Sometimes it pays to think big – really big. Just ask Eric Schmidt, the chief executive of Google. The company’s share price has had a bumpy ride lately as Wall Street tries to digest the fact that Google is unlikely to carry on growing until it reaches the sky.

This in itself is somewhat bizarre. In the final three months of 2005, Google made as much money as it did in all of 2003. How could it possibly keep on growing at that rate? If it did, then by the end of next year its revenues would probably be greater than those of Time Warner or News Corp, and its cashflow would exceed both of those media giants combined.