No doubt it was just coincidence that the Internet company Google announced its long-awaited plans for an initial public offering the same day that the last Oldsmobile rolled off the assembly line. But it was a reminder of the rapid change and flexibility that makes the American economy the mightiest in the world and America the land of opportunity.

Even the way General Motors shut Oldsmobile down is a reminder of the lumbering slowness of corporate America at its worst. The giant automaker announced in December of 2000 that it would phase out the division, which it called “the oldest automotive brand in America.” It took until yesterday — almost three and a half years — actually to put the brand to rest.

Oldsmobile was founded in 1987 and lasted until 2004. Google is a company with a much shorter history. It was founded in 1998 by two Stanford computer science doctoral students, Sergey Brin and Lawrence Page, whose initial financing came via their credit cards, and who, when the cards were maxed out, then raised about $1 million from friends, family, and acquaintances to start the company. Mr. Brin, 30, is an immigrant to America from Russia. Mr. Page is 31, the son of a computer science professor at Michigan State University. Their filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission yesterday indicated that their company earned $105.6 million last year on revenues of $962 million.

Now the investment bankers at Morgan Stanley and Credit Suisse First Boston are catering to Messrs. Brin and Page, while Oldsmobile is relegated to antique museums with the likes of the Edsel and the Packard. The politicians on the campaign trail palaver about the loss of manufacturing jobs in America. Indeed, it’s hard to imagine many United Auto Workers members in Michigan getting retrained as Google programmers. But for all the pain of the temporary job losses and dislocations — and it is no doubt real — the way our economy keeps growing is that for each Oldsmobile division that shuts down, a new Google or want-to-be Google opens up. After all, when Ransom Eli Olds and a group of Detroit businessmen invested $50,000 to create the Olds Motor Vehicle Company in 1897, R.E. Olds was 33 years old and the son of a blacksmith. So while the arc of Oldsmobile may be waning and that of Google waxing, the arc of American risk-taking and innovation that inspired Olds, Brin, and Page alike seems to us to be, like the entrepreneurial spirit in America, very much alive.