I think people here are being ungenerous towards the author. Too me this story sounds genuine and not like a pr move dictated by Microsoft. It strikes me to be a personal account by someone who's trying to make sense of the past and actually mourning what he believe is the death of old Google. This deserves our respect as professionals because inevitably we are all going to find ourselves in a similar situation, trying to learn from the past and seeking understanding by our peers.
Also as someone who never worked at Google but has been a pretty big Google "fanboy" (of the search, Google Apps, Android, etc) his waning enthusiasm for the brand as an employee seems to have taken a very similar dip to my waning enthusiasm for them as a user, though due to personal investment his dip was probably faster and deeper than my own.
I've loved Google in the past precisely because they weren't Apple and they weren't Facebook. It seems increasingly like they are trying to be Apple and Facebook rolled up into one, which (most importantly for me) sucks because I'm not a fan of Apple or Facebook and (most importantly for them) sucks because they aren't a very good Apple nor a very good Facebook, so they're trading in their old fans for the hope of new fans that probably aren't interested anyway.
The beauty of a good smear is that is true. You have to find things that are genuine and exaggerate their importance and weight in the public mind through timing, placement and publicity. If it doesn't have the weight of truth behind it a smear cannot work.
To me, I see this as a cynical smear by Microsoft precisely because it is true and it is genuine.
So he complains about advertising and then he complains when they try to make a more honest living with app engine. At the end of the article you would conclude that this guy has had enough of rampant commercialism and was off to joing something like MSF. But it turns out to be MSFT. I know its harsh to say it but the guy comes across as a spoiled child.
Not enough people think about year 10. You know, that's when you're 10 years old as a company and you've got a lot of huge successes behind you. Kind of like teenagers when they realize that finding a job is suddenly not an 'optional' thing in their lives.
James' rant here reminded me of a similar rant I read (internally) at Sun on its 10 year anniversary. They had published a book all about Sun's first decade, and somehow excised the fact that Sun had built a workstation called the 386i. It emphasized the successes, and papered over the mistakes. The rant was about how Sun, who had kicked DEC in the nuts and had them retreating to the data center, was walking right into that same data center because Microsoft was starting to make PC's as useful as workstations. (there used to be a real distinction there.)
I remember thinking that somehow Sun had gone from bringing technology to the folks who could use it, to being all about being a more impressive Sun Microsystems. Sun's "Google+" moment was the day they announced they were going to merge System V and SunOS.
In my brief time at Google I was exposed to the folks who had become more about 'The Google' and less about doing cool stuff. I saw many of the same things James did, and I hear Marissa's 'call to arms' about Social and said to myself "If she can't say what it is, how can she expect the troops to achieve it?"
If you read the stuff about Mark and Facebook (and I have to believe that at least some of it is true.) the man is on a mission. And his mission was to make a new place in the universe that didn't exist before, he left it to others to figure out how to monetize it. Google did the same with search, make it real, then monetize.
But I think at some point the operating committee at Google looked at monetization of all the things Google has done and if you included search advertising the in the bar graph everything else looked like zero. And you ask yourself "We've got all these smart people doing all these projects and not a single one even comes CLOSE to the income that search advertising does? Give me one good reason I shouldn't just fire all of them?"
The sad thing is that I saw multimillion dollar a year businesses get tossed under the bus because they just didn't move the needle.
Ten years on, ask yourself, "What value do you bring to the table?" if you don't know, that is a big problem.
Clayton Christensen's "The Innovator's Dilemma" was motivated by DEC getting killed. He claims that DEC was a victim of a disruption: a new technology that offered something that didn't seem to be a threat, become successful in other markets and eventually improved enough that it was threat - then it was too late. There, the old technology was minicomputers; the new technology was workstations.
The new technology isn't perceived as a threat because it is not as good and will never be as good in the old market. It manages to survive in a different new market (because it really can't compete in the old pond). As it improves, it never catches up with the old technology - but it becomes good enough. That is, the old technology has also improved, and is definitely better - but the old market doesn't care for that extra improvement. You can see there are a few things that have to happen for disruption to occur.
One of the reasons for Google's 20% was to try to prevent this kind of thing, but it never worked out. Some business types redefine terms, so that "invention" is a new technology (make something), and "innovation" is a new business (people want). Google's made a lot of stuff, but most isn't wanted and didn't create a business. They aren't innovations. Closing down businesses that aren't making enough to move the needle is the classic mistake of disrupted businesses: Christensen suggests setting up separate, autonomous business units (even separate businesses; startups), with limited resources, that will get excited by small wins - because new disruptions start small. (YC is pretty much doing it right...)
However, right now, Google is fighting for its life. At the beginning, facebook didn't seem threatening - or at least not that threatening. Then again, I'm not sure that Google ever could win this fight; social is such a different kind of business. Perhaps the best that google could hope for is to settle back into owning search forever.
My only disappointment is that google didn't manage to transform its internal inventions into innovations. I'm not saying it's easy or that I could do better, it's just that unlike winning social, it seems possible... and who knows what new disruptions might have come from that?
As it is, Google seems closer to Xerox: one fantastic invention/business, invents the future, makes no money from it.
But I think at some point the operating committee at Google looked at monetization of all the things Google has done and if you included search advertising the in the bar graph everything else looked like zero. And you ask yourself "We've got all these smart people doing all these projects and not a single one even comes CLOSE to the income that search advertising does? Give me one good reason I shouldn't just fire all of them?"
Funny nobody mentioned until now, but from what I've read, that's what happened to Yahoo. Apparently years ago they were so successful with the ads on their "portal" that not much more could matter. Maybe somebody has good links at hand? The similarities seem to be really big.
We've got all these smart people doing all these projects and not a single one even comes CLOSE to the income that search advertising does? Give me one good reason I shouldn't just fire all of them?
Because "we" (if I was a Googler) need to make the next big wave, or at least catch it. Search won't be the biggest thing forever.
> App Engine fees were raised. APIs that had been free for years were deprecated or provided for a fee.
From where I'm sitting Google has been pretty rough on independent developers recently.
I think their lack of caring (or understanding?) indy devs is best summed up by the Google+ API. Read-only is understandable as they get off their feet, but you can't even get a user's profile stream (you can only fetch profiles one by one).
Now that the Buzz API is shut down I have yet to find a way to "share" anything programmatically on Google. How can you be social without a share API?
Google's recent behavior was central in our decision not to embrace their technologies and APIs. If they're going to either be suddenly shut down or have prohibitive, anti-startup pricing applied to them then why should we hitch our wagon to their horse?
Its not just independents, we're working with one of the largest US companies and they don't want to license (and by license I mean happy to pay for) google maps (for a traffic app) because the Goog can't guarantee that the maps will remain ad free.
IMHO what's sad is that Google+ is not better than Facebook for average people. Better is, for them, more warm, where you may express more about you in a simpler way, and so forth. Google+ is clearly designed by people not exactly in touch (mentally speaking) with the average person using Facebook, that's why nobody of the non tech guys want to switch to it.
p.s. IMHO Google is going to lose in the email space soon as well, times are mature to beat it in simple ways, only protection they have in this space is that there is a big "optimization" part in email that is anti-spam and they are good at it.
G+ is a worse Facebook (and not in the worse is better sense).
Gmail is getting slow and the recent changes haven't been for the better. In fact it's hurt usability for common users for the (dubious) benefit of "power" users.
The unified google interface is rather crappy. I don't know which which i have to click/hover/etc to get to my account settings.
IMHO Google is going to lose in the email space soon as well, times are mature to beat it in simple ways, only protection they have in this space is that there is a big "optimization" part in email that is anti-spam and they are good at it.
The only thing that, for me, would cause Google to "lose in the email space soon" would be the exact thing you say they are good at: anti-spam. I've started getting more spam on gmail recently but it's now only 5 or so emails a week out of thousands. Think about how good that is and then ask the question, "If it was 0, would that inspire people to go through all of the hassle to switch emails?" I'd guess that the answer for most folks would be, "Meh - 5 spam messages a week for a free email service is fine. I'd rather not change."
As a Microsoft employee, I wish this hadn't been posted to a Microsoft-branded website. Other than that, I thought it was an interesting perspective and I loved the money quote:
"I couldn’t even get my own teenage daughter to look at Google+ twice, “social isn’t a product,” she told me after I gave her a demo, “social is people and the people are on Facebook.”"
But "the people" were on Myspace, Hi5, Friendster and other social networks before Facebook - hundreds of millions of them. So clearly it's something about the product, too.
Google released hangouts (it's group video chat) in mid january. it might be a feature teens would really like and one that facebook would have hard time to copy.
So it's probably too early to tell if teens will use google+.
Another great quote: "Google was the rich kid who, after having discovered he wasn’t invited to the party, built his own party in retaliation. The fact that no one came to Google’s party became the elephant in the room."
I think it's a mistake to blame this on ads though. I don't believe that the G+ crusade is being driving by advertising (though I'm sure it looks that way to people who assume that everything is about ads).
I do miss the old Google. They had some good products. Search was search, and it was clearly designed to provide the very best search possible. Unadulterated and honest. Same story with Gmail, despite the ads. No lock in, no rent-seeking.
Too bad, really. The new Google is obnoxious in a "why-are-you-doing-this?", Facebook kind of way.
I would put the difference this way. I used to feel like Google was providing me cool, useful services. Now I feel like Google is trying to figure out ways to collect my data.
I think they will learn to their cost that trust doesn't grow back.
Google should focus on their product- the search bar.
Google Plus Me should mean I can find anything of mine via the search bar. If I want to find a file on my computer, I should be able to search for it using google.com instead of spotlight. I should be able to do this even if I'm not on my normal machine.
It's not just desktop files. If I want to show my dad pictures of my trip to Cabo, I shouldn't have to log into Facebook, find the always moving Photos app button, find the album, find the picture.
I should be able to search 'My cabo pictures' in Google.
The omnibar should really become omnipotent. That would be compelling, cool, futuristic must-have UX. That's what Google Plus Me means to me.
I liked old Google Search. I would pay to lose the omniscience and omnipotence for the same reason I pay for Google Apps, I'm tired of everything being a sales pitch.
Someday I may want to look up the stage Nietzsche's syphilis advanced to without that following me around as part of my advertising profile.
'People who enjoyed "Human all too Human" also bought Doxycycline 200 mg tablets' - that sort of stuff creeps me out.
I don't think Google /want/ you to have any files on your computer. They could have built Dropbox a long time ago, but that's not the direction they want the world to go. They chose Google Docs instead.
Whether they're correct or not is still up for debate. Dropbox are doing pretty well.
They have that: Google Desktop. If I recall correctly, it even lets you do it from your other machines. Admittedly, it's been a while since I've used it, so I might be wrong there.
(Methinks that it would be vastly improved if they got simply got rid of the big clunky desktop widget engine. Possibly even got rid of the search box and just let you use a web view -- as you described above.)
An observation from the inside of what I've been seeing/feeling from the outside.
When Google started killing the "cool" stuff, I perceived (rightly or wrongly) the writing on the wall as far as attracting and retaining top talent. And they lost my semi-hesitant... "devotion". I wanted to believe they really did care about e.g. next generation energy sources, at a time when even our lame-ass federal government can't get its act together on that front. And Earth, Maps, various API's (Translate, for example), and the like produced fundamental changes in various environments and endeavors, both professional and hobbyist.
Now, sliding into "corporate", lame-ass Google. So sad. Perhaps inevitable; nonetheless, if so, then "just another".
P.S. As I reflect a bit more, I still have more respect for them than e.g. Facebook (manipulation) or Microsoft (domineering, monopolistic, and (perhaps resultantly) now fumbling senior management). But I fear the arrow is pointing in the wrong direction.
And yeah, this is just one random guy's observation. I guess I've added it because in the past Googlers (and "Google") seem to have occasionally observed and perhaps absorbed some of the collection sentiment expressed on HN.
G+'s problem at it's root is that it's a FB clone. They copied the core functionality and tacked on a few specs that make it, literally, FB+1. The problem is no one is going to move their whole social network for FB+1 or FB+2. Google needed to build a product an order of magnitude better to win social.
There are plenty of colas that are +1 better then Coke but to take away Coke's base you'd need to be Coke+100.
The obvious solution is to stop trying to make a FB clone and do something else to get your ad demographics. I think they should stick with their core advantages and innovate in the vein of their own Adsense product:
(1) Users sign up with Google and volunteer their demographics.
(2) While signed in, Google tailors searches to them.
(3) Google gives the user a tiny percentage of the increased ad revenue. It's peanuts for most people so make it Google Play credit.
(4) If you're not signed in everything is anonymous.
Test run the whole thing on a smaller scale with Android users that already have Google accounts and (for many) credit card info on file.
Nielson families give up a lot of personal data about their viewing habits. This is rewarded with free cable, internet and cell phone service, heck they may even be paid. Even people that just take an hourlong phone survey about tv or radio are rewarded with $50+ checks. The reason market research companies pay this is because the data is extremely valuable to them and their clients. Obviously every web company wants to get that data "for free" like they do now but the giant tracking databases and all the personnel behind that certainly aren't free and create an adversarial relationship that can dilute your brand.
If life were a movie, all the "advice" Steve Jobs gave to Larry Page toward the end of Jobs' life was completely bogus, and part of a long con aimed at destroying Google in retaliation for Android being a "stolen product" (http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/11/10/20/steve_jobs_vow...)
We all know Jobs was enough of a mastermind to pull it off; but was he that malicious?
Today google is doing what MS did some years back. Google wants to be facebook and some years back MS wanted to be Google(when they started bing).
People at google say "don't be evil", you cant run business without being evil, google in its early days tried being the least possible evil, but as Shakespeare said: "lowliness is young ambitions ladder".
But the ambitions of MS were clear from start and they did not even care about what was evil, they wanted their supremacy all over. By joining MS you have come to a place that is more evil, more evil than putting ads or compromising slightly on privacy of users, look at the open source initiatives that Google takes, agreed google labs has been shut down, app engine prices have gone high they have dedicated some of their focus working on Social Networks, but which company would not want to have a chunk and share in what is hot.
By the way, what do you see on MS being done, even they are wannabe in their approach. free 90 days trial for azure and the sun will rise from west if they offer anything that is not free/freemium. The point i want to make here is
When you talk about privacy, i am sure you would curse facebook for privacy, won't you. The only reason that compelled you to leave google, was you did not get a project that you would like to work on, more geeky, irrespective of what the company gave you, you should have tried paying it back by being proactive in your efforts and pointing out the errors. I respect google for what it has built, i am sure the amount of effort it has put, the horizons that it has opened the initiatives it has brought remains unsurpassed, yes there is a tinge of evil air that currently surrounds it, but again as you mentioned Google learns from its mistakes, and rectifies them.
By joining MS you have done more bad than good, probably you will be given some hardcore engineering project, but you could have got them as google as well, with some efforts.
The author states that in his time at Google he realizes it was always a company funded by ads, but that he did not have to personally feel the need for Ads in all products. That's a fair point. Where I lost him is his connection of Google+ with Ads.
I disagree that G+ is an Ads play. It's a play for staying relevant on the internet. When you think about it, Facebook is a closed system. They want CNN to post articles into the CNN FB stream. They want people to read those articles on the CNN page (yes, this currently links to outside FB... that will change). They want to do this so that you never have to leave FB, and in fact if you look at the user behavior of 13-17 year olds you will see disturbing trends that this is the case.
Facebook is a danger to a free and open internet by becoming the de-facto internet. I concede that this is a stretch, but it is within their power to do so and from my understanding is how their strategy is lined up.
TL;DR: G+ is only about Ads in the way that Google needs users to serve Ads to and there is a threat that all users of the internet only go to Facebook and nowhere else.
I dream of a day when the world will wake from this social sharing bad trip. Facebook is not only making the web worse, by breaking most of its core assumptions, but it's destroying one of the greatest companies to arise in recent years.
Google has made accessing the world's information transformatively faster and easier. Facebook has made blogging more pervasive and closed.
" As the trappings of entrepreneurship were dismantled, derisive talk of the “old Google” and its feeble attempts at competing with Facebook surfaced to justify a “new Google” that promised “more wood behind fewer arrows.”"
Simply put, Google stopped investing in it's future through building entrepreneurship in its engineering ranks. This is bad for Google's future growth prospects, full stop. They've drawn a line in the sand "we're about ads, not technology innovation!" and that is where the company will slowly age and die.
Google is no longer about where it's going, but about how it ages.
Why does he even bother bringing Wave into this? As a Googler he should know that Wave was never meant to be a social network. It didn't even have the subscribe of 'friends', it was an attempt to create a new kind of Email.
He worked at Google but didn't realize that all that innovation, be it GMail, Android, Chrome, Search, Maps, Google Car, etc was paid for by ads?
I think Google+ 's mistake, like the author, has to do with a changing doctrine, but i think it has more to do with a branding issue than an innovation or technology issue. (it could be both, but i would argue perception comes before reality when it comes to success)
I think "Google+ is a dud," has less to do with whether social is broken, but rather with human perception and branding.
Much the way Google owned the category search in peoples minds, Facebook owns the category social in peoples minds.
Google made two fundamental mistakes.
1. Using their brand that stands for Search on something else. The human mind is like wet cement, once a brand owns a category, that impressions is almost impossible to change. (Ever try to change someones mind from his political philosophies? almost impossible).
2. Building a product in a category that is already owned by another brand without positioning themselves opposite it.
This is classic... Burger King will never take over Mcdonalds market share because they are trying to convince people that they are better. Since the category is owned already, they need to claim, "We are different"
When it comes to branding, its all about human perception. Like the authors daughter said, "Facebook is where the people are." Even if that statement weren't true, the perception is ingrained in peoples minds.
A good example of competing with an established brand is Coke vs. Pepsi... coke was the real thing, original coca cola, so pepsi came out and said were for the new generation. Why be old when you can be young and fresh.
Avis didnt say we are better than hertz, they said, sine we are number 2, we try harder.
Dominoes didn't say we have better pizza than pizza hut, they said, we will get it to you faster.
Listerine didnt say we taste better than scope, they said, "the taste you hate twice a day."
This is branding 101.
A brand can only stand for One Thing. (a brand that stands for everything, stands for nothing.)
If google wants to compete in the social game... They either need to create a niche of social like twitter, foursquare, and pinterest did, or they need to use a new brand name, and position themselves opposite facebook, not claim they are better...
Big executives always talk about convergence, but the Human perception just doesn't work that way. When you combine two things, people assume you are compromising on quality on both sides.
When you separate things, people assume you do that one thing much better than everyone else...
Google owned the search brand because that was all they did, Search. The new ways of trying to get into other businesses like Paul Graham said," is a chink in their armor."
However I think G+ did in fact differentiate itself at the start. They made a big play out of how circles were there so that you weren't sharing things publicly all the time. But the nymwars hit and it went horribly wrong at that point. You can't sell a message that you're the champion of people's privacy and then kick them off your network for not revealing their identity to you. They basically lost all credibility as being differentiated from Facebook and became just "the same" as Facebook but worse because none of your friends were there.
Sounds like you've read Ries and Trout's classic marketing books (Marketing Warfare and Positioning: The Battle for Your Mind). They should be required reading for startup hackers.
At first, I also thought it had to do with branding, and was infact, quite enthusiastic about G+. But then G+ launched, and I tried it, and about half of my friends also came ever to give it a try.
It just wasn't good enough. I've had people tell me that they go to G+ to escape from the madness that people apparently post on facebook. This 'madness', as the person quoted, was simply the fact that people post more personalised messages on facebook. I've yet to see that when it comes to G+, (and to be honest, the only reason I still visit is because of the HN circle).
So I guess you're right that branding is a part of it, but not big enough. Google thought compartmentalising everything with circles would be the answer, but is it really? People complain about facebook's privacy all the time, and yet, when G+ came with better options, they didn't just up and left.
> 2. Building a product in a category that is already owned by another brand without positioning themselves opposite it.
> This is classic... Burger King will never take over Mcdonalds market share because they are trying to convince people that they are better. Since the category is owned already, they need to claim, "We are different"
For what it's worth, Apple's Jon Ive completely disagrees with you:
"...most of our competitors are interesting in doing something different, or want to appear new - I think those are completely the wrong goals. A product has to be genuinely better. This requires real discipline, and that’s what drives us - a sincere, genuine appetite to do something that is better. "
This is a fantastic post on what branding is and how to position oneself.
There's probably more to it, and I am not fully versed in such a field, but I am now far more interested in the aspect and history of branding than I was before.
And here I am, just wishing someone could sell me awesome $10/mo email without feeling the need to leverage my presence on the mass media cognitive battleground.
[+] [-] arkitaip|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] georgemcbay|14 years ago|reply
Also as someone who never worked at Google but has been a pretty big Google "fanboy" (of the search, Google Apps, Android, etc) his waning enthusiasm for the brand as an employee seems to have taken a very similar dip to my waning enthusiasm for them as a user, though due to personal investment his dip was probably faster and deeper than my own.
I've loved Google in the past precisely because they weren't Apple and they weren't Facebook. It seems increasingly like they are trying to be Apple and Facebook rolled up into one, which (most importantly for me) sucks because I'm not a fan of Apple or Facebook and (most importantly for them) sucks because they aren't a very good Apple nor a very good Facebook, so they're trading in their old fans for the hope of new fans that probably aren't interested anyway.
Larry Page, I am disppoint.
[+] [-] zmmmmm|14 years ago|reply
To me, I see this as a cynical smear by Microsoft precisely because it is true and it is genuine.
[+] [-] discreteevent|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] yanw|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ChuckMcM|14 years ago|reply
Not enough people think about year 10. You know, that's when you're 10 years old as a company and you've got a lot of huge successes behind you. Kind of like teenagers when they realize that finding a job is suddenly not an 'optional' thing in their lives.
James' rant here reminded me of a similar rant I read (internally) at Sun on its 10 year anniversary. They had published a book all about Sun's first decade, and somehow excised the fact that Sun had built a workstation called the 386i. It emphasized the successes, and papered over the mistakes. The rant was about how Sun, who had kicked DEC in the nuts and had them retreating to the data center, was walking right into that same data center because Microsoft was starting to make PC's as useful as workstations. (there used to be a real distinction there.)
I remember thinking that somehow Sun had gone from bringing technology to the folks who could use it, to being all about being a more impressive Sun Microsystems. Sun's "Google+" moment was the day they announced they were going to merge System V and SunOS.
In my brief time at Google I was exposed to the folks who had become more about 'The Google' and less about doing cool stuff. I saw many of the same things James did, and I hear Marissa's 'call to arms' about Social and said to myself "If she can't say what it is, how can she expect the troops to achieve it?"
If you read the stuff about Mark and Facebook (and I have to believe that at least some of it is true.) the man is on a mission. And his mission was to make a new place in the universe that didn't exist before, he left it to others to figure out how to monetize it. Google did the same with search, make it real, then monetize.
But I think at some point the operating committee at Google looked at monetization of all the things Google has done and if you included search advertising the in the bar graph everything else looked like zero. And you ask yourself "We've got all these smart people doing all these projects and not a single one even comes CLOSE to the income that search advertising does? Give me one good reason I shouldn't just fire all of them?"
The sad thing is that I saw multimillion dollar a year businesses get tossed under the bus because they just didn't move the needle.
Ten years on, ask yourself, "What value do you bring to the table?" if you don't know, that is a big problem.
[+] [-] 6ren|14 years ago|reply
The new technology isn't perceived as a threat because it is not as good and will never be as good in the old market. It manages to survive in a different new market (because it really can't compete in the old pond). As it improves, it never catches up with the old technology - but it becomes good enough. That is, the old technology has also improved, and is definitely better - but the old market doesn't care for that extra improvement. You can see there are a few things that have to happen for disruption to occur.
One of the reasons for Google's 20% was to try to prevent this kind of thing, but it never worked out. Some business types redefine terms, so that "invention" is a new technology (make something), and "innovation" is a new business (people want). Google's made a lot of stuff, but most isn't wanted and didn't create a business. They aren't innovations. Closing down businesses that aren't making enough to move the needle is the classic mistake of disrupted businesses: Christensen suggests setting up separate, autonomous business units (even separate businesses; startups), with limited resources, that will get excited by small wins - because new disruptions start small. (YC is pretty much doing it right...)
However, right now, Google is fighting for its life. At the beginning, facebook didn't seem threatening - or at least not that threatening. Then again, I'm not sure that Google ever could win this fight; social is such a different kind of business. Perhaps the best that google could hope for is to settle back into owning search forever.
My only disappointment is that google didn't manage to transform its internal inventions into innovations. I'm not saying it's easy or that I could do better, it's just that unlike winning social, it seems possible... and who knows what new disruptions might have come from that?
As it is, Google seems closer to Xerox: one fantastic invention/business, invents the future, makes no money from it.
[+] [-] acqq|14 years ago|reply
Funny nobody mentioned until now, but from what I've read, that's what happened to Yahoo. Apparently years ago they were so successful with the ads on their "portal" that not much more could matter. Maybe somebody has good links at hand? The similarities seem to be really big.
[+] [-] sliverstorm|14 years ago|reply
Because "we" (if I was a Googler) need to make the next big wave, or at least catch it. Search won't be the biggest thing forever.
[+] [-] jf|14 years ago|reply
Is there a reason you shouldn't be asking yourself that after every year you spent at a company?
[+] [-] taylorbuley|14 years ago|reply
From where I'm sitting Google has been pretty rough on independent developers recently.
I think their lack of caring (or understanding?) indy devs is best summed up by the Google+ API. Read-only is understandable as they get off their feet, but you can't even get a user's profile stream (you can only fetch profiles one by one).
Now that the Buzz API is shut down I have yet to find a way to "share" anything programmatically on Google. How can you be social without a share API?
[+] [-] JS_startup|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mikeryan|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] killpg|14 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] antirez|14 years ago|reply
p.s. IMHO Google is going to lose in the email space soon as well, times are mature to beat it in simple ways, only protection they have in this space is that there is a big "optimization" part in email that is anti-spam and they are good at it.
[+] [-] pragmatic|14 years ago|reply
G+ is a worse Facebook (and not in the worse is better sense).
Gmail is getting slow and the recent changes haven't been for the better. In fact it's hurt usability for common users for the (dubious) benefit of "power" users.
The unified google interface is rather crappy. I don't know which which i have to click/hover/etc to get to my account settings.
[+] [-] ScottWhigham|14 years ago|reply
The only thing that, for me, would cause Google to "lose in the email space soon" would be the exact thing you say they are good at: anti-spam. I've started getting more spam on gmail recently but it's now only 5 or so emails a week out of thousands. Think about how good that is and then ask the question, "If it was 0, would that inspire people to go through all of the hassle to switch emails?" I'd guess that the answer for most folks would be, "Meh - 5 spam messages a week for a free email service is fine. I'd rather not change."
[+] [-] hughw|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] CurtHagenlocher|14 years ago|reply
"I couldn’t even get my own teenage daughter to look at Google+ twice, “social isn’t a product,” she told me after I gave her a demo, “social is people and the people are on Facebook.”"
[+] [-] nextparadigms|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ippisl|14 years ago|reply
So it's probably too early to tell if teens will use google+.
[+] [-] re_todd|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] paul|14 years ago|reply
I think it's a mistake to blame this on ads though. I don't believe that the G+ crusade is being driving by advertising (though I'm sure it looks that way to people who assume that everything is about ads).
[+] [-] rickmb|14 years ago|reply
Because as far as I know, every service that isn't about being so great people would pay for it is about advertising and nothing else.
[+] [-] pragmatic|14 years ago|reply
What disappoints me is how much it has failed. I used to love Google products, but lately...not so much.
[+] [-] pradocchia|14 years ago|reply
Too bad, really. The new Google is obnoxious in a "why-are-you-doing-this?", Facebook kind of way.
[+] [-] bo1024|14 years ago|reply
I think they will learn to their cost that trust doesn't grow back.
[+] [-] AmericanOP|14 years ago|reply
Google Plus Me should mean I can find anything of mine via the search bar. If I want to find a file on my computer, I should be able to search for it using google.com instead of spotlight. I should be able to do this even if I'm not on my normal machine.
It's not just desktop files. If I want to show my dad pictures of my trip to Cabo, I shouldn't have to log into Facebook, find the always moving Photos app button, find the album, find the picture.
I should be able to search 'My cabo pictures' in Google.
The omnibar should really become omnipotent. That would be compelling, cool, futuristic must-have UX. That's what Google Plus Me means to me.
[+] [-] huxley|14 years ago|reply
Someday I may want to look up the stage Nietzsche's syphilis advanced to without that following me around as part of my advertising profile.
'People who enjoyed "Human all too Human" also bought Doxycycline 200 mg tablets' - that sort of stuff creeps me out.
[+] [-] DanI-S|14 years ago|reply
Whether they're correct or not is still up for debate. Dropbox are doing pretty well.
[+] [-] jdpage|14 years ago|reply
(Methinks that it would be vastly improved if they got simply got rid of the big clunky desktop widget engine. Possibly even got rid of the search box and just let you use a web view -- as you described above.)
[+] [-] pasbesoin|14 years ago|reply
When Google started killing the "cool" stuff, I perceived (rightly or wrongly) the writing on the wall as far as attracting and retaining top talent. And they lost my semi-hesitant... "devotion". I wanted to believe they really did care about e.g. next generation energy sources, at a time when even our lame-ass federal government can't get its act together on that front. And Earth, Maps, various API's (Translate, for example), and the like produced fundamental changes in various environments and endeavors, both professional and hobbyist.
Now, sliding into "corporate", lame-ass Google. So sad. Perhaps inevitable; nonetheless, if so, then "just another".
P.S. As I reflect a bit more, I still have more respect for them than e.g. Facebook (manipulation) or Microsoft (domineering, monopolistic, and (perhaps resultantly) now fumbling senior management). But I fear the arrow is pointing in the wrong direction.
And yeah, this is just one random guy's observation. I guess I've added it because in the past Googlers (and "Google") seem to have occasionally observed and perhaps absorbed some of the collection sentiment expressed on HN.
[+] [-] Steko|14 years ago|reply
There are plenty of colas that are +1 better then Coke but to take away Coke's base you'd need to be Coke+100.
The obvious solution is to stop trying to make a FB clone and do something else to get your ad demographics. I think they should stick with their core advantages and innovate in the vein of their own Adsense product:
(1) Users sign up with Google and volunteer their demographics.
(2) While signed in, Google tailors searches to them.
(3) Google gives the user a tiny percentage of the increased ad revenue. It's peanuts for most people so make it Google Play credit.
(4) If you're not signed in everything is anonymous.
Test run the whole thing on a smaller scale with Android users that already have Google accounts and (for many) credit card info on file.
Nielson families give up a lot of personal data about their viewing habits. This is rewarded with free cable, internet and cell phone service, heck they may even be paid. Even people that just take an hourlong phone survey about tv or radio are rewarded with $50+ checks. The reason market research companies pay this is because the data is extremely valuable to them and their clients. Obviously every web company wants to get that data "for free" like they do now but the giant tracking databases and all the personnel behind that certainly aren't free and create an adversarial relationship that can dilute your brand.
[+] [-] defen|14 years ago|reply
We all know Jobs was enough of a mastermind to pull it off; but was he that malicious?
[+] [-] gamebit07|14 years ago|reply
People at google say "don't be evil", you cant run business without being evil, google in its early days tried being the least possible evil, but as Shakespeare said: "lowliness is young ambitions ladder".
But the ambitions of MS were clear from start and they did not even care about what was evil, they wanted their supremacy all over. By joining MS you have come to a place that is more evil, more evil than putting ads or compromising slightly on privacy of users, look at the open source initiatives that Google takes, agreed google labs has been shut down, app engine prices have gone high they have dedicated some of their focus working on Social Networks, but which company would not want to have a chunk and share in what is hot. By the way, what do you see on MS being done, even they are wannabe in their approach. free 90 days trial for azure and the sun will rise from west if they offer anything that is not free/freemium. The point i want to make here is
When you talk about privacy, i am sure you would curse facebook for privacy, won't you. The only reason that compelled you to leave google, was you did not get a project that you would like to work on, more geeky, irrespective of what the company gave you, you should have tried paying it back by being proactive in your efforts and pointing out the errors. I respect google for what it has built, i am sure the amount of effort it has put, the horizons that it has opened the initiatives it has brought remains unsurpassed, yes there is a tinge of evil air that currently surrounds it, but again as you mentioned Google learns from its mistakes, and rectifies them.
By joining MS you have done more bad than good, probably you will be given some hardcore engineering project, but you could have got them as google as well, with some efforts.
[+] [-] whiletruefork|14 years ago|reply
I disagree that G+ is an Ads play. It's a play for staying relevant on the internet. When you think about it, Facebook is a closed system. They want CNN to post articles into the CNN FB stream. They want people to read those articles on the CNN page (yes, this currently links to outside FB... that will change). They want to do this so that you never have to leave FB, and in fact if you look at the user behavior of 13-17 year olds you will see disturbing trends that this is the case.
Facebook is a danger to a free and open internet by becoming the de-facto internet. I concede that this is a stretch, but it is within their power to do so and from my understanding is how their strategy is lined up.
TL;DR: G+ is only about Ads in the way that Google needs users to serve Ads to and there is a threat that all users of the internet only go to Facebook and nowhere else.
[+] [-] cromwellian|14 years ago|reply
Maybe the third time will stick?
[+] [-] pessimist|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tambourine_man|14 years ago|reply
Google has made accessing the world's information transformatively faster and easier. Facebook has made blogging more pervasive and closed.
[+] [-] MatthewPhillips|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bane|14 years ago|reply
Simply put, Google stopped investing in it's future through building entrepreneurship in its engineering ranks. This is bad for Google's future growth prospects, full stop. They've drawn a line in the sand "we're about ads, not technology innovation!" and that is where the company will slowly age and die.
Google is no longer about where it's going, but about how it ages.
[+] [-] cromwellian|14 years ago|reply
He worked at Google but didn't realize that all that innovation, be it GMail, Android, Chrome, Search, Maps, Google Car, etc was paid for by ads?
[+] [-] davemel37|14 years ago|reply
I think "Google+ is a dud," has less to do with whether social is broken, but rather with human perception and branding. Much the way Google owned the category search in peoples minds, Facebook owns the category social in peoples minds.
Google made two fundamental mistakes. 1. Using their brand that stands for Search on something else. The human mind is like wet cement, once a brand owns a category, that impressions is almost impossible to change. (Ever try to change someones mind from his political philosophies? almost impossible).
2. Building a product in a category that is already owned by another brand without positioning themselves opposite it.
This is classic... Burger King will never take over Mcdonalds market share because they are trying to convince people that they are better. Since the category is owned already, they need to claim, "We are different"
When it comes to branding, its all about human perception. Like the authors daughter said, "Facebook is where the people are." Even if that statement weren't true, the perception is ingrained in peoples minds.
A good example of competing with an established brand is Coke vs. Pepsi... coke was the real thing, original coca cola, so pepsi came out and said were for the new generation. Why be old when you can be young and fresh.
Avis didnt say we are better than hertz, they said, sine we are number 2, we try harder.
Dominoes didn't say we have better pizza than pizza hut, they said, we will get it to you faster.
Listerine didnt say we taste better than scope, they said, "the taste you hate twice a day."
This is branding 101. A brand can only stand for One Thing. (a brand that stands for everything, stands for nothing.)
If google wants to compete in the social game... They either need to create a niche of social like twitter, foursquare, and pinterest did, or they need to use a new brand name, and position themselves opposite facebook, not claim they are better...
Big executives always talk about convergence, but the Human perception just doesn't work that way. When you combine two things, people assume you are compromising on quality on both sides. When you separate things, people assume you do that one thing much better than everyone else...
Google owned the search brand because that was all they did, Search. The new ways of trying to get into other businesses like Paul Graham said," is a chink in their armor."
Just my two cents.
[+] [-] zmmmmm|14 years ago|reply
However I think G+ did in fact differentiate itself at the start. They made a big play out of how circles were there so that you weren't sharing things publicly all the time. But the nymwars hit and it went horribly wrong at that point. You can't sell a message that you're the champion of people's privacy and then kick them off your network for not revealing their identity to you. They basically lost all credibility as being differentiated from Facebook and became just "the same" as Facebook but worse because none of your friends were there.
[+] [-] cpeterso|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] manish_gill|14 years ago|reply
It just wasn't good enough. I've had people tell me that they go to G+ to escape from the madness that people apparently post on facebook. This 'madness', as the person quoted, was simply the fact that people post more personalised messages on facebook. I've yet to see that when it comes to G+, (and to be honest, the only reason I still visit is because of the HN circle).
So I guess you're right that branding is a part of it, but not big enough. Google thought compartmentalising everything with circles would be the answer, but is it really? People complain about facebook's privacy all the time, and yet, when G+ came with better options, they didn't just up and left.
[+] [-] jmduke|14 years ago|reply
For what it's worth, Apple's Jon Ive completely disagrees with you:
http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/lifestyle/london-life/sir-jona...
"...most of our competitors are interesting in doing something different, or want to appear new - I think those are completely the wrong goals. A product has to be genuinely better. This requires real discipline, and that’s what drives us - a sincere, genuine appetite to do something that is better. "
[+] [-] malnourish|14 years ago|reply
Thank you.
[+] [-] thwest|14 years ago|reply