Larry Page is Named CEO of the Year. Are They kidding?

Investor’s Business Daily has named Larry Page  of Google “CEO of the year.”

Their reasoning (despite the fact that Page only became Google’s chief executive in April) is he could have taken a hands-off approach to run the company. But instead he got busy and therefore deserves our accolades, or so the theory goes:

He reorganized the company’s management structure, redesigned the face of the company’s products and pushed forward with a multibillion dollar deal to acquire a cellphone manufacturing outfit. He also launched two other products aiming at Groupon, the leader of online coupons, and Facebook, the top social networking site.

Well I’m not sure if I buy that reasoning and apparently I’m not the only one who thinks so. As Om Malik said:

I think it jumped the gun. It is too early to be passing the honors. Why? First, Larry took over the CEO job in April 2011, so he hasn’t really had a full year under his belt. Sure, the company made some good progress on its social efforts. Android has been a monster hit, but it is not clear how much money it is bringing to the company. And frankly, Android would do well with or without Page.

Ouch! How the Mighty have Fallen.

I have a more pragmatic point of view. I see Google running scared of the Facebook juggernaught and is all over the map trying to reinvent itself.

Apparently being just the best search engine and tinkering with cool toys for our titillation is not good enough. It’s now going head to head with Facebook in the Social Networking business, amongst others.

But experience has shown that when a company loses focus of it’s core product, it will founder. Nor am I impressed with the Google Plus fiasco over pseudonyms that is still unresolved. Google has lost a lot of credibility that I’m not sure it can recover from, and Page is ultimately responsible for that.

So which is it Google. Are you a search engine, a cell phone company or a social network?

Or is Google the next Apple? Your guess is as good as mine.

Care to wager how it will all end?

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