外刊阅读20200901|科技巨头如何应对中年危机？
《本期内容》
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导读
眼下的谷歌或许才21岁，却已迎来了中年危机。与这类危机中常见的一样，表面看来一切都好。
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双语阅读
Being hauled before Congress is, on the face of it, a sign of success. But it also marks a difficult moment for Google’s leaders: the onset of corporate middle age. This is a problem as old as business itself. How do companies sustain the creativity and agility that made them great, even as they forge a culture and corporate machine that is built to last?
表面上看，被国会质询是企业成功的体现。但对谷歌的领导层来说，它同样标志着一个艰难时刻的到来：公司开始步入中年。这个问题和商业活动本身一样历史悠久。公司如何在打造一种经久不衰的文化和企业机制的同时，保持曾让自己发家兴业的创造力和敏捷性？
The cultural challenge is fuzzier but no less urgent for a firm that is proud of its unusual corporate character. The freewheeling ethos that was so successful in Google’s early days has become a liability. It works much less well at scale.
对于谷歌这样一家以独特的企业性格为荣的公司来说，文化上的挑战虽没有那么明显，却同样紧迫。谷歌自由自在的气质在早期极为成功，如今却成了一种包袱。公司规模变大后这种气质拥有的优势大打折扣。
Google now has nearly 120,000 employees, and even more temporary contractors. Doing things from the bottom up has become harder as the workforce has grown larger and less like-minded, with squabbles breaking out over everything from gender politics and the serving of meat in cafeterias to Google’s sale of technology to police forces.
谷歌目前有近12万名员工，合同工的数量甚至更多。随着员工人数的增加，这个群体的观念也更多元，围绕性别政治、餐厅肉食供应、公司向警方出售技术等各种问题的争吵声不绝于耳，想要自下而上做成一件事情变得更加困难。
The signs of ageing are apparent in Google’s maturing business, its changing culture and its ever-more-entwined relationship with government. Take the business first. The firm is running up against growth constraints in its near-monopolies of search and online-advertising tools. Its market share in search ads is around 90%.
谷歌的衰老正从几个方面显现出来：趋于成熟的业务、演变的企业文化，以及和政府的关系比以往都要纠结不清。先说业务。在被它近乎垄断的搜索和在线广告工具领域，谷歌的扩张开始触顶。它在搜索广告市场所占份额已达到90%左右。
Unearthing other gold mines has proved difficult. None of the ambitious “moonshot” projects into which Alphabet has poured billions, such as deliverydrones and robots, has been a breakout success. To keep growing, Google is having to try to muscle in
on the turf occupied by big tech rivals, such as cloud computing and enterprise software and services.而到别处掘金的历程并不顺利。Alphabet已为雄心勃勃的“登月”项目投入了数十亿美元，包括送货无人机和机器人，但无一取得突破性成就。为保持增长，谷歌不得不费力挤进已被其他大型科技竞争对手占领的地盘，比如云计算、企业软件和服务等。
本文节选自：The Economist（经济学人）
发布时间：2020.08
原文标题：The firm has outgrown its uninhibited corporate culture. It is time to learn from its elders
