Via: Paul Kedrosky Via Steve Jurvetson Via Ray Kurzweil

In the third quarter, and this was with the benefit of a 3.6% lift in property taxes (amazing), tax receipts at the lower levels of government fell 7% in Q3 from a year ago. Sales taxes are down 9% (seems just a bit at odds with the retail sales data, no?) and income taxes off 12%. If that is what a recovery does to fiscal finances, imagine what the backdrop will look like if the economy actually does pull a ‘double dip’.”

Via Business Insider

The Old Paradigm: Rely on quasi-monopoly and second-rate legacy products to squeeze users starved of choice for every last penny (*cough* Microsoft, *cough* *cough*).

The New Paradigm: Put end-users first and profits will follow. (Google).

Much can be said about the corporate cultures (particularly Google’s) which have in part enabled this brand of user-centric thinking, but that is a topic for another discussion.

Time and time again Google has put the best interests of their users AHEAD of their own share-holders and short-term bottom line.  This isn’t to say that they are profit agnostic in the slightest, they happen to make very healthy profits, rather they believe that doing right by their customers will earn them more loyalty (read: money) in the long run.

To phrase it another way: Google is not successful in-spite of putting users interests first, to the contrary, they are successful BECAUSE they put users’ interests first.
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Great deck by Joshua Porter