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Google's Schmidt Says He 'Screwed Up' On Social Networking
"Google chairman Eric Schmidt took responsibility for the search titan's failure to counter Facebook's explosive growth, saying he saw the threat coming but failed to counter it."
Note: The original link's landing page was changed after we posted it. The one showing now goes to a Wired article.
The same story (coverage of a May 31 conference presentation by Schmidt) also quotes him as saying, unsurprisingly, that cloud services will be 'the death of IT as we know it.'"
No company worth their salt will put all the company data "on the cloud" No way in HELL is my customer DB and accounting DB going on the cloud.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
The posted url now 410's. here's a link to the article on PC mag and the wired source too...
jaymz
I think what he means is that it's the death of IT in America.
I mean, with virtualization, "cloud" services can allow your admins to be in a cheaper country, like India. Since you never get to touch your hardware, your admins don't need to touch the hardware anymore either.
It's yet another way for management to increase profitability by lowering costs by firing everyone except themselves, who all get big fat bonuses.
What the "cloud" really provides is yet another way to make the rich richer, and everyone else poorer.
Never mind that they are handing the crown jewels over to a bunch of people, who, should the shit hit the fan, are more than happy to steal all that data and keep it for themselves, leaving their rich corporate masters with nothing.
It's akin to giving the serfs all the weapons to protect the castle, and then the king thinking he's somehow safe even though no guards are loyal to him.
Greed has truly fucked up this country. We're going to find, in less than a decade, that we've given away everything that made this nation great, and we'll be left with very little to show for it. Rome was smarter than we were.
If telephones are outlawed, then only outlaws will have telephones.
"Social" isn't Google's problem. Mobile is.
Google revenue for 2010 was $29 billion. Facebook revenue was $1.86 billion. If Google was as successful in "social" as Facebook, it would barely affect their bottom line. "Social" just isn't that big a business.
There are bigger businesses where Google missed out - in telephony, music sales, and movie sales. The ones where Apple is making money. Apple revenue for 2010 was $63.5 billion. That's where Schmidt failed.
Google is trying to figure out how to monetize Android, but so far, not with great success. Apple has been very successful in using the iPhone to create a direct connection between the user's wallet and Apple's bank accounts. Google tries to do that, but not as profitably.
Meanwhile, while ordering their people to focus on "social", Google is having problems in their core business - search. Back in Q3 2010, they merged Google Places results into web search, not realizing how easily Places could be spammed. That backfired and got them some bad press. Then there was the Demand Media content farm problem and the J.C. Penny link farm embarrassment. The press then caught onto the fact that Google isn't very good at stopping web spam, "black-hat" SEO started to go mainstream, and Blekko, with their strong anti-spam policies, started to gain traction. Now the FDA and the Justice Department are investigating Google for knowingly running ads for sleazy offshore pharmacy operations. Google may have to pay $500 million in fines.
That's a classic big-company mistake - failing to run the cash cow properly, while management is distracted with the shiny new stuff.