I have this sense that Google is running out of gas.. No, I don't mean money because I think google is flush with cash and will be, at least in the near future. I mean it from a strategic sense. A few of Google's apparent missteps or misadventures are starting to bother me..
What do you think?
- Nexus One - "Super Phone Not" Did not go anywhere as Google found out that technical specs alone does not a phone sell. Apple iPhone and even Droid is having it for lunch.
- Google Apps - "Is it up yet?" . It has been a bumpy ride for google apps with reliability its main issue. Had several outages which almost shook the cloud computing community.
- Google Search - "Bing it on". Google had to reinvent its search (a bit) because of Bing's unexpected popularity.. Bing provided targeted and immediately usable search results without users having to go through each link. And Bing is cute...
- User Apathy - "Do no evil.. Ok, maybe a little" Google is now seen in the same light as other corporations- big, faceless, powerful, greedy. People are wary of the enormous lobbying power that google wields, the enormous amount of user data it holds and it's enormous need for profit.
- Social what - "Social Network is just a friendly Wi-Fi" Google somehow does not get social networks. Orkut, Wave, Buzz all are getting buried by facebook.
What do you think?
I get a similar sense at times. Partly because there doesn't seem to be a unified strategy at Google and they seem to be falling into "let's do everything" pattern. Juxtaposed to that is of course something that I do give them credit for: boldly trying different things, however that doesn't cue their "addiction" to ad revenue. Their primary and very much only source of revenue.
ReplyDeleteAnd then there are all the issues with their core tech, like search. Seriously, Gmail will NOT find some of my emails with certain text even though the text is in the email (it'll find say 9 out of 10 emails, which I know contain said word). I also hate how by default it will only search for complete words and not partial results.
Or this one: add a couple of labels to a conversation. Back to the main view, delete said conversation. Then when you receive a new email with the same subject (thus the same conversation), you'll go to read it, and even though the labels ARE enabled if you click at the Labels button, they do NOT show on screen. I mean, this is their CORE tech we're talking about. Gmail, the best web mail out there. The inventor of the "conversation view". Jeez...
Get your shit together guys. I know you have very smart people there, and you started off well (marketdroids and non-engineers didn't run the place at first), but you're loosing track. (And you're also pissing me off with Android because you just can't do what Apple does, and as well as Apple does it but you've given fuel to all the lame Winmo freakboys and now they think they've "seen the light" and they've jumped ship to the fandroid hordes. But it's still "Windows" under the covers: multiple hardware makers, multiple software versions, fragmented, head-smacking confusion and inconsistencies of the PC world all over again. Gah. Even if finally Linux made it onto handsets and even if Android is way better than anything that could have came from Microsoft.) Anyways...
I thought it was just me. I used to go nuts because of the partial word search issue in Gmail. It is especially painful considering that Gmail is one of Google's flagship products.
ReplyDeleteAnd your observation that Android is starting to look like Windows is spot on in my opinion. Just the delay in upgrading to Android 2.2 (Froyo) is an indication of the chaotic ecosystem.