| 簡介：◎ play down 是什麼意思？ ◎ 「自食惡果」英語怎麼說？ Taking Stock of Google─The Evolution of an Internet Giant It's a testament to the company's pervasiveness that imagining a world without Google is hard. In 1999, founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin offered to sell their fledgling company for US$1 million to Excite, which was then a major online presence. In what must rank as one of the worst business decisions ever, Excite CEO George Bell rejected even a revised offer of US$750,000. Less than 15 years later, Google is worth over US$300 billion and Excite is an Internet irrelevance. Since its 2004 IPO, Google shares have rocketed by more than 700 percent. In May, they closed above US$900 for the first time. Meanwhile, although its search-engine market share has slipped by 0.6 of a percentage point, it is still way out in front with 66.5 percent. It's a similar story for mobile devices, where Q1 figures for 2013 showed Android occupying 75 percent of the market space.
Innovation has always been part of the formula for Google's success, and it has stuck by its principle that employee empowerment breeds the best ideas. The company's 30,000 employees are famously allowed to spend 20 percent of their time on projects that interest them. This has helped spawn ideas like Google Moderator — where everyone can pose questions on companywide issues and people can then vote on which they'd like to see answered.
Google─網路巨擘再進化 難以想像沒有 Google 的世界，是這家公司普及程度的最佳證明。在一九九九年時，創辦人賴瑞•佩吉和謝爾蓋•布林向當時的網路龍頭 Excite 提出以一百萬美元售出這間草創公司。這絕對是史上最爛的商業決策之一，Excite 的執行長喬治•貝爾拒絕了這筆後來甚至降價到 75 萬美元的交易。 不到十五年後的今天，Google 身價超過三千億美元而 Excite 早在網路界出局。自二○○四年首次公開募股後，Google 股價飆升超過 700%。今年五月其股價則首次以高於九百美元收盤。同時，雖然其市佔下滑了 0.6%，但仍以 66.5% 領先群雄。Google 在行動裝置上的表現也是如此，二○一三年第一季的數據顯示 Android 的市佔率是 75%。
創新一直是 Google 成功的方程式之一，而且這間公司也堅守原則，賦予員工活力以培育最佳想法。為人所知的是該公司的三萬名員工可以把 20% 的工時花在自己感興趣的專案上。這激發了像 Google Moderator 這種點子：每個人能針對與公司相關的議題提問，其他人則可投票決定哪些問題需要解答。
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一同製作報告的卡爾三人就最後的細節進行討論與分。
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