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Which brings us back to Larry and Sergey and the question of what they’ve learned. Having repeatedly ignored the prevailing wisdom in Silicon Valley—inventing a search engine when everyone knew search was dead; building a business on Internet advertising when everyone knew it was impossible; antagonizing two revered VCs whose rings they should have been kissing—the boys have undoubtedly learned that conventional wisdom often isn’t wisdom at all. But salutary as that lesson is, there’s also a danger to it. As Excite founder Kraus puts it, “The risk is, they’ll think the hallmark of a good idea is that everyone says it’s dumb.” Similarly, it would be easy for the boys to conclude that dissing Wall Street carries no penalty. In the IPO, they told investment bankers and investors to go pound sand—and they wound up happy billionaires. Today their message to shareholders remains: Trust us, or put your money elsewhere.

All of that is fine for now. As long as Google is growing like gangbusters and making money like the U.S. Mint, Wall Street, investors, and employees will be infinitely indulgent.

But if the history of the technology industry teaches us anything, it’s that no one is ever that lucky—at least, not for long. Every important high-tech company has at some point stumbled and fallen on its face. Microsoft, Intel, Oracle, Sun, Apple, Cisco—all have made severe mistakes, paid a price, and then survived in large part because they understood what being a public company is about. They learned that Wall Street matters. That investors like transparency. That “trust us” isn’t enough.