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Are Google's Best Days Behind It?

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the aren't-they-always dept.

snydeq writes "InfoWorld's Neil McAllister questions whether slowing product development, legal woes, and rising bureaucracy will signal trying times ahead for Google. 'With Google's rapid growth have come new challenges. It faces intense competition in all of its major markets, even as it enters new ones. Its newer initiatives have often struggled to reach profitability. It must answer multiple ongoing legal challenges, to say nothing of antitrust probes in the United States and Europe. Privacy advocates accuse it of running roughshod over individual rights. As a result, it's becoming more cautious and risk-averse. But worst of all, as it grows ever larger and more cumbersome, it may be losing its appeal to the highly educated, impassioned workers that power its internal knowledge economy.'"

16 of 283 comments (clear)

  1. I'm gonna go with... by iRommel · · Score: 4, Insightful

    No.

    1. Re:I'm gonna go with... by jellomizer · · Score: 5, Insightful

      The real question is to define best days.
      I remember looking back to when I was a Teenager. I remember all the good times I had, without any responsibilities weighing me down. However I remember being miserable (however looking back with my adult brain, I felt I should have been able to deal a lot better then I did at the time). Then College I remember fondly having a much better time then in high school, however I remember feeling far more isolated and lonely. Then as an adult, I don't have much time for all that good time and I am very busy and I don't really remember too much good times in a few years, and having a lot of things to worry about... however my emotional state is much more happier, and fulfilled then at any other point in my life.
      I kinda wish I could go back in time and relive my childhood and early adult years with my current brain and coping skills, Then I would really have ad a blast years ago.

      Now for Google... Starting out everything was new and exciting everyone was giving them praises, However they were more cash strapped and had to do a lot of scrounging and pushing to get every dollar in. Then they have a good flow and development was exciting however they had to make sure that they didn't make any major mistake or they would be toast. Now Google in maturing, It knows that it needs to do and has the money to do it. However a lot of the excitement and praises are going away as Google has become more predictable.

      --
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    2. Re:I'm gonna go with... by rtfa-troll · · Score: 5, Insightful

      The real question is to define best days.

      I think the real question is: "who's paying for the continual stream of anti Google stories in the tech media; why are they so desperate; and do they really think we are that stupid"

      We have no idea whether Google's best days are behind it, but Google's main failure has been in social networking where it has finally released a product which, even though it is terribly incomplete, limited and difficult to get into, is considered by most people who've used it as much better than Facebook. The article is so desperate to discredit Google that it links to what seems to be an MS stooge review rather than actual information about sales.

      --
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    3. Re:I'm gonna go with... by Danzigism · · Score: 3, Interesting

      I agree with you. InfoWorld has composed a barrage of Anti-Google articles for years now mostly because of Microsoft's hands being in their back pocket. Sorry but I'm getting tired of hearing their same crap. Google is simply not going anywhere. Especially when on the other side of the spectrum, you hear news about 25 million people signing up for Google+ in the matter of just a couple weeks. AdWords alone will grow substantially thanks to G+.

      --
      *plays the Apogee theme song music*
    4. Re:I'm gonna go with... by kelemvor4 · · Score: 3, Informative

      Google's main failure is that they haven't had a real big success after their search business.

      You don't consider the world's #1 smartphone OS to be a success? What do you want, every competing OS to be completely obliterated before it's successful? Gmail is pretty successful as I understand it, Maps is also successful.

      Like search, Google gives most of it's products away for free in order to feed their advertising engine. Since they're not making money DIRECTLY on the other products they might also get the benefit of being able to write off development and legal defense of other projects, too.

      I think people forget that Google is basically an advertising firm, and everything else Google does is ancillary.

  2. Fun by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Interesting

    When it stops being fun, it's all downhill.

  3. Long story short, by redemtionboy · · Score: 5, Insightful

    No. People have been saying this about Google for the past 5+ years. The difference between Google and Microsoft is that Google has maintained the mindset of a startup. Things like 20% time will always insure that Google has a fresh set of ideas brewing and working their way up.

    1. Re:Long story short, by Frosty+Piss · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Its newer initiatives have often struggled to reach profitability.

      I know lots of people here like to parrot the nonsense that profit profit profit now now now is legally and ethically the sole objective of publicly traded corporations, but that's simply hogwash.

      And in Google's case, it isn't.

      There is no particular reason any particular "product" needs to be financially profitable for Google now now now in the way that these parrots are thinking. It's really better to think of many (most?) of Google's "products" as research projects, and remember that in many cases those "failed products" end up as parts or foundations for future products.

      It is exactly this profit profit profit now now now bullshit that is stifling innovation in the world today and in the US in particular.

      --
      If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
    2. Re:Long story short, by jalefkowit · · Score: 3, Informative

      It's really better to think of many (most?) of Google's "products" as research projects, and remember that in many cases those "failed products" end up as parts or foundations for future products...

      Google appears to disagree: under Larry Page's leadership, they have begun pulling back on the "throw lots of things against the wall and see which ones stick" strategy.

      --

      Read my blog.

    3. Re:Long story short, by rabun_bike · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Actually the more fundamental difference is the Microsoft is a certified monopoly by US district court Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson. Aside from that, Microsoft derives the majority of its revenue from license fees of software and hardware products. The hardware products make up a tiny portion of that revenue. Google, on the other hand, derives something like 97% of their income from selling adverts. That makes then an advertising company. And if you parallel most advertising based firms with Google such as ABC, CBS, Turner Broadcasting, NewCorp, Viacom, etc. you will find that in order to sell advertisement you need shows or products to attract viewers which then drive advert sales. Some produce their own content such as CNN via news gathering and others buy it like ABC, CBC, and the main stations. In Google's case they produce their own shows but those shows have names like Gmail, Google Search Engine, Google+, iGoogle, etc. It is hard to have hit shows and Google needs hits to keep the advert dollars rolling in. The Google Search Engine is like the Simpsons. But even the Simpsons can't bring in all the money you need for your "station." They need other hit shows and they are having trouble coming up with them.

  4. Best days for what? by Hatta · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Best days as a search engine? Probably, yes. Best days as an advertising revenue machine? Probably not.

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  5. It can't be said for sure by erroneus · · Score: 4, Insightful

    At this stage in the game, it can't be said whether or not Google can turn things around, but it is quite certain that the direction of things at the moment is not the best for its users. Google has put out many useful services that many people use out there. (Personally, I just use search and though I do have a gmail account, I don't really use it...) But lately, Google has been tying things together with their services and now this Google+ thing really worries people.

    Perhaps the minds of the masses haven't been made yet, but I am always cautious when it comes to marketers and advertisers and Google is definitely one of those.

    I think this tying together of services is a way of locking in and firmly identifying its users. Their push against pseudonymity/anonymity has me and many others worried.

  6. Re:Startup mentality - like this? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

    They're like a startup, in that they willfully infringe patents?

    http://fosspatents.blogspot.com/2011/08/oracle-and-google-keep-wrangling-over.html

    I guess they are willing to make mistakes.

    Google is clearly on the right side of the java debacle. Java is licensed GPL2, which allows forks. The copyright license doesn't cover patents, true, but if you license your code to allow forks, and then sue for copyright infringement, I call estoppel.

  7. Meal Ticket Lottery. by 140Mandak262Jamuna · · Score: 3, Insightful

    The number of predictions made by these analysts, talking heads, policy wonks, think tank shills etc far exceed the actual number of companies. There is a constant stream of such predictions. At some point some one has to be right. Then the guy who won the lottery, i.e. the guy who predicted it exactly at the right moment, is going to beat his chest and make loud noises about how he got it right, when everyone else was wrong. The prize for winning that lottery is a life time supply of meal tickets. Essentially this guy will be invited to occupy one square in the talking heads matrix that is de regour (sp?) in the business news channels.

    --
    sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
  8. Re:Same old nonsense. by jalefkowit · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Interestingly, Apple before the Second Coming of Jobs had one of the same problems Google does today: too many products, forcing them to spread their resources too thin to support them all. Apple in the 1990s had an incredible profusion of different flavors of Mac; one of Jobs' first big decisions was simplifying it down to four key product lines and throwing the rest out. (Here's video of Jobs himself explaining the situation at the 1998 Macworld keynote.) It angered a lot of people at the time, but that decision was a big part of what started Apple's turnaround.

    --

    Read my blog.

  9. Google are doing just fine by Flipao · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Android is growing massively, they lead in search and they've finally cracked social networking. Microsoft on the other hand are losing billions in both the search and mobile markets every single year. They've been so focused on Google they didn't notice Apple sneaking by and their OS business is far closer than most people realize to fading into irrelevancy over the next decade or so.

    People bring up software patents all the time but these only really apply in the US. They're screwed.