

Kevin Rose on why Google needs Buzz - MikeCapone
http://kevinrose.com/post/385156078/why-google-needs-buzz

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marcusestes
Please Kev, next time you reach this point of inspiration just take a few
minutes to write your thoughts out. Your delivery adds too little to your
thesis too make up for the bother of listening to you deliver it.

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fnid2
yep, that's exactly what i think too. Google needs real time search and the
best way to do that is to have the data on their lightning machines.

If it's not on their lightning machines, then the content owner (twitter,
facebook, etc) is the king and google has to wait until that content owner
makes the data available to google's bots.

I imagine google talked to facebook and twitter, but google is getting a lot
of push back from content owners because content owners don't want to let
google put servers in their data centers or have quicker access to the data
than can be gotten through polling for updates.

And why would they? They all work on advertising meaning they are all
competitors. It's the same thing with newspapers, except in this case, the
content owners actually have some power to say no to Google, because twitter
and facebook users don't go through google first to get there. Google is a
gateway for the newspapers, but twitter and facebook are _themselves_
gateways.

Google wants everyone in the world to start their browsers on a page
controlled _by_ google.

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MikeCapone
If we're going to have real-time search, I'd rather it's from Buzz than
Twitter if only for the fact that it's not limited to 140 characters and
doesn't have to use URL shorteners, you can include pics/maps/videos/etc, and
it's easy to see comments made about a post.

Twitter's 140 char limit was cute at first, and it sounds great in concept
("deep thoughts in few words!"), but in practice it's starting to get on my
nerves.

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fnid2
OT: Is there a literary term for the situation where something's greatest
strength is also that thing's greatest weakness? Like an Achilles heel, except
the Achilles heel isn't also a strength.

It applies here, because the 140 char limit is what helped twitter take off,
but it could also be twitter's greatest weakness.

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MikeCapone
> OT: Is there a literary term for the situation where something's greatest
> strength is also that thing's greatest weakness?

A couple of Google searches (ha!) didn't return anything, but it _feels_ like
there should be (I'm expecting an ancient greek word).

I'd definitely also like to know.

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qjz
"Double-edged sword" is typically used for these scenarios. But the meaning is
more metaphysical than practical, suggesting that two blades facing opposite
directions can do an equal amount of harm as good ("cuts both ways").

Oddly, the "Midas touch" fits the definition almost perfectly, but the phrase
is almost always used to positively describe someone's uncanny success,
ignoring the devastating effects it might have on the person's life.

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MikeCapone
He's basically saying that Google needs the real time info that sites like
Twitter produce, but that they don't want to rely on a third party like
Twitter (which they probably would have bought if they could).

He notes how Google gives Twitter a prominent space in its search results, and
how that it not something they've done often in the past, and probably want to
change in the future.

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marksbren
As I was watching this I also thought that Google could be using Buzz to
devalue Twitter. If Buzz can get a mass audience Google may be able to acquire
Twitter more cheaply. Twitter has way too much of a head start for Buzz to
actually rival it.

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lallysingh
Twitter's hit mainstream, and even turned into a verb. Google can't really
compete on that, as their name is already a verb in a different area :-)

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hexis
not text; didn't read

