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Has Google Peaked?
nile_list writes "Robert X. Cringely's latest column explores just what the heck Google could be doing. 'Google likes to play the Black Box game. What are they DOING in all those buildings with all those PhDs?' He concludes that it's likely Google has peaked as a company: 'What if everyone is mainly wrong? What if search and PageRank and AdSense are Google's corporate apex. Most companies would be content with that, but Google isn't supposed to be like most companies. But what if they are?' His conclusion is that 'Microsoft's clearest threat still comes from Apple, though not the way most people expect.' It's an interesting read."
What if, what if, what if. This article could have been posted when Earth came out, or GMail, or even Desktop Search. There can always be speculation, why now?
I dunno, the article sounds rather like pretty wild speculation to me. Not that speculation is wrong—the author admits it's speculation—but if any of this stuff comes to pass, I would chalk the author's correctness up more to luck than to keen insight.
Google has a lot of project in the works, including Gmail, Gtalk, Google Desktop, etc. These projects are anything but mainstream and have a LOT of room for growth. Hell, there's still even room for growth in their primary market, the search engine. Though they are huge, they are far from owning that market.
And Apple knocking off Microsoft? Maybe, but if they haven't done it yet, I don't have much reason to believe they'll do it anytime soon. I will admit that there was an interesting speculation in the article:
Wild speculation, but man, it would be fun to watch the resulting scramble.
As for me, I'm convinced that if anyone will ever knock off Microsoft, it will be an OS that gets game developers behind them. I've said for years that as weird as it sounds, gamers drive the market. Not many people use computers at home or school for productive uses, most people use them for playing games. The most popular "applications" on my own computer are probably Firefox and City of Heros. Firefox already runs on a zillion platforms. If City of Heroes ran on Linux, I would probably go ahead to switch to a Linux-only system, if for no other reason than it's free and I don't have to buy a new version every few years.
Once everyone is using an alternative OS (not necessarily Linux, but something other than Windows) at home for games, then they will all want to use it at work and school for productivity and educational applications, and that familiarity will drive more and more companies and schools to switch desktops.
But that's just my wild speculation...
Next question the does not involve endless futile /. speculation please.
Do not try to read the dupe, thats impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth
What truth?
There is no dupe
Make use of the information you received from the search. Did the information help you solve the problem that led you to make the query? If it did, then the information was relevant.
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
Working. What are YOU doing, Cringely?
He's working. As a journalist and columnist, it's his JOB to write stuff.
"Slashdot - News and Chat Sites Deviant". (Click "homepage" link above for details).
- As a webmaster, I don't want to rely on Google for 80% of my traffic. I'd like to be able to count on each of three search engines for about 30% of my traffic. Google has been known to throw sites out of their index accidentally.
- As a user, I feel that Google knows too much about me already. They have a ton of information about what I search for. With gmail, they have a list of who I know, with maps they have a list of places I go, with froogle they have a list of what I buy.
I would prefer that some of the other players in search got their act together and improved to the point to be able to challenge Google. I'd prefer if some of the other maps, email, and shopping sites got their act together and became as good as Google.Its hard to hate a company that usually has the far superior product, but Google is getting huge and a little scary.
Please, for the good of Humanity, vote Obama.
He started out ok, made a few interesting at least observations about Google behaviour of late. But then with a lot of handwaving and not a lot of reasoning dismisses them as has beens so he can go on yet another tired rant about how Apple is going to rise from insignificance and crush it's enemies.
Didn't we all get tired of hearing this same song from the Amigans, how any day now _insert company who owns em today_ is going to come back with something wonderful and all the infidels on PCs and Macs will be wailing and gnashing their teeth?
Apple is a bit player now, will remain a bit player after Intel. In fact, after they perform this one last act for Mr. Gates (get TCPA into mainstream use, something Gates was rightly pilloried for trying under the Palladium name) I'd expect the coup de grace to finally be administered.
But leave off the last part of that collumn and it does raise an interesting question. Where does Google want to be in ten years?
Democrat delenda est
Maybe Google has peaked, or maybe they're just in a bit of a valley right now (see the underwhelming debuts of GTalk and GDS 2). I can give that to Cringely. But Apple giving away copies of OS X?? Even old copies, especially old copies? That's insane. If they really wanted more market share Apple could just preload porn on all new video iPods.
This has to be a new low. "I don't know what Google are doing, so I'll write about how I don't know what Google are doing!"
I thought this "OS X on generic Intel boxes" thing had been done to death? How are Apple going to solve the driver problem? Giving away a free older version that doesn't work with half your hardware is going to make a negative impression, not a positive one.
Bogtha Bogtha Bogtha
What if Google's plan is to actually deliver on the 1990s promise of a "Web Desktop", one app at a time? They're doing it 1990s "spiral development" style, rolling out one complete feature at a time. Amassing the best (or #2 behind Apple) brand in the world, with a "Google feel" of simplicity, immediacy, and nonintrusion. When they lay a layer of association across their related apps, so their Earth model is related not only to your searches (including history of clicks) but also to your contacts and purchases, presenting your online life to you seamlessly wherever you "hit the Web", they'll have endrun Microsoft and everyone else in the "computer business". All those other companies will be merely component suppliers, and the customer relationship will belong to Google. Which is where every seller wants to be - so all those other vendors will have to go through Google to get to the customer. Without all the "evil" baggage of Microsoft, or "complicated" baggage of AOL. Of course, Google won't be able to totally monopolize that relationship, nor hold it forever without challenge. But they will be in the catbird seat for long enough to have all the advantages of perpetuating their power that incumbent market dominators get. It remains to be seen just how benevolent, and benign, is their ruling of that roost - if they achieve it.
--
make install -not war
hey fucktard, robots.txt
The other reason the Intel move hurts Microsoft is less subtle. By switching to Intel, Apple hurts development on the new Xbox360. Right now development is done on Apple G5s probably because of the similiarity in chip architectures. By moving away from PowerPC, Apple makes it harder for game companies to develop. Sure developers could probably use something else like Intel emulating PowerPC or an IBM PowerPC machine. But the later is very expensive ($5K a piece) and the former doesn't provide for real-world simulations.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
Maybe -not- having Google Maps at all would be worse?
The big draw of OS X, and one of the big reasons why it rocks and Windows sucks, is compatibility. Getting device drivers to work, and to work well with each other, is the biggest nightmare to stability and ease of use ever invented.
I can't imagine that these people who continually suggest that Apple get OS X working on commodity Intel boxes have ever really used Macs. Apple doesn't sell a computer--they sell a user experience. Seriously. From the moment you plug the computer in, you're in a little Apple dream world, full of eye candy and "everything works" and stuff that's easy to use. Do you think replicating that experience on commodity Intel boxes is easy, much less even possible? Do you think that Apple would want to risk their image on such an outrageous gamble? Not a chance.
Dlugar
Computer Go: Writing Software to Play the Ancient Game of Go
I've seen a couple of projects on the net trying to achieve this. The obstacle always seems to be speed: Distributed P2P searching won't give near instantaneous answers like Google and Yahoo does.
But the idea is intriguing. What I've been thinking is that if something like that should be made, it should be done as a part of Firefox. Every page you visit could be indexed by Firefox. Not any other pages. There's not a crawler involved, because you're the crawler: Your surfing habits decides which pages are indexed and which are not.
Now think about BitTorrent: The more people sharing the same file, the faster you can download it. Imagine if the same applied to your distributed search engine: Often and much visited pages would have a high distribution, and would therefore "be more searchable" and therefore automatically be ranked highly.
With this you'd get a search engine where pages could be ranked according to popularity and freshness in a way that ordinary search engines cannot do. It would be a kind of social bookmarking service for search.
The problem with Google is that they are not diversified enough. They only have ONE revenue stream from Adsense. Google Search and to a lesser extent, Gmail, are the vehicles driving it.
Now what? Desktop Search, Google News, Gtalk, Picasso, Gmaps, GEarth are all interesting apps/services, however, they...don't...make...money.
Microsoft has like 10 different revenue streams, some completely separate from Windows (e.g. Xbox), so does Apple and so do most companies who are smart. Even Yahoo has diversified, offering paid services, making deals with cable providers. Google is very very dependant on search.
What problems have they solved for you personally and other Slashdot readers?
Did you actively think not having a 1 GB e-mail account was a problem before GMail came along? Did you not manage to get any maps off the net? Did you not have other IM clients? Did you have a shortage adverts to put on your site (if you had/have one) to generate revenue?
They exploit niches. None of their 'products' are profound, but they've reawoken long forgotten tools (XMLHTTPRequest), and used existing ones like Javascript to their potential (circa Google Javascript was seen by most as dirty and evil and no good except for form validation). They've made adverts less intrusive, (although alot of sites don't place adsense very smartly). Everything they do is elegant, and clean - not excellent, innovative or terribly wonderful. I think that appeals to geeks more than anyone else.
I'm not anti-Google, I love what and how Google do things and use alot of their stuff. The way they create more buzz by disclosing less than most companies do with a marketing fanfare, that is genius.
I wilke to play the baseless speculation game. What can I THINK some company is doing based on my limited knowledge?
There are countless writers out there whose job is to do exactly that - to speculate and postulate how organizations, the markets, and the world are going to change. Perhaps you're the sort that simply waits for the world to change around you, always on the trailing edge, but a lot of people like to be in a position where they're not just along for the ride.
What I'd really like to know is why you felt it so important to purportedly read the article, and then to comment on it? If speculation isn't your cup of tea, then move on. Instead I think you're driven by some sort of desperate Google-love, fanatical in your quest to piss on those who dare to question the almighty Google. That particular disease is pretty rampant around these parts.
I think you hit the nail squarely on the head. What a lot of people fail to understand--the author of the article included--is that the tech world is not just going through another shift, but that the nature of the tech world is change. It's unlikely to ever become stagnant.
I honestly can't understand the latest popular mantra: "Google has peaked". It seems that those espousing that view or so deeply rooted in traditional ideas of what or how a business should perform that they fail to see that the real beauty of a company like Google is that it doesn't set its sights on any one particular market or business because it understands the fluid nature of the tech world.
From the article: It will take the company another five years just to mature the businesses they already have
That statement is screaming ignorance of the tech business world and a devotion to old fashioned thinking. Specifically: "Find a product or service, slowly develop it over a period of years, fight competitors for market share, and comfortably become one of the leaders in the industry". That way of thinking might work great if your in the business of selling bird feeders, but it's folly to suggest it should be an acceptable business plan in the tech world.
In another five years, the "businesses they already have" may be irrelevant. Remember, Windows 95 was released only 10 years ago last Wednesday. In August of '95, very few companies even had web pages. IT was exclusively a productivity focus, and had next to nothing to do with marketing. Assuming a geometric increase in change (which isn't all that unreasonable), we can only speculate in dim generalities what the tech world will be like in 5 years.
A company that's going enjoy long term success in the ever changing tech world is one that doesn't spend too much time developing any one product line, because something else can come along which literarily overnight renders that product or service moot.
Google seems to understand this. While their roots are in the search engine, they've proven to be quite adept at entering new avenues and in a very short period of time offering a service which is significantly better then their competitors.
While no one other then those who are the inside can say for sure, it appears that their path to success is pretty simple:
1. Find out what people want, and give it to them. While Google was working on making their search engine faster and further reaching, Yahoo was trying to turn their search engine into an "Internet Portal". The thing is, people wanted a better search engine. Nobody wanted, or even asked for a portal. Google says "We're going to provide for people what they say they want" while Yahoo was saying "We're going to provide something for people that we think they want". While Yahoo's search page was becoming more and more cluttered with useless widgets, Google's page was simple and to the point. (to see what I mean, go to http://www.yahoo.com/ and then http://www.google.com./ If all you want to do is search for a webpage, the simple design of Google's search engine suggests a greater utility).
2. Don't fill customer's heads with marketing hype about how you think your product should be used. Instead, make your product versatile and flexible enough so that others can discover a way to use it to its fullest potential. Google maps (maps.google.com) is a great example of this. Take a look first at one of Google's competitors in this field: Mapquest. At the top of the page is a claim of what Mapquest can do. "You can find it!". There's another blurb at the bottom about how great they are because you can use Mapquest to link maps from your website. A full quarter of the page is devoted to an advertisement. There are links for finding everything from Hotel rooms to fishing trips. Yet, despite all of these fancy, in your face claims of how great Mapquest is, it's still little more t
The Internet is generally stupid
- Google's services are free
- The advertisements are not intrusive
- The search engine is very useful to me
- Gmail is simple to use and generous in terms of space
- The list goes on...
I don't care if their motto is "do no evil" or not. As long as I see and perceive no evil *AND* I like the service I'm getting, I see no reason to hate them.I'm not going to blindly follow some faceless comment or story telling me to think Google is evil *or* good. I make up my own damn mind!
If you can't mod them join them.