Google’s (GOOG) High Reputation Could Ruin Share Price

By Douglas A. McIntyre Published Jun 23, 5:03AM EDT

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Google (GOOG) is now the US company with the highest reputation, at least according to the annual Harris Interactive Reputation Quotient poll. According to Reuters, "Largely for its reputation for treating workers well, Google claimed the No. 1 spot from Microsoft Corp (MSFT), which fell to 10th place."

Other winners in the survey included Intel (INTC), 3M (MMM), and Kraft (KFT).

Being viewed well by the public may be bad for shareholders. Looking good to outsiders and doing well financially are often very different things. At the top of the Fortune "Most Admired Companies List" sit GE (GE) and Starbucks (SBUX). It would be hard to find two companies which have actively done so much to hurt their shareholders. Starbucks failed to monitor its growth and the quality of its service. GE refuses to dump its losing divisions.

Admiration and reputation are a simpleton’s way of viewing how corporations are doing. The smart money is looking at earnings.

Douglas A. McIntyre

About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.