Slashdot Mirror
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."
If google prints money maybe I can be a googillianaire.
harmonious design
The only "Google Desktop" I would consider using would be one that ran on X. And at this point windowmaker does me just fine. If google could make a window manager that was truly effective and integrated directly with their upcoming gmail/web storage, then maybe Microsoft would have to start worrying.
Imagine a beowulf cluster of... Oh, wait...
"If we let things terrify us, life will not be worth living."
- Seneca
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.
Hwo do you pronounce that? Like Goose?
Moo!
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.
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.
Gee, I don't know. I thought they had a good search engine.
Business isn't willing to pay for products, innovation and careers, so we get brands, mortgage commercials and layoffs.
I'm amazing. You aren't. SUCK IT
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.
In case the server goes down, I can show you what the article looks like:
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-Colin
This just in: "Google to define a new universal standard of internet measurement, called a G-Unit."
From http://www.kottke.org/04/04/google-operating-syste m "So. They have this huge map of the Web and are aware of how people move around in the virtual space it represents. They have the perfect place to store this map (one of the world's largest computers that's all but incapable of crashing)."
SkyNet? Is that you?
Google mail would be nice, especially if it had quality POP3/IMAP access that only cost $5-10/month. But that's nothing terribly special, there are some good services out there that already do that. Now if they made Google chat available, and based made it a Jabber based service and just put the Google name it on, that'd be awesome. It'd have the name recognition to get popular, and programs like gaim wouldn't have to constantly fight for access like they do with the AIM, Yahoo, and MSN protocols.
ce n'est pas un Sig.
how prominent Google and Yahoo have become as almost parts of the operating system
Ok, so Google is a really good search engine (although you should also look at Vivissimo, it's quite excellent too) and I use it all the time, and everybody I know uses it all the time, and my dog would become depressed if he didn't use it regularly too. But Yahoo?
I don't remember the last time I used Yahoo. Or rather, I know I have an Egroups^H^H^H^H^H^HYahoo Groups account that I've given up on using since Yahoo decided to dump a million metric ton worth of advertisement on me in each page, and I think I went to yahoo.com to check it out with a glazed eye when I read somewhere that it stopped using the Google search engine not so long ago, like it mattered to anybody since I fail to remember anybody I ever met who uses Yahoo for anything whatsoever.
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
Today Google is an operating system layer.
Tomorrow they're a utility, like gas and electricity.
Next week they're a small government.
Next month they take over the world.
Maybe also the galaxy.
Google now has all sorts of information on hand. They have the Google search engine to index web pages, various offshoots to index news, images, and similar, Orkut to index people, and Gmail to index peoples' communications. With all this information at their fingertips, the sky is the limit (and it is good to know they seem responsible in the way they use their information, separating advertisements from search results, for example). I know that Google has some exceptionally brilliant researchers on staff, and I expect to see even more excellent services from their camp in the future. Does anyone else think that Google is on the cutting edge of Computer Science research?
http://images.google.com/images?q=money&hl=en&lr=& ie=UTF-8&sa=N&tab=wi
"The young lion [google] shall overcome the old [microsoft]/On the field of battle in single combat; [desktop]/In a cage of gold [computer] he shall pierce his eyes: [gates' breaks his glasses]/Two knells one, then to die, a cruel death [bankruptcy]"
If you have to ask, you'll never know.
Ebay is full of scammers and the feedback system is horribly broken since scammers can pad their own feedback, but if you leave them negative, they will leave you negative feedback as well as revenge. Somebody needs to come up with a better system and google has the ability to actually make a better system popular.
just the $.02 of someone sick of browsing pages of scams to find a dvd.
Google is becoming a potential privacy monster; if you concider GMail and cross indexing with the terabytes of data they've gonna get theire hands on... You see, it includes never-to-be-deleted mail archives, all newsgroup postings since the 80's, mailing list archives, blogs, *cached* snapshots of personal web pages... the list goes on.
I'd like a pair of virtual stereo glasses that could project a screen in front of my eyes, and which would activate keyword searches using silent pre-vocal muscle movements. Then google would be an integral part of my being.
buy em out
Just remember, the reason Micro$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
1) Custom OS, G-mail 2) ? 3) Profit (of course, all of it in Google e-currency)
...
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?
ARGH! LINUX!?!?
Not that Google's magic isn't in their own software, but the least they could do is mention that it's running on Linux.
Barclay family motto:
Aut agere aut mori.
(Either action or death.)
I just want to know from a slashdotter if the beta is all it's cracked up to be. I've seen a few screenshots and some blathering about the GUI...but is it really that cool? Is there a NDC so you can't talk about it? So they are going to target ads based on e-mail content...what if you encrypt? Is this against the user agreemnet?
I just hope they can keep this together without becoming EVIL (read shareholder value centered)
Inquiring minds want to know.
McK
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.
There is limited demand for web services today and I don't see this demand growing in the near future. There's only so much one can do in a web browser before you're better off working locally. Things like client-side ActiveX and Java, while supposedly making web services a reality, are slow, bulky, ugly and difficult to use.
Besides their foray into email (essentially nothing new), Google will find little potential for growth in their product line. I think the company should stick to improving their search technology by getting access to more data sources and making their results more relevant (there is still much work to be done!)... that's if they want to be dominant player 5 years from now.
True, and this is the google baar for mozilla, if you want one :)
My other car is first.
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
It's pretty awesome. Keyboard shortcuts, clean, simple user interface, labels, a distinction between the inbox and the archive... the list goes on. I also tested encrypted emails with GPG, and this does not violate the policies.
It's all that you'd imagine and more. I am thoroughly impressed, though I don't yet want to make it a primary account over the 100mb IMAP service I have.
I am patenting the encryption software and Gmail Viewer that will interface with Gmail with one Click. Basically, you use Gmail/GOS for storage and email delivery but your content is encrypted using 128 bit or 256 bit or 512 bit or 1024 or 2048... encryption before it goes to Gmail servers. You just upload and download encrypted files and email messages to the Gmail Viewer on your PC using 1-click feature with your gmail user name and password...
Well, I am just kidding but what is to stop someone from creating such a viewer/encryptor if they want to keep their information private(less readiy accessible to Google bot/PhD's). If they want to read the content, they have to first break the encryption....using email viewer means that once you download attachment, the viewer decrypts it with the key and you can read the mail as if you were using it in your favorite POP mail reader....
Finding people who want to sift through 1000 MB of spam every week?
Twenties Retirement
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
From the Gmail privacy policy:
Ah, good! So I won't receive any spam from John Ashcroft any time soon...