Google: We want your crazy ideas!

Google has already built an organizational culture that puts a premium on innovation. As Bloomberg News points out, it looks like the company is taking steps to ensure that it is able to tap into some of the most amazing innovative ideas bubbling up in Silicon Valley. Flush with billions of dollars in cash, Google is willing to put its money where its mouth is when it comes to innovation:

“Google looks for ideas that are

“really crazy” when sizing up potential purchases, the Internet

company’s top dealmaker said. “We look at everything very carefully,” Salman Ullah,

Google’s director of corporate development, said yesterday in a

speech at a meeting of the Los Angeles Venture Association. “The

really crazy ones do really well.”         

Google, owner of the most-popular Internet search engine,

has about 15 people working on acquisitions that meet with dozens

of companies a week, Ullah said. Mountain View, California-based

Google responds to every e-mail pitching a company, while phone

calls have a 10% response rate, he said.         

The search engine, which had more than $11 billion in cash

at the end of the fourth quarter, last year bought video-sharing

site YouTube and DMarc Broadcasting to move into the

market for radio advertising. Google also bought smaller startups

including online software company JotSpot.         

“The crazy ones mean they ignore the usual restraints of

investment levels required or design parameters or `Gee I need

more servers than anyone ever thought was possible’,” Ullah

said. “When you free yourselves from these constraints, you

create crazy, cool things.”         

Anyway, if you think you have what it takes to impress Google, it might be worth a shot. Chris Masse of the Midas Oracle has kicked things off with a Great Idea Survey, in which he outlines some of his more promising ideas (i.e. X Groups and X Universes) that might just meet some of Google’s hurdles when it comes to revenue and profitability.