# Professor Aswath Damodaran discusses Facebook and Google's public perception and its relationship to their success

1 Faculty News July 27, 2016 ![Quartz logo](/sites/default/files/styles/246w/public/assets/images/con_038218.gif?itok=JIQPnzXd)>

Excerpt from [Quartz](http://qz.com/743058/facebook-and-google-succeed-because-theyre-governed-as-benevolent-dictatorships/) -- “'The reason Facebook and Google are able to do what they do is because they are viewed as benevolent dictatorships,' says [Aswath Damodaran](http://www.stern.nyu.edu/faculty/bio/aswath-damodaran), a professor at New York University’s Stern Business School. That’s not necessarily a bad thing—it’s preferable to a company run like a chaotic democracy, he notes—but 'you’re going to have to accept the fact you have no control over the outcome.'”

[Read more](http://qz.com/743058/facebook-and-google-succeed-because-theyre-governed-as-benevolent-dictatorships/)