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Google's Next Steps
danimlp writes "An article at SearchEngineWatch states that Google and Yahoo have become as almost parts of the operating system, a 'layer' above Linux, Windows or Mac OS. Another article at Kottke.org says that Google is building a a huge computer with a custom operating system that everyone on earth can have an account on. Some people predicts that, after Gmail, Google could start a new instant message service or even its own electronic currency."
Well, from where they are now, Google could do pretty much anything and people would use it. They could easily be as pervasive as AOL or even Microsoft is to most people.
And the l33t shall inherit the 34r7h.
I'm all for them entering the online money business. Anything to get away from PayPal.
Don't try to do everything Google, you can't win (well, no one else has).
Google has stayed away from Portal Fever so far, and hasn't gotten too cluttered, but they run that risk the bigger they get. There are plenty of companies that do very well in "niche" markets. Basically ALL users will always need a search engine (even more as the web grows), you don't NEED to offer everything.
Just stay as objective and useful as possible, and people will stay. Honestly I think they should be focusing on cleaning up search results. There is an increasing amount of spam and while it's not their fault, who wouldn't want cleaner, more accurate results?
Thats why MS put som much effort into Explorer..Internet Explorer.
Ballamer recently bemoaned the MS lack of precense in the search engine and portal space.
Do I detect a deja vu!
And if you thought that was boring you obviously havn't read my Journal ;-)
Are these people crazy?
Speculation: in the next few months, Google will abolish world hunger and buy everyone a pony. Google is search engine, not the second coming of Christ.
Google seems to be very analagous to Apple's development in many ways: 1. Start offering one revolutionary (not neccecarily original) service or product (Apple: cheap computers, Google: search) 2. Become a household name 3. Slowly add more services/products that are somewhat related to the core product (Apple: iMovie, et al, Google: GIS, Gmail, et al) 4. Take over the world (forthcoming) Microsoft has also arguably followed this track, but has actually made it to the last step. My hypothesis is that once you reach step 4, people start hating you.
Google is becoming a potential privacy monster; if you concider GMail and cross indexing with the terabytes of data they've gonna get theire hands on... You see, it includes never-to-be-deleted mail archives, all newsgroup postings since the 80's, mailing list archives, blogs, *cached* snapshots of personal web pages... the list goes on.
Unless a better search engine comes along, in which case we ditch google and forget about them in the space of about 3 hours.
Matt.
Just remember, the reason Micro$osft was able to become our evil overlord is because we let them. We bought their software, we gave them our money, and we said "Here Bill, we trust you not to abuse us." Just because we all love Google doesn't mean we should allow power to be concentrated like that... we've already made that mistake once. "Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely." -- attributed to Lord Acton, 1887
Let's be real. Google will not be selling PCs anytime soon with a "Goog" OS. Applications determine the success of any OS. And right now, Microsoft can run millions of apps.
Let's take it easy with the Google Is Taking Over the World stuff. Let them perfect search first. And they certainly have not won that battle yet.
-- You see, there would be these conclusions that you could jump to
This sounds so familiar...
Remember when Netscape was going to "replace the OS" back in the 20th century?
It never happened and I doubt if this will either.
Seems every time there is a company with lots of hype potential, predictions like this surely follow. (Usually right before Microsoft breaks their kneecaps.)
"Trademarks are the heraldry of the new feudalism."
Google aims for monopoly share, Slashdot prints neutral article.
Any guesses on the tone if this was Microsoft?
well
tbh making google toolbar for web browsers other than IE might be a bit redundant since most of the other browsers are actualy good and already incorporate most of the stuff that the good toolbar has to offer
its only useful on IE because IE lacks so much functionality
As for the hype, most of it isn't coming from google. All that goodwill is beneficial to google so long as they don't start believing it themselves.
As for not wanting to turn managment of your data over to some third party, I agree completely.
Easy...take a breath.
I am quickly losing the esteem I have always had for Google with this out of control shitfest of sappy, foaming-at-the-mouth hype.
If you didn't notice, nobody from Google wrote any of these articles. They aren't hosted by Google. I'll recap for you:
Another article at Kottke.org says...
Some people predicts(sic) that...
I'm no apologist for any company, but your post blasts Google for no good reason. You now dislike Google because of a few articles not written by Google??? Google is one of the few usable search engines available and I'll not jump the gun on hating a company with such a good track record.
Frankly, I would feel uncomfortable giving my data to any company, especially if they are not obligated to destroy it after I terminate my account.
You've never bought a car? A house? Used a credit card? A debit card? You posted that comment through an anonymous proxy that you connected to using someone else's computer or a wireless account you sniffed? Google is right now one of the few companies I would feel comfortable with my information. Again, they have done nothing to make me feel differently.
You've got an easy breezy wind at your back...most of the time.
Funny, I had just completed a research paper on Google for my corporate finance class. Anyhow, here's an excerpt from my paper.
To construct a "Google-killer" is intuitively rather simple, though logistically, quite difficult. Only companies as large as Microsoft or Yahoo may have the financial resources and manpower to carry out such a task. Nonetheless, one of the first steps would be to crawl every single page on the Internet. While Google has an index of 4,285,199,774 pages, it has been suggested that the Internet consists of over 1 trillion webpage's, most of which cannot be reached through the current PageRank algorithm that Google employs (Wired 12.03, 2004). Going through all these pages with a natural language search, and without sponsored advertisements would also be of significant benefit. Furthermore, an archive every single copy of every single webpage would be another "killer" feature. Finally, keeping track of up-to-the moment changes on every webpage through RSS feeds would also be considered another "killer" feature.
Hence, Google has to keep up with the progressing landscape of search technologies if it is to remain profitable. It was not too long ago that Netscape was thought to be unstoppable and considered to be the next Microsoft. An IPO, whether bookbuilding or Dutch Auction, will give Google some leverage to carry on its tremendous pace of innovation, and should allow it to possibly fend off the competition, at least in the short term. It may simply have to compromise between transparency and loyalty, and offer a combination of the Dutch Auction and bookbuilding to price its shares.
First off, Google hasn't done anything so far that they can't immediately see the return on investment. Look at their aquisitions:
- Deja.com: IMHO they bought this to 1) Remove Usenet from search results to improve quality and, 2) show applicable ads later.
- Applied Symantecs: The underlying technology for AdSense, which greatly expanded their contextual marketing market share.
- Pyra Labs: IMHO same basic principle as the Deja aquisition.
All of them directly affected their major revenue generator, search marketing, in a positive way. (Though blogger might have more untapped potential.)Now, in comparison, these other theories have no basis on reality. The fact that Google is in a position to have these wild rumors about their Godlike Power is a direct result of the highly profitable search advertising market.
So what is Google going to do with their money? Not piss it away on the logistical nightmares of "GooOS", or "Google Bucks." In fact, they will be effectively printing money by expanding in their core market with the likes of Froogle, GMail, Orkut, and other future innovations.
Google is what it is today because it concentrated on what it does best, SEARCHING. All this talk about Google adding auctions, IM, chat, etc etc is just gonna distract Google.
Remember all of those other search engines turned "portal" (buzzword of the dot com days)? What happened to them? They all took a turn for the worst and got sideswiped by a little unknown company named Google. Let's stop it with trying to add "sticky" features. Stickiness and portals went out with the dot bombs.
Or has our memory faded so quickly?
eTrade SUCKS
I love that in Firefox I've got address bar searching powered by google. Like a lot of old hats from the CLI days, a mouse is mostly an impediment to me, and keyboard shortcuts occupy the majority of my interaction with my OS. All I have to do in Firefox is hit "alt+d" and then type in "google" followed by a space and one or more keywords and it takes me straight to a results page.
:)
Toolbar shmoolbar.
--Obyron
Google could also change the way the printing industry works overnight with this service - I use the internet for much of my reference needs now, and a few times a year I buy a couple hundred worth of books to add to my reference. The problem is there's a major time investment in locating what new books are actually worth buying - sometimes exceeding the value of the book, almost insignifigant to the effort spent reading and understanding what is in it.
It's not up there any more, but it looked like google was playing around with buying large volumes of IP from publishers then offering it for instant buy in pdf format online. As someone who has a few books in the works and is wondering how to go about trying to make some money from them - a search service and sales avenue managed by google would be amazing.
"Sold!"
..don't panic