The Google myth?

I am really interested in how often ideas become part of the accepted wisdom without any real evidence for their veracity. This is one of the reasons that having one’s thoughts challenged is something I would strongly recommend all managers to make part of their regular routine: the discipline imposed by knowing that you may have to justify any view is a discipline worth encouraging.

The world is replete with examples of accepted mythology and a chance conversation I had a year or so ago has led me to do a little informal research into what I now am starting to regard as “the Google myth”.

I was talking with several other company directors and we were talking about how we choose law firms to do our work. These people are the sort of potential clients most law firms would regard as the bulls-eye on the target of their client-acquisition strategy. The word “Google” was never uttered. We used advisers we knew and