When I think of Google, I think of search, information, data, algorithm and fat stock price. But I also think about innovation. Recently, Google ran a contest among employees to design the new bike for employee use around their campus.
“We’ve got an entrepreneurial and innovative culture,” said Brendon Harrington, Google’s transportation operations manager. “We said, ‘You tell us what you think is a cool design.'”
Now when Google puts its mind to inventing a better, cooler bicycle, and they have the engineering and technological resources to do something really special, I feel somewhat compelled to look and see what they came up with. Curiosity gets the better of me. I’m guilty.
So when I looked at their product, I was surprised. Shocked to be more precise. Because what I didn’t expect is what they came up with: A girl’s cruiser with a basket and bell. Seriously. That’s not just disappointing, but it’s sad and pathetic. As a stock holder in Google, I wish they had just asked me. I would have told them to Google “girls cruiser bike” and saved them a lot of time, effort and money.