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Workshopshed

For traditional companies there are "real world" cyclical trends (particularly topical as we are comming up to Christmas) and trends driven by external forces such as the weather or finding out that a pop star has just bought your product. A traditional company typically has a few niche items (cars, music, software). Trends and influencing factors are easy to spot and analyse.

Google however lives much more in the virtual world and has a very wide range of "customers" from other companies working in the virtual world, to multinationals, to conventional local niche product companies.

On one hand this wide spread should help stabalise their earnings but being virtual means things can change very quickly. So long term forcasting could be unreliable.

Perhaps the solution is not to try and forecast such a company but for the money men to also be able to manage without forecasts and to adapt to changes more quickly without panicing.

Remember... past performance does not guarentee future returns.

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