Google's Crazy Lack of Focus: Is It Really Serious About Enterprise?

curtwoodward writes "Driverless cars. Balloon-based wireless networks. Face-mounted computers. Gigabit broadband networks. In recent months, Google has been unveiling a series of transformative side projects that paint a picture of the search pioneer expanding far beyond an online advertising company. At the same time, Google has been trying to convince enterprise software buyers that it's finally, really, truly serious about competing with Microsoft for their business. Which version of Google's future should you believe?"

Comments

All of them.

[CRC'99]

There is no real reason why Google can't do all of these things. Their core market is information. Gathering information. Processing information. Sorting and utilising information.

Once you're good at this, it isn't hard to expand into various uses for that information.

Re:All of them.

[Cenan]

There is no real reason why Google can't do all of these things

Except closing down projects that don't meet arbitrary internal goals without warning. Nobody is going to trust Google with enterprisey stuff, since they can't seem to hold focus long enough for people to actually build an infrastructure around their offerings. When the next new thing comes along, guess which balloon side project gets canned, for no reason, with no warning, leaving countless gimps clamoring for an alternative that is nowhere to be found.

They might be all about processing information, but they can't seem to actually monetize this beyond shoving ads in their users faces.

Re:All of them.

[Chrisq]

Absolutely. There are historical precedents. Bell labs did things as diverse as writing Unix, inventing the transistor, and the construction of DNA machines.

Re:All of them.

[Anonymous Coward]

They have a pretty good migration shedule, sure, they "close" stuff without warning, but they give you plenty of time to get your data out. And most things that they close are not as popular as some of the users believe they are.

Since there is no alternative to be found, you also suggest that their producs are often either way better than the competition or really in niche markets. You can't really force them to keep running losing products, certainly not if they do not contribute to their core information gathering strategy. Youtube ran losses for a while, but it worked well with what they had.

Also, while ads certainly are their biggest feature, they have quite a few other products that either manage to substantially offset their costs or give profits.
Further on, it is also possible that contrary to what the title suggests, google really is focussed and all their products have something to do with the information gathering and processing that seems to be their core. And that does seem true. The fiber they roll out is because they want the internet to become faster, because nearly all of their business is on the internet, for android they want a better online mobile experience and have an ad market there. Chrome tries to improve the browser world to ensure they can get the informationt they need. Balloon wireless service just the same. Google knows that once the third world gets a bit of money, they will be looking to buy stuff like a washing machine, which they want to be the one showing the ad for. I am not sure I can fit the driveless car anywhere in the picture, but probably they don't want you to go offline during commute, they want you to be able to see their ads, especially since you will be near stores that do the advertising.

Re:All of them.

[flyneye]

Flip a coin, shut down a program and call the accountants to call it a loss on taxes. What's the problem here? Looks ordinary to me.
Next up, the Google inflatable mate w/ bucking mechanism and heater, it makes it's own pr0n movies and uploads them to Redtube while you pump away.
It collects customer data to recommend lube, toys or Viagra. It also has a government backdoor...

Re:All of them.

[Anonymous Coward]

Thats why I had "close" between brackets. The parent post said "without warning" and I decided to stick with it. Their announcements of projects ending does come unexpected sometimes, but their actual closing date is very reasonable, with plenty of time to migrate.

Re:All of them.

[Anonymous Coward]

They have a pretty good migration schedule

Yeah - for your PERSONAL stuff that takes you 20 minutes to migrate or backup.

You've clearly never managed an enterprise software product. The entire point of enterprise software is that it affords deep integration into your workflows and internal processes and systems throughout the company.

"We're closing this down in 6 months" is barely enough time to plan a migration, much less actually PERFORM the migration. And that's the point: if Google wants BUSINESSES to trust that Google isn't going to pull the rug out from under them, then Google needs to start taking migrations and end-of-life's seriously.

It's fine if they want to be a consumer advertising company, and don't want the enterprise business. But the entire article is based on the premise that Google wants this "Enterprise" business.

they have quite a few other products that either manage to substantially offset their costs or give profits.

No, they really don't. 95+% of their revenues are generated by advertising. They make virtually NO money from any source that is not advertising. Go look at their financial statements.

Re:All of them.

[serviscope_minor]

And most things that they close are not as popular as some of the users believe they are.

That doesn't matter. Apart from the most major services, things often get shut down. That means that new google services are not trustworthy, and you have to expect them to go. If that's the case, why bother wasting time on using their infrastructure if you're moderately sure you'll have to end up rebuilding it yourself anyway.

You can't really force them to keep running losing products,

No one is forcing google to do anything, but they also cannot force people to use their products. If they have the reputation for new things not being a trustworthy provider (they do have that reputation) then they will not garner new users and will not get the associated revenue.

They also seme to love upgrades which improve shinyness but do little else (gmail, google docs^Wdrive, google maps, etc). It's their service and they're giving it away for free, but I need a very compelling case to buy any of the professional google services because of my experience of their free services.

Re:All of them.

[steelfood]

It's their service and they're giving it away for free

Except, they're taking this exact same mentality to the enterprise world too. Only, the enterprise market pays for the services; it's not free. And in the enterprise, there's one and only one thing that matters: stability.

This mentality does not fly for enterprises. Making significant changes every few months, terminating all support for deprecated services under 2 years (by support, I mean the actual service itself), releasing their "beta" products to a production environment and hoping nobody'd notice the bugs.

Just remember that IBM is still supporting their mainframes from the 1970's (albeit for a price). Note that Microsoft Office 2012 will run VBA code from Office 97. That's enterprise support. Support for XP will last 13(!) years, and enterprises will still use it for another 10. Enterprises manage change in 10-20 year timeframes, not the .5-2 that Google likes and insists everyone else follow.

Google's the antithesis of what enterprises want and need. If they didn't practically have a monopoly in certain areas, if they weren't the most reliable vendor by far for certain services, nobody'd touch them with a 10ft pole.

Google is just like Microsoft.

[wvmarle]

Google's and Microsoft's behavious are very similar.

Google makes heaps of money with their search engine and advertising business; MS makes heaps of money with their Windows and Office products.

Both are extending into all kinds of related and not so related ventures.

Only difference there is that MS tends to go for already established business (XBox gaming console, Bing search engine, Zune music player) while Google is searching for new opportunities (networking with balloons and dark fibre; advanced automation with self driving cars, etc).

the basics are the same: make a lot of money in one product, use those massive profits to extend into other businesses, or simply to have some fun (not all of Google's experiments seem all to serious from a pure commercial pov).

Re:Google is just like Microsoft.

[kthreadd]

Google's projects are seldom open source. You can't get the source code for most of their services. Many open source projects that they run is developed in the dark behind closed doors, lika Android; technically open source, but not in spirit.

Google is a very very closed company.

payouts come later

[flowerp]

Look at what they did with Android. Seemed like a crazy project at first, but now they're essentially owning the market for mobile operating systems.

So let them do their unfocused things, because some of them will pay out big later.

Re:payouts come later

[rasmusbr]

Or look at Amazon doing other things than selling books.

You don't want to put all your eggs in one or two baskets when you're operating in an industry where most everything changes completely in a decade. In fact, it might make sense from a risk perspective to enter into industries with slower rate of innovation and change like automotive, energy, etc.

Re:payouts come later

[Anonymous Coward]

The cloud computing business is purely a side business. The only reason they are in it at all is to monetize their infrastructure needs. Ever wonder why in the early years of EC2 is always slowed down at Christmas time? The infrastructure they were renting out was the excess capacity they need to add every Christmas season to meet demand. They started renting it out and then Christmas time came and they needed it all back, leaving EC2 customers in the lurch. They eventually grew it to the point where it is able to survive without affecting customers, but it is still simply renting excess capacity they don't need. I doubt it could survive without the retail sales business.

Discontinue Unsuccessful Products

[tuppe666]

Except closing down projects

I have a bookshelf behind me with a whole host of dead languages, and products from Adobe and Microsoft that have been discontinued. Unsuccessful (and sometimes successful for strategic reasons) software will be discontinues, companies are trying to make money.

FYI Googles Enterprise Apps doesn't get Ads...maybe you are thinking of Windows 8.

Re:Discontinue Unsuccessful Products

[kthreadd]

Well if you built your app with Visual Basic 6 then you're still supported. It has been discontinued, won't get new features. But it works, and will work for a while so that you have enough time to migrate to something newer such as Visual Basic .NET.

Re:Discontinue Unsuccessful Products

[Anonymous Coward]

Well if you built your app with Visual Basic 6 then you're still supported. It has been discontinued, won't get new features.

But if you built your app around Plays for Sure then you're out of luck.

Google is just like Microsoft in your dreams.

[tuppe666]

Google's and Microsoft's behavious are very similar.

Not even close. Microsoft is the same lumbering bullying monopolist it always was(although now looking stupid in todays mobile market), and Google acts like fresh young startup(although now with lots of baggage).

Other than them both being mega corporations, they have very little in common. This could be a whole topic in itself.

Good someone's spending money on innovation

[monzie]

Disclaimer: Not an MBA, never attended even a Biz 101. Just your average geek

I think we are talking about two distinct things here:

1. A company which makes a lot of money selling ads on the 'standard' web and the mobile web

2. A company that is trying to carve a space in the 'enterprise' space ( Google apps, docs etc )

3. A company that is spending a lot of money on innovation - most of which looks to help the general public ( Specifically mean their attempts at networking ) and some which look like sci-fi projects ( Google glass)

#1 - It's how they earn their $$ and I ( like most of you ) use their search engine and email offerings. A lot of us use their mobile operating system as well - and we take for granted that it keeps our contacts and calendars and other stuff in sync. ( side note: not many , especially the Apple fanbois - appreciate how good google email/calendar/contacts sync is )

#2 My previous and current employer use Google Apps. My previous company migrated from Domino/Notes (gasp!) to Google Apps and my current company moved from Exchange/Sharepoint/Outlook to Google Apps. As an end user it made my life much better. However, I am sure the CIO who took the decision for the move had evaluated other factors as well ( Cost of migration, cost of maintaing , integration with exisiting directory services etc )

#3 - Now let's assume they make a ton of money with #1 and #2 ( in reality they're making money primarily with #1, but bear with me) and they spend their money on Gigabit Ethernet and self driving cars. What's so wrong with that? How does spending money on Gigabit ethernet make their Google Apps or Google Search team any smarter/dumber? Answer: It doesn't.

I do not work for Google and Google doesn't need my defence.

I just think this article and post is pointless. This is a question a shareholder may ask. As an end user I"m happy with their offerings for personal and professional work and even they work on a new variant of the NCC-1701* - It wouldn't matter to me or to my CIO as long as what they offer us is better than the competition. As of now, they are.

* = If you do not know what NCC-1701 (and it's variants are) Google it (pun intended) before you reply

Google has a problem.

[pla]

Google exists primarily as a playground for two (actually much, much more, now) geeks. They want to do things like build driverless cars and have robot cats and sharks with frickin' laser beams.

Unfortunately, Google accidentally became too successful, and would have needed to start filing SEC disclosures even if they hadn't gone public. So hey, free money.

Now, Google has a problem, not unlike that of John Rigas or Dennis Kozlowski (minus the criminal aspect of it, of course) - Brin and Page both see Google as their private playground, but have to pretend they give the least damn about their shareholders... Thus, the whole reason they brought on Eric Schmidt early on, to do all that boring BS business-stuff while they play with online weather balloons.

But make no mistake, evil or no, Google exists as a high-tech playground, not a serious business. The fact that they make oodles of money should serve as a role-model to other companies who haven't come to grips with the fact that "knowledge" workers do their best when not forced to sit in a 6x6 box for exactly eight hours a day using only "approved" apps and hardware.

Re:Google has a problem.

[su5so10]

In the OLD days (e.g. up through the early 1990s), MOST successful tech companies had research labs doing far out things. AT&T, Xerox, DEC, IBM... I think the fact that today, few companies have such a research arm, is the real problem.

Irrelevant

[Tridus]

The only relevant things about Google's enterprise performance should be how seriously they treat those offerings. That they're playing around with driverless cars on the side really doesn't matter in the slightest.

If it does, then obviously people should be equally concerned that Microsoft is more focused on trying to sell phones and Xboxes than it is on what their enterprise customers are actually using (since they're sure as hell not using Windows 8).

imagine this article from a few decades ago...

[Lluc]

This article summary from a few decades ago:

Bell Labs' Crazy Lack of Focus -- Is it Serous about Telephones?
From semiconductors, to photovoltaics, to computer operatings systems, Bell Labs has wanders aimlessly from topic to topic. How will these ever apply to the copper lines strung across the world to carry our telephone conversations?? Doesn't Bell Labs know that it should only invest in ideas and technology that can pay off within 3 years?

Replace MSWord

[lfp98]

Their strategy with GoogleDocs/GoogleDrive is truly incomprehensible. Seven years after its launch, it is still pathetically primitive, lacks even the most essential functions like detailed formatting of figures and legends. DOS WordPerfect was more sophisticated. MS-Word is a terrible program, still crash-prone, expensive, frustrating and distracting. It cries out for a replacement, even though almost every enterprise and public sector institution is dependent on it. Google engineers can make a self-driving car, you'd think they could program a decent word processor in an afternoon. It's clear they're not even trying. Why??