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  3. "Google is not a conventional company. We do not intend to become one," wrote Larry Page and Sergey Brin, the search firm’s foun

"Google is not a conventional company. We do not intend to become one," wrote Larry Page and Sergey Brin, the search firm’s foun

admin2014-01-09  44
问题     "Google is not a conventional company. We do not intend to become one," wrote Larry Page and Sergey Brin, the search firm’s founders, in a letter to investors ahead of its stock market flotation in 2004. Since then, Google has burnished its reputation as one of the quirkiest companies on the planet. This year alone it has raised eyebrows by taking a stake in a wind-energy project off the east coast of America and by testing self-driving cars, which have already covered over 140,000 miles (225,000km) on the country’s roads.
    Google has been able to afford such flights of fancy thanks to its amazingly successful online-search business. This has produced handsome returns for the firm’s investors, who have seen the company transform itself in the space of a mere 12 years from a tiny start-up into a behemoth with a $180 billion market capitalization that sprawls across a vast headquarters in Silicon Valley known as the Googolplex. Google also stretches across the web like a giant spider, with a leg in everything from online search and e-mail to social networking and web-based software applications, or apps.
    Much of its growth has been organic, but Google has also splashed out on some sizeable acquisitions. In 2006 it paid $1. 7 billion for You Tube, a website that lets people post videos of their children, kittens and Lady Gaga impersonations. The following year it snapped up Double-Click, an online-advertising network, for $ 3. 1 billion. More deals are likely. Google is bidding for Group on, a trendy e-commerce business, using some of the $ 33 billion sitting in its coffers.
    All this has turned Google into a force to be reckoned with. But now the champion of the unorthodox is faced with two conventional business challenges. The first involves placating regulators, who fret that it may be abusing its considerable power. On November 30th the European Union announced a formal investigation into claims that Google has been manipulating search results to give an unfair advantage to its own services—a charge the firm vigorously denies. In America, Google faces a similar investigation in Texas and is also battling with a bunch of online-travel companies who have been lobbying the government to veto its recent purchase of ITA Software, a company that provides data about flights.
    The other challenge facing Google is how to find new sources of growth. In spite of all the experiments it has launched, the firm is still heavily dependent on search related advertising. Last year this accounted for almost all of its $ 24 billion of revenue and $ 6. 5 billion of profit. Acquisitions such as You Tube have deepened rather than reduced the firm’s dependence on advertising. Steve Ballmer, the boss of Google’s arch-rival Microsoft, has derided the search company for being "a one trick pony".
    Ironically, investors’ biggest worry is that Google will end up like Microsoft, which has failed to find big new sources of revenue and profit to replace those from its two ageing ponies, the Windows operating system and the Office suite of business software. That explains why Google’s share price has stagnated. "The market seems to believe this could be like Microsoft version two," says Mark Mahoney, an analyst at Citigroup. News of the formal EU antitrust enquiry will no doubt invite further comparisons with Mr. Ballmer’s firm, which fought a long and bruising battle with European regulators.
    Is such a comparison fair? Those who think it is point to several changes that could damage Google. The first is the rise of new ways in which people can find information online. They include social networks such as Facebook, which saw traffic to its site in America surpass that to Google’s sites earlier this year, and apps offered by Apple and other firms that help people find information without using a web browser.  
The author’s attitude towards Google’s unconventionality is
选项 A、disapproval.
B、approval.
C、neutral.
D、ambiguous.
答案B
解析 态度题。由题干定位至第一段。第二句指出“Since then，Google has burnished its reputation as one of the quirkiest companies on the planet．”，题干中的unconventionality是对one of the quirkiest companies的解释，而句中的burnish意为“使光亮”，burnish its reputation指对它的声誉有助益，可见作者认为谷歌的标新立异是好事，故[B]为答案。disapproval表示否定，与原文相悖，排除：neutral意为“中立的”，burnish本身这个词就具有正面意义，显然作者是有倾向性的，排除[C]；ambiguous意为“含糊的，模棱两可的”，这与原文矛盾，排除。
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