledna.1998 || cat googledna.1998

"Appendix A: Advertising and Mixed Motives

Currently, the predominant business model for commercial search engines is advertising. The goals of the advertising business model do not always correspond to providing quality search to users.

* * *

For this type of reason and historical experience with other media [Bagdikian 83], we expect that advertising funded search engines will be inherently biased towards the advertisers and away from the needs of the consumers.

Since it is very difficult even for experts to evaluate search engines, search engine bias is particularly insidious.

* * *

For example, a search engine could add a small factor to search results from "friendly" companies [e.g., the search engine company itself, its subsidiaries, companies that use AMP, etc.], and subtract a factor from results from competitors.

* * *

This type of bias is very difficult to detect but could still have a significant effect on the market. Furthermore, advertising income often provides an incentive to provide poor quality search results.

* * *

In general, it could be argued from the consumer point of view that the better the search engine is, the fewer advertisements will be needed for the consumer to find what they want. This of course erodes the advertising supported business model of the existing search engines. However, there will always be money from advertisers who want a customer to switch products, or have something that is genuinely new. But we believe the issue of advertising causes enough mixed incentives that it is crucial to have a competitive search engine that is transparent and in the academic realm."

source: https://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=297827

Authors: Sergey Brin, Lawrence Page

Published in: WWW7 Proceedings of the seventh international conference on World Wide Web

Computer Networks and ISDN Systems

Volume 30 Issue 1-7, April 1, 1998

Pages 107-117

Elsevier Science Publishers B. V. Amsterdam, The Netherlands

doi 10.1016/S0169-7552(98)00110-X

The anatomy of a large-scale hypertextual Web search engine 1998

Citation Count: 3,024