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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."
Google may be following the typical path, which is generally attributed to the growth of a company. The difference that I see between a company like google and Microsoft is that google generally does an awesome job on virtually everything they release(which, by the way, is all free.) G-mail is hands down the best e-mail service I've ever used, and although I haven't used the new IMing service, I hear that it's very streamlined. I like google. They give me what i need to surf the web efficiently. As long as they don't become bent on world domination like Microsoft, I don't see why them getting bigger would be a problem. In my eyes, it means more resources with which to provide us with better services.
Google is is a tool in the sense that it is a content search. It has tried to branch out in many ways but is it after all, still a page search engine.
There are alternatives that we all know of. Of late it appears that google now want money for their splendid efforts of acurate page delivery. Which is fair enough. But we all rely on google.
It is my opinion that Google has not yet peaked, there are plenty more ideas that they can deliver.
Expect to see user targeted adverts more frequently.
Why UNIX?
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I was thinking about what could possibly out-Google Google other than some other company making a better search engine.
Would it be possible to construct an OSS distributed search index, where anyone who participates would donate a portion of their disk to for indexing thus creating a super-distributed, free-Free, Google killer? The only downside I can see is that it might be painfully slow compared to Google, unless some genius out there came up with a clever algorithm to distribute the indices.
If it were OSS, couldn't it borrow heavily from PageRank[tm] as well?
Just a thought I thought I would throw out. The details and implementation are beyond me.
While I do think their search algorithm is slowly getting hacked and more link farms are popping up, it seems obvious the plays they are making:
personal location based services.
Repeat after me...
personal location based services.
Google Maps, the other purchases, google weather and tracking. All this stuff feeds into some sort of local play for the cell-phone/gps space. Maybe car nav systems as well. Ubiquity.
There is still a lot of things that can be done with information for management if they want to. They could create a directory system similar to Yahoo. They could let you further customize the news and other stuff you receive.
It is odd that there seems to be so much Google=bad going around these days.
I wonder if someone is coordinating it all. After all, the general sentiment seems to be that Google=good, so all this Google=bad stuff could clearly be someone's doing.
I wonder who.
Cool art gallery, if you're into that sort of thing.
Imagine if Google was secretly a government covert operation under a non-threatening company stance, looking to find out everything about anything, in a freaky big-brother-esque reality? That would be quite an interesting holywood shab-shot movie...
Mr Spanky, the erotic goldfish
Everybody is rooting for brilliant convergence, but Google is a such a mess nowadays, it's just not going to happen.
Google Video is a ratty service, even for a beta, I've regretted the time I spent uploading content. No way it's going to shine.
Google Talk is a callback to 1995.
Picasa and Hello are glued messily together, and posting from Hello is flaky.
There's a bushel of great services too, but the whole Google concept is just all over the place.
Now is the winter of our disco tent
... because even the most virulent (ahem) MS-loathers have to be aware that they're sounding a little stale these days. The sheer drama of a once-romantic company like Google making the transition from dewey-cheeked lass to, well, a grown-up company will fuel slashdot rants for years. This is mostly due to the dislike, on the part of so many users here, of the realities of what it takes to be a large, publicly-held, growing tech company (i.e., make money for the people who invested so much cash, solidify the brand, beat or absorb competition, and show that you have what it will take to continue to grow indefinately). The real drama comes from Google's original "no evil" clause, coupled with the completely rudderless definition of "evil" as used by slashdotters. Thus will Google simply become a canvas on which to paint every argument about capitalism, openess, income disparity, regulation, monopolism, liberalism, conservatism, and operating system religions.
It's not so much the fun we'll have watching certain G-accolytes feeling betrayed. It's the fun we'll have watching so many people realize they've simply been projecting their own notions onto a company that's now so large and visible that the disconnect will be obvious, even to those addled enough to have thought that there could be something that big, "free," and still beyond the reach of normal economic realities. We're not seeing Google "peak," we're seeing the Google fanboy fantasy peak. I use their tools dozens of times every day. As a surfer, as a consultant, as a merchant, as a consumer, as a driver, as a communicator... but for some reason, as much as I'm impressed with pretty much everything they do, I've not ever quite heard the siren song that so many others seem to hear. I'm always impressed, but not so much seduced. Perhaps it's because I don't have the abiding hatred for Google's competition found in so many others - that makes the whole issue less emotional, I think.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
http://www.evolver.ca/
by TheSpoom (715771) Uncaring Linux user here. I have nothing to add to this but please continue. *munches popcorn*
What if, what if, what if. This article could have been posted when Earth came out
As in "what if the Earth were flat?"
In theory there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice there is. - Yogi Berra
Much like Digital they only employ people who "get it" when it comes to technology and real innovation. Theire chosen back end OS? Linux. Wise choice especially on the technical end. Unfortunately, there are some people who think that technology should exist for business and that's when things go sour. That's what happened to Digital. They were run by some of the most brilliant engineers, but they hhad to compete against other companies run by suits who only care about making money and not advancing technology or society. Most of the time techs can't beat suits at business. Let's hope this isn't the case with Google. I really like seeing companies that are more focussed on moving technology forward and less focussed on insane profit. (Yeah, I know they make a lot of money from ads, but they apparently aren't totally focussed on it because they've been coming out with the most innovative stuff due to their sole focus on the advancement and innovation with technology.)
-"...bad old ideas look confusingly fresh when they are packaged as technology" - Jaron Lanier (Digital Maoism on Edge.o
Followed by some defensive fudging to link the "hardcore search" mantra with the current portalization of google. Interesting note at the page bottom:
What the recent NCSA study showed, contrary to the slashdot interpretation, is that Google remains very vulnerable to keyword spammers, while Yahoo is quite good at muting them.
Google is no longer a clear-cut leader in search, and they are branching out to the full spectrum of portal services. And it's not clear that they will succeed in these new areas.
I'm very grateful to Google for increasing the demand for engineers, pressuring other companies to ramp up engineering and prioritize innovation, and teaching the world that giant flashing gifs and paid placement listings were not the way to go. And Google Maps shows that Google is still capable of giant leaps forward.
I'm puzzled, however, by the level of Google fanboyism on slashdot. I guess a lot of you were "imprinted" by Google back in the Dark Ages of search when nothing else worked right, and cannot see them objectively.
What if search and PageRank and AdSense are Google's corporate apex.
That's probably true, but it's completely irrelevant. There are still countless areas in which they can APPLY PageRank and AdSense.
I think it's clear that Google Labs will be what Bell Labs was 30 years ago. Trust me, we haven't even seen a fraction of what they are currently working on. You can doubt what they are doing all you like, it doesn't change the fact that they are packed with talent. Perhaps they will not be as hugely profitable as they have been with AdSense, Bell Labs never made great profits, but I have no doubt they will be the most innovative place on the planet for the next 10 years.
Games? Sweet christ how old are you? Think businesses. That is where you'll need to knock off MS first.
Find a company that offers support, has entrenched mindshare amoung executives that make decsions, and a product that interfaces with existing software and brings something new and absolutely amazing to the table. THEN maybe you'll give MS something to worry about.
Games, you make me laugh.
The saying "games drive the market" really is about the rapid upgrade cycle of the home user. Its a great way for intel, nvidia, and the rest to say "See, thats why you need this new chip. You cant play this game!" Its the old keeping up with the jonses strategy and it works.
Back in the day, Apple thought it could get OS dominance by giving away machines to schools and selling pricey GUI driven machines to business. Well, it ends up that its very convienent for people to buy a computer that runs some of the stuff they run at work to do work at home. MS had a good start in the business world and it just translated into the home market.
Not to mention the x86 architecture was much more hacker friendly than Apple's offerings at the time. That's still true today.
Lastly, the game companies are developing in DirectX anyway so they seem to have drunk the kool-aid with the rest of the industry.
Why? Because he hates Microsoft and loves Apple. Both MS and Google have a shitload of money to invest and both have tons of stuff they can do with their money. But if Google really wants to take on both MS and Apple, and even Intel, I think I got an excellent suggestion for them.
In my opinion, Intel and the rest of the big processor vendors can only come up with so many incremental improvements before they bore the market to death. Microsoft is mired in buggy code that they'll never be able to fix. Apple is playing second fiddle in the market. So what comes next?
I suggest that Google starts working on the biggest problem facing the computer industry today: unreliable software. It's costing us billions of dollars and even human lives. Consider that the basic architecture of the processor has not changed in more than 150 years, when a guy named Babbage and his girlfriend Ada built their mechanical computer around the "table of instructions". All processor architectures have been based on and optimized for the algorithm ever since.
A truly innovative architecture would abandon the algorithmic model altogether and embrace a non-algorithmic, signal-based synchronous software model. It would not only revolutionize the computer industry, it would solve its nastiest problem: software unreliability.
But can we really expect the big guys (Intel, AMD, IBM, etc...) to be truly innovative at this stage of the game? Their approach is evolutionary, not revolutionary; and they are doing just fine as it is. They have no great incentive to change. Hopefully, a bright upstart will get the message and make a killing while the behemoths are busy fighting each other for market share. They won't know what hit them until it's too late. The message is simple: There is a solution to the software reliability crisis. The disadvantage is that it will require a radical change in both processor architecture and software construction methodology. The advantage is too good to ignore: 100% software reliability! Guaranteed!
This is the stuff that revolutions and great companies are made of. After a century and a half, I think it's time for a change. He who has an ear (and the venture capital) let him hear!
Probably because their HR department has rubbed a bunch of techies the wrong way. Having to wait 6+ months for a response (if you're lucky) on a _solicited_ resume, then being prompted to take phone tests _after_ you've landed a job that has better pay. That, coupled with the company's opacity, could understandably damage their reputation amongst the traditionally hypercommunicative hacker community and OSS folks. Good guys aren't supposed to be that secretive.
Also, word on the street is that the 20% of 'personal research' time is now essentially added onto a standard work week, thus driving the hours on the job up, which smacks of a growing sweatshopization (but which may also be a symptom of bad HR).
OTOH, of the folks I know there, all seem to be pretty happy, so it could all just be sour grapes and bullshit. Still, hubris is something to actively, constantly thwart.
Personally, I don't think it's the hatred of other companies that drives Google fanboyism (I'm a fanboy myself, I'll admit it).
What makes it exciting for me is that they are the one company, at this point in time, that seems to have that innovative drive along with the resources to fund those ideas. I don't have Microsoft or Yahoo... they just appear to have lost their drive. They improve their products, but they always seem to be in lockstep behind Google. (Some examples: Yahoo releases Search. Google releases search plus Page Rank. Now Yahoo does their own version of Page Rank.)
What makes us nerds excited is true innovation. What makes us more excited is innovation that WORKS. Google seems to be committed to this vision. Who knows? Maybe they'll go the way of Yahoo when it transitioned from innovator to large, corporate company.
On a final note, I don't think people here are blindly devoted to Google. I think it's that western sort of competition that drives us to like the innovator, the little guy, the people who make it and keep it exciting. If Google becomes stale, if they become a more settled company with little innovation, then we will be looking for The Next Big Thing.
"Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere." - Martin Luther King, Jr.
He believes Microsoft's greatest threat may come from Apple, in that case I believe he may be living in the past, thinking companies of the past may pose the largest threats. What if people like him are wrong, and Google's mission and their web services is the model for many future IT companies, and the actual hardware you buy will start playing less of a role than it once used to? Even today, I notice myself buying brand new computer systems far less than before. Not even the games (and yes, it's modern games) require a new computer as often as they used to. More often than not, it's just about a new graphics card if anything at all, not about upgrading your 8 MB ram to 16 MB like you used to. You can often keep running with the 512 MB you bought four years ago.
And when it's about web services, it's their hardware that matters, not Apple's. It seems like the author is putting an awful lot of trust in that hardware markets will decide everything, in an age when web services become more and more complex.
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
Apple wouldn't make any money off those new users right away, but whatever percentage of them chose to keep using OS X would be candidates for buying an upgrade somewhere down the line, and perhaps even buying Apple hardware.
And I didn't see any suggestion anywhere that the IPod was suggested as the permanent storage - it could just as well be used just as install media.
The iPod suggestion was as a means to put OS X in the hands of Apple friendly Windows users to grow the base of OS X users. Putting out torrents might be a good idea for Apple too, but it would still require people to make a conscious decision to use a lot of time to download it as opposed to looking at a leaflet with their shiny new iPod and deciding to give it a spin and see what it's like.
perhaps i'm alone in feeling this way, but no company has a soul. none. any corporation in our capitalist economy has one goal: create a return for investors (or, make money).
what does this have to do with google? simple. a company like google saying 'do no evil' is the most banal meaningless and baseless statement ever, unless you've seen the shell ads talking about 'human power' and 'alternative fuels'. there's absolutely no reason for google to 'do no evil', there's no market share that's based on the ability for a company to be 'evil free'.
where does that leave us? my feeling, and i feel very strongly this way, is that google (although they won't admit it) collects and aggregates marketing data, hoards of marketing data. because of their policy towards 'do no evil', they fail to recycle most of this data, other than for their own adsense network. once this stock plateaus, whenever that happens, they'll annonce that they're releasing their marketing data, lay off all their phd's, and the board/heads of the company will be instant billionares (as if they weren't already, but that's the way it works, the collection of capital, more capital.)
to break it down:
1) collect marketing data
2) ipo
3) plateau
4) release marketing data
5) $
Greg Albrecht (gba@undef.net) * -0700 GMT/UTC
http://undef.net
While I occasionally find the ads coming off of search results useful, I've never seen anything in gmail that was remotely helpful.
Half joking but half serious - I'm not sure what kind of ads you're seeing in gmail, but the quality of those ads could simply be due to the content of said emails. Not all Adsense words are helpful and not everyone who's helpful buys Adsense words. I have noticed that spammers are sending email which contains words they likely have purchased Adsense words for. They're hoping the Google ad may get you to click even if they can't get you to click through the email.
While I don't disagree with your observations, I'd like to point out that advertising is the oldest profession on earth (in a chicken/egg sort of way with the other oldest profession) and that targeted advertising becomes even more important as online services become more competitive and are utilized by more of the general public. Advertising is a lucrative business no mater how much we hate it.
Google appears to be the current winner in online advertising and will likely continue to take a larger percentage of ad revenue, especially as more and more people filter out the annoying junk ads. In the least, I think they will force a number of their competitors to change the way they present ads. In the mean time Google's revenue should continue to climb.
Also, as they continue to develop the multitude of applications they have, I sense they will find ways to link almost every one of them in an easy to use interface and most likely start to offer paid variants of some of those services. They already do this with Search and Google Earth and could easily do the same with Talk. I don't think I've seen an single evening news broadcast in the 6 months that hasn't used Keyhole, so there's definitely a revenue stream coming in from that app.
Advertising started it all for Google, but they have lots of opportunity left. And the bubble burst had nothing to do with having advertising as a business model. It had everything to do with just plain bad business models.
The Stone Age did not end because humans ran out of stones. - William McDonough
I agree that Microsoft is a prime suspect. They certainly have the history and savvy to pull something like that off. But it doesn't make them guilty. Again - where's the proof?
Paul Graham wrote an interesting piece that's appeared on Slashdot before. In it, he describes the rather simple method to uncovering the source of planted trend stories - "press hits":
That might be a bit simplistic for our purposes here. The "anti-Google" sentiment isn't a single concept or story. But it could still be possible to go over the various stories, look for the quoted experts, and then track back to see if there's any links. Whether they lead to Microsoft or not.