
How Google missed the boat - queensnake
http://scripting.com/2014/02/20/howGoogleMissedTheBoat.html
======
troymc
Blogger isn't the winner of the blog engine wars anyway. That would be
WordPress, which _is_ open source and now runs about one in five websites.

[http://w3techs.com/technologies/details/cm-
wordpress/all/all](http://w3techs.com/technologies/details/cm-
wordpress/all/all)

It's fun to imagine a world in which Blogger was open sourced, with the core
developers working for Google. Would WordPress have "won" in that alternate
universe?

~~~
kcbanner
Care to cite that "one in five" figure?

~~~
troymc
I did: just follow the link.

~~~
hmsimha
I've seen different figures
([http://trends.builtwith.com/cms/WordPress](http://trends.builtwith.com/cms/WordPress)),
but I'd say 1 in 5 doesn't sound too far off, though perhaps it's a little
exaggerated.

~~~
mseebach
In a long tail world, it only really matters if you're in the tail or the
"body". If you're in the body, there's no big difference if you're 1 in 5 or 1
in 50 - you're huge.

------
ralphm
“The technology of the last 10 years should have all been open to
experimentation by developers without locking users in. There are a lot of
developers who believe in this. It's central to the mission of WhatsApp, btw,
so if you doubted that it could be lucrative, you should think again.”

WhatsApp has changed and extended their XMPP basis such that it is not even
remotely interoperable. They are actively battling third-party
implementations. Their server is not federated. How exactly are "open",
"experimentation" and "without locking users in" central to WhatsApp's
mission?

~~~
meowface
You're right, I don't know what he's referring to. WhatsApp did not become
successful through open sourcing or "DEVELOPERS DEVELOPERS DEVELOPERS".

------
kriro
I think they could have done Google+ and the whole social aspect better but
they are still driving a couple of important buses. I think they should work
on an open source WhatsApp clone with strong crypto.

\- The browser it the platform of the future...they have a good browser

\- Mobile is in everyone's pocket...they have a mobile OS

\- Shocking newsflash...people still use mail...they have a good email service

\- They provide "cloud office"

\- Search is still search

And they have a bazillion other good projects.

If you want to say they slept on something I wouldn't even pick social. I'd
say their biggest mistake in recent tmes was that they let Amazon get such a
lead in cloud hosting/infrastructure and they aren't the #1 there.

~~~
higherpurpose
The problem with Google and also open source apps is that they don't promote
their products very well. It's more understandable with open source projects,
though, since they don't have the funding, but Google has no excuse.

Take Hangouts for example. Android is now on over 1 billion devices, and will
be on 3 billion in ~2 years. Most of those people should have Hangouts by
default. But I'm willing to bet most of those people will _not_ use Hangouts.
Most of them won't even know what the heck Hangouts is. And since Google isn't
promoting it heavily, that means that even if someone wants to use it, he
knows it's going to be hard to get his friends to use it if they haven't even
heard much about it or what it does.

Larry Page was right about needing to be "all-in" with a mobile company like
Motorola. It used to be much worse while Eric Schimdt was leading it, with
products like Google Checkout or even Google Docs being in a sort of coma-like
state for _years_ before you'd see any improvements. But even today, Google
still seems to make a lot of stuff just for the sake of it, and don't seem
_all-in_.

It feels like they want to just do the minimum amount of work for a product.
With Hangouts they probably think "we've made it available to everyone with an
Android phone - we don't need to do more than that now, do we? I should just
become popular by itself!"

The difference between Hangouts and Whatsapp is that the company behind
Whatapp treated it like a _product_ \- a product they needed to be as
successful as possible to survive. Google treats Hangouts as a _feature_ \- a
feature of which they don't necessarily think they need that bad to survive.
That's why something like Whatsapp becomes popular, and something like
Hangouts not so much.

That being said, I've love for them to integrate TextSecure/future Whisper (1)
into Android, at the very least as an underlying layer, the way CyanogenMod
did it recently (2). As soon as Whisper is out, I'm going to recommend
everyone I know to use it, and same for e-mail as soon as a nice DarkMail-
based client appears that's easy to use. But if Google offered me all of that,
I wouldn't have to do it.

1-
[https://whispersystems.org/blog/a-whisper/](https://whispersystems.org/blog/a-whisper/)

2- [http://www.cyanogenmod.org/blog/whisperpush-secure-
messaging...](http://www.cyanogenmod.org/blog/whisperpush-secure-messaging-
integration)

~~~
toyg
The problem is that Google is not just a developer, it's the _platform owner_
, i.e. the company who has to _sell the platform to manufacturers and
carriers_.

Carriers don't want features like Hangouts because they _eat into their
margins_ for crappy but expensive features like video-calls. If carriers don't
want something, manufacturers (who have to sell to carriers) don't want it
either, so Google (who have to sell to manufacturers) has to downplay it as
well. Same goes for IM: carriers would prefer that you used their metered SMS
services rather than ubiquitous GTalk or something equivalent.

Third-party developers like WhatsApp don't have to maintain a relationship
with carriers, so they can push anything they want as hard as they want.

------
dsl
Google missed the boat because they only hired academics, not hackers.

They didn't need to embrace standards or build APIs, they just had to hire
people who knew how to build products that real people outside the valley
wanted. Google got lucky with its first product (search), acquired a company
to make it a successful business (Adwords), and kept buying companies to try
and onboard innovation.

~~~
drakaal
Keep telling your self that. Hackers rarely build things that scale to the
size Google needs. A failure for Google has 10 Million signups the first day.

The Product managers are what count in building a new product. Hackers are
rarely good product managers.

Academics are only a problem when they don't get user feed back before hand. A
good researcher can build product that fits the needs of the users, and when
paired with good UI people you get a winning product. Google isn't good at
getting user feed back they work like Mathematicians, not like Anthropologists
and Psychologists.

Math and Anthropology are still academics. But not in the same field.

------
drakaal
The premise that they missed the boat is wrong. They built a leaky boat
because their core competence is in a different field. Google didn't "Miss the
boat" they just never studied Nautical Science.

Google is very good at things that are mathematical, predictable,
quantifiable, and numeric.

Google fails at things like Natural Language, Art, Social, Music, Video
(youtube doesn't count that's just hosting and they bought it already
successful, and it still doesn't hardly make any money)

Facebook would "miss the boat on search". Apple will "miss the boat" on
social.

The difference is those guys won't go after a boat if they don't have the
competency for it.

~~~
joelrunyon
I don't think your other examples of FB & Apple are any good.

* FB hasn't really given search a big go yet. They're working on getting onto everyone's phone. I think that's too early to call.

* Apple bought Lala & has PING. Neither were great successes.

~~~
bentcorner
> _FB hasn 't really given search a big go yet._

I'd be interested to see them try, because I have _no idea_ what they could
offer that I don't already get from the plethora of search engines available.
I think Bing already has some social search thing that pushes up searches done
by friends or something, but I don't hear much about that at all.

~~~
waterlesscloud
Facebook doesn't just have the social graph of who your friends are and what
they search for.

They also have an increasingly insightful record of your personality. Probably
moreso than Google, since Facebook gets more of your "casual" life than
Google.

Google is in a good position to record and analyze the intents you express,
but Facebook likely has a better record of who you are outside of those
expressed intents.

Turning that into a useful product is difficult, but I'd be very surprised if
they never work in that direction.

------
soup10
So google failed to catch the social bus, who gives a fuck. Google is an
engineering company at it's core, and as long as they continue to do
ridiculously cool and useful R&D with their search advertising revenues in the
hopes of developing new killer products. They are a far more impressive and
valuable company than their derpy cousins at facebook who mostly just
capitalize on people's vanity and boredom.

~~~
chappi42
Well and google capitalizes on the fact that most normal people are too lazy
to install adblockers and bored enough to watch youtube videos.

I admire their engineering capabilities but for me they are no longer cool and
the 'one google' doctrine is something I actively try to resist (multiple
accounts, log out, avoid services, use alternatives).

------
mirsadm
I'm glad we have this guy to tell Google how to run their completely
unsuccessful business that missed the boat.

~~~
sergiosgc
"this guy" is David Winer, not some random guy. Go look him up.

~~~
jrockway
I miss his old blog, with ¶s next to every paragraph for purposes of linking.

------
rsync
Wrong wrong wrong. OP, comments, parent, children, all wrong.

Tim Wu, Master Switch, monopoly over distribution channels - that is the
answer. Either google ceases to exist or it becomes Ma Bell.

There's no third way, and all of the things that google does that seem
confusing make _perfect sense_ if you view them through the prism of trying to
become The Phone Company.

~~~
jmspring
Maybe I am missing why this is top comment...more comment to the discussion
would be helpful.

~~~
wreegab
I think he/she is saying to stop idealizing an entity which primary purpose is
to increase shareholders equity. I sure agree with him/her if it's what he/she
meant.

------
meowface
Interesting how a lot of the advice in here parallels Steve Yegge's infamous
rant.

The link, for anyone who hasn't read it:
[https://plus.google.com/+RipRowan/posts/eVeouesvaVX](https://plus.google.com/+RipRowan/posts/eVeouesvaVX)

~~~
gregw134
Do you mind linking to it?

~~~
meowface
[https://plus.google.com/+RipRowan/posts/eVeouesvaVX](https://plus.google.com/+RipRowan/posts/eVeouesvaVX)

------
varelse
Vic Gundotra ruined Google+, which could have and should have relegated
Facebook to 2nd place, but then Real Names happened and the rest is history.

Google hires generalists: jacks of all trades, masters of none. Their web
services and Android applications suffer greatly because of this ongoing
idiocy. Don't believe me? Cool, go try building a house using only a
Leatherman tool and get back to me. They need some sort of proven design czar
to make dangerous choices and they need the specialized talent to execute on
them.

Finally, when they went public, they were gradually coerced into being a
profit-driven company over being a technology-driven company. Only Jeff Bezos
seems to have figured out how to give Wall Street the middle finger so he can
do as he pleases.

That said, their moonshots remain cool, and I'd get acquihired by them in a
second given the kind of money they shell out.

~~~
wdr1
> Google hires generalists: jacks of all trades, masters of none.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Norvig](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Norvig)
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vint_Cerf](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vint_Cerf)
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ray_Kurzweil](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ray_Kurzweil)
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hal_Abelson](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hal_Abelson)
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joshua_Bloch](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joshua_Bloch)
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harald_Tveit_Alvestrand](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harald_Tveit_Alvestrand)

~~~
varelse
Yes, Google hires specialists for their moonshots. And in doing so they make
it extra difficult for existing employees to escape the tedious work they're
doing by transferring to them. As an example, when I worked there, I was told
(by someone on Glass) that the only real way on to the Android team was to be
hired into it from outside.

Using these black swans to disprove my point seems akin to "proving" that
playing the stock market is easy because Warren Buffett and Peter Lynch got
really rich doing so.

So are you actually unaware of the blind allocation process at Google for most
incoming employees or are you just trolling me?

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4713320](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4713320)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4713077](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4713077)

~~~
jrockway
I had no trouble transferring from Checkout to Fiber, and Fiber is a pretty
cool project. I also know people on my team that transferred to Glass.

Anything is possible, you just have to do it. Nobody is going to come up to
you and say, "hey, I read your mind and I think you want to transfer to
Android. Follow me." Just do it!

------
pointillistic
What is unbelievable about this conversation is that the question about how
content creators will get paid for the content is never raised. In fact this
is biggest mistake. There are questions about how app developers get their
exits but not how people who create content get paid. This is the heart of the
problem with the internet today, not how someone can build the next bottleneck
aggregator that rides on the wave of users creativity but pays them nothing in
return. Social or not.

~~~
willholloway
The answer to how do content creators get paid? Dogecoin.

Hack on that.

~~~
pointillistic
In fact micro payments might be the solution but Google have chosen to
monetize with ads, this meant nothing flows for the content creators and
everything for the sponsors and the toll collectors at Google. In other words
the next television. This is what is out of balance now.

------
yuhong
Another HN comment on this issue (I wonder why HN don't allow its own comments
as submissions):

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6754053](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6754053)

Makes me wonder how Larry Page was convinced that Facebook was a threat.

~~~
mdasen
I'll take a stab at this one.

Google's main source of revenue comes from ads that are driven by user want. I
search for "car insurance" and Google gives me an ad for GEICO. But that
doesn't really tell me anything about GEICO other than that they have enough
money to pay for my click. They could be excellent or they could be crap, but
they do likely sell car insurance and I'm looking for car insurance.

On Facebook, I may ask my friends "what car insurance do you have and how do
you like it?" I get better information; I get testimonials from people whose
judgement I trust (or at least I trust that their judgement isn't paid for,
unlike Google's ad). This cuts into the heart and soul of Google's revenue -
matching advertisers with user needs. Facebook hasn't done this to my
knowledge, but let's say they classify those queries and responses. So, I post
the question and my friend Julie replies, "I have GEICO and I love them". Six
months later, our mutual friend Jeff sees an ad in the sidebar with a GEICO
logo and that quote from Julie. Better yet, Jeff posts a picture of his new
car and an advertisement comment appears using Julie's quote.

This isn't about car insurance. Your friends will not be as good about filling
search requests as Google for many needs. However, your friends might be
better for the ones that pay. I have no idea if this graph is accurate, but it
can be interesting to go through: [http://www.wordstream.com/articles/most-
expensive-keywords](http://www.wordstream.com/articles/most-expensive-
keywords). Attorney and Lawyer are the #4 and $6 most expensive keywords. I
think I'd rather go with a friend's recommendation than a Google ad for
something important like that. We've already covered insurance at #1.

That's what makes Facebook a threat. Rather than searching, people ask the
hive-mind on Facebook for a recommendation for a restaurant, insurance
company, lawyer, etc. Friends and friends-of-friends comment and like
different answers and while people are certainly fallible, at the very least
is comes off as more trustworthy. If you were looking for wireless service in
a new city, would a Google ad be the first place you looked or maybe how your
friends in that city fared. Recommendations would certainly be skewed by the
fact that they have too little data to have a good opinion combined with
popular perceptions of the carriers, but would ad space that went to the
highest bidder be more trustworthy?

Now, when I search for the Battle of Gettysburg, I don't get ads. Same for
when I search for Washington DC. Same for many other search requests - the
type of requests that don't really have money in them; the type of requests I
use Google for and would never really use Facebook for. The threat is that
Google would become the place you go for the searches that don't pay while
Facebook gets the requests for information that do pay.

Worse, what if Facebook leveraged itself for videos as it did for photos? As
the comment you reference mentions, Facebook's photo platform was worse, but
its social aspect made it better for the way users wanted to use photos.
Facebook's messaging platform makes it good to chat to a group of people who
you know, but not super well - and everyone can see the whole conversation
even if they were added later. Businesses are already setting up pages and
giving Facebook nicely formatted data about the business.

The worst part of it is that Facebook is good at what they do. They're not
some company that can't handle the technological challenges. While one can
call their business fluff, their engineering staff isn't. So, the company
isn't going to go away via technical problems.

I'm not saying that any of this will come to pass, but Facebook is certainly a
threat to Google's revenue. Google makes its money off of ads that can be
replaced by friend recommendations. Again, I'm not saying the replacement will
happen, but I can see the threat.

~~~
dasil003
We often criticize companies for being blind-sided by an innovator coming up
behind (ie. Microsoft with the web), but in this case I think we have the
opposite problem of Google dropping everything to try to become Facebook.

Your reasoning about the potential threat of Facebook is of course totally
cogent, and indeed Facebook _could_ be a threat to Google's business. The only
problem is that they haven't proven there's a way to monetize that word-of-
mouth that Facebook technologizes so well (because of course it's always
existed). In fact there's a strong argument to be made that it is impossible
to monetize this phenomenon without destroying it. Facebook is throwing
everything they have at this problem, but they have still not crossed the
chasm. The state of play today is that AdWords are expensive because of the
ROI they can drive, and Facebook tend to be cheap, yet still overpriced due to
a wave of hype that has crested but still hasn't washed away back to sanity
yet. And when the smoke clears will Facebook's model be more valuable than
Google's? I think that's anything but a foregone conclusion.

Given the uncertainty of the winning model, I'd rather see Google stay true to
their DNA rather than chase after the Facebook hype with the G+ strategy. Some
good has come out of it in terms of improving their authentication across
properties, but by and large it appears as an impotent move to recreate a
second-class implementation of Facebook that no one gives a shit about.
Meanwhile, Google actually has tons of properties that Facebook can't touch.
So why are they chasing after an upstart? I consider it a sign of weakness and
ultimately detrimental to try to shift your company culture like this. If
you're on top with a certain strategy, do your best to ride that wave instead
of running scared and trying to compete with someone else on their terms. It's
a sign of weakness, and only should be pursued when the company is in real
trouble, not based on attempted clairvoyance.

~~~
waterlesscloud
You make a good point that perhaps facebook can't monetize word of mouth on
the valuable keywords without also destroying the word of mouth. It's easy to
see how that could happen. People would stop asking if it just resulted in
their friends getting quoted in ads.

But does it have to be monetized to hurt Google? What if Facebook just
promoted the idea that you should ask your friends for advice on these things?
Maybe something like yelp, but limited to reviews and comments from your
circle. Or even just highlighting the conversations when they naturally occur.

Probably wouldn't get to a level that it was a threat to Google, but it might
shave some edges off here and there, at little to no cost to facebook.

~~~
dasil003
But that would be even less reason to change strategy. Look, there are an
infinite number of things that could kill Google in the future. The only real
certainty of life is death. But they can't be speculatively jumping on every
potential future threat just because Goldman Sachs said you should buy; it
makes them look foolish. Successful companies should stay true to themselves
and give their own DNA a chance to win with full commitment, if they lose they
lose but at least they won't have suffered a fear-based implosion.

------
Mikeb85
What boat did Google miss? Seems to me they're achieving their goals. They own
search, they own video (YouTube), they have a very successful mobile OS, they
have a successful desktop platform (Chrome OS and the Chrome browser), and
they're innovating faster than anyone.

~~~
nissehulth
Well, their "own" video was Google Video, that did fail and was replaced by
Youtube.

~~~
AaronIG
Which they acquired in 2006 (less than 20 months after YouTube launched).
They've been driving YouTube for quite some time now.

------
NicoJuicy
Anyone who thinks Google+ has missed the boat doesn't understand Google+.

Google+ brings together: \- SMS \- Chat \- Likes (+1), on apps, youtube,
websites \- Videochat / screen-sharing / helping out \- The easiest OAuth
implementation (Facebook needs an App-ID), google needs nothing \- Your
location information (Android) \- GMail \- Contacts (backup of your cellphone)
\- SEO (their platform is OPEN for the web, while Twitter and Facebook wants
to hide their information) \- Information for businesses (Google Places) \-
and probably a lot more that i didn't thought about right now. \- Pictures
(backup of your android phone, default tag= personal) \- Documents (Google
Drive)

Now, to create a social network, what do you need and what does Google +
doesn't have? Google+ is probably one of the most used communication social
network... But a lot of it is going on in the backend and you don't see it on
the web.. Because people don't really use it right now (they don't use it by
going to Google+ and enter their message there).

~~~
ulfw
And what does the end user get out of all of this exactly?

~~~
NicoJuicy
Here are some practical innovations that are usefull when i'm going out with
my car.

When you lookup a bussiness in Chrome/Google on my PC, Google Now (your
mobile) will suggest the navigation to this business, included with traffic
delays. Just click on it (you don't have to enter an address), and it will
navigate to that place. (ps. this is a less user friendly method:
[http://gps.about.com/od/gpsmapscharts/ht/google_garmin.htm](http://gps.about.com/od/gpsmapscharts/ht/google_garmin.htm)
)

Traffic delays can be calculated by people who navigate with Google Maps (or
are using Google's Localisation Service).

Low Battery localisation (with WIFI) can be calculated by the combined power
of collecting MAC-address by the Android platform and/or the cars that are
used for Google Street View.

I can view the surroundings of where i'm going with Google Street View in my
navigation app. It will ask me if this information is correct, if it's not
correct. I can correct it and the business has a improved place on the Google
Maps platform.. (without doing it themselves)

Google+ is not only a social network. It's an authentication system where the
pk is your email, the frontend is www.google.com/\+ (social network) and the
backend is a collection of meta-data (big data?) that can be used to make your
life easier... And on top of that big data, you have a learning skynet ;-)

------
toyg
Dave Whiner lamenting the demise of RSS and OPML, you don't say!

~~~
__pThrow
Ha Whiner, I see what you did there.

No actual argument, just making fun of some guy's name.

Very nice.

~~~
jrockway
I don't think that was the parent's intent. Dave Winer basically invented RSS
and OPML.

~~~
__pThrow
Of course he was. He was saying that Dave Winer was "whining" about Google et.
al., shifting away from RSS.

Bullshit comment that I hate seeing on HN.

~~~
callum85
Typo or lighthearted joke. Either way, chill out

------
B-Con
> Their search engine was and still is the glue that holds the web together.
> So, why didn't they build around that?

Yeah, if only every product they offered either:

a) had comprehensive search capabilities (YouTube, GMail, map, etc)

b) was at least decent integrated with their flagship search (News, YouTube,
images, Blogger, heck, Android, etc)

c) was a variant of their flagship search (images, news, sound, etc)

I think it's fair to say that Drive/Docs/Keep and Calendar are fairly
independent of Search. Tsk, tsk, for shame.

~~~
dredmorbius
It's worth noting that when G+ launched (oddly missing from your list), it
_didn 't have_ search.

Even now, while G+ has search (and yes, it's both fast and comprehensive in
that everything is indexed), it's missing tools -- you cannot search by
author, by date, or by content type (posts vs. contents). Search is
balkanized: you can search ... "pages" from the search bar (along with posts
and content which is what you likely want), but to search a Community you've
first got to navigate to it, then realize that the thing that doesn't look
like a search dialog is actually a search dialog.

There's no negation (you can't exclude people or terms), you can't search by
user, you can't search by date ranges.

All that said: search was the one thing G+ really had going for it.

~~~
B-Con
That's a good point.

It was missing from my list because I honestly never use G+ search and didn't
know how to best assess it.

~~~
dredmorbius
I was pretty gobsmacked when it showed up missing.

For a while there, before Google's "you _will_ be assimilated* policy really
showed itself, Search was about the best thing about G+. I've since abandoned
it largely for Reddit, which _does_ have a featureful search, though it's
_not_ comprehensive (comments aren't indexed).

------
sidcool
It interests me how people expects Google to do all the things they want.
Let's be sure that Google is a business, not a missionary organization. They
will guard their business interests first.

------
mcv
They did try to provide an open platform with Wave, which was amazing,
powerful, innovative, open source and decentralized. And it failed. I wish it
hadn't; I liked it a lot.

~~~
judk
Wave's problem wad that it was all complicated plumbing, and no product.

It isn't clear to me why no startup has built a product on the Wave code or
concept.

------
WWKong
I strongly believe that was the right way to go. I never understood why Google
didn't make a big push for standard structured information. They could have
published standards for different industries similar to RSS. Everyone would
have gotten on board similar to how every blog was pushing a RSS feed. Once
the web moved towards structured data it would have been the first big step
towards Semantic web.

Imagine writing apps that could do this: "Phone, please book top movie at the
box office and dinner for Friday evening and adjust Nest at home accordingly".

------
whitef0x
First of all twitter's growth is slowing, so its not very apt to compare them
to google. And the same thing may start happening to Facebook in a few years
(as people are notoriously fickle with social media sites - which depend on
mass adoption - not innovation). I think google is doing the right thing -
they are sticking to what they know instead of trying to 'build around the
web' and become another Microsoft (who tries to make 'their own version of
everything' example - Silverlight).

------
api
IMHO Google was somewhat psyched out by Facebook and made the classic mistake
of copying their rival. Google+ is almost an exact copy of Facebook.

~~~
chris_mahan
Yet it's so much worse...

~~~
agumonkey
the first two or three version were unbearably slow and awkward, but since the
'card' redesign, it's reactive (coming from a fps fetishist on a 2006 laptop)
and usable. When G+ came, FB had all this in place, their html framework was
hyper lean in all possible ways. Every time I had to use FB after G+ I was
shocked to witness the difference. FB gained some weight since but it's still
a smooth cut.

~~~
scholia
Oddly, I still find G+ almost unusably slow on a fast Core i5-powered desktop.
And I use it every day. Facebook's performance is much better.

------
voyou
Odd that Winer doesn't mention Google's actual attempt to do what he suggests
here, which was called OpenSocial (and had buy-in from MySpace, back in 2007
when that might have mattered):
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenSocial](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenSocial)

I'm not sure why Google gave up on this approach, but it's not the case that
no-one at Google was thinking along these lines.

------
auctiontheory
When you're just _so damn rich_ , and the money keeps pouring in, it's very
hard to stay focused, to relentlessly innovate, to admit (if only to yourself)
that you're just as imperfect as everyone else, and make just as many
mistakes.

It was true for Microsoft, it's true for Google, and it's true for everyone
else. (Well, those of us who are rich enough not to have to give a sh*t. Not
me personally.)

~~~
agumonkey
I wonder if there were some structural attempts (at Google or elsewhere) at
mitigating this effect, like voluntary creating nano-competition by spinning
off a bunch of companies just to see how the perceive trends and create on
their own.

~~~
mik3y
It definitely happens in the valley; Cisco was notorious in the 90s and 00s
for acquiring "spin-ins" (startups founded by ex-Cisco leadership/teams with
an almost certain expectation of returning to the mothership), and I'm sure
there are other examples.

Less drastically, Google (and I'm sure many other valley peers) will often set
up special incentive structures for certain teams: bonuses tied to aggressive
adoption metrics and separated from the company-wide bonus, for example. I
doubt it comes close to cutting that safety net (and making people truly
_hungry_ ), but I give them credit for trying.

~~~
agumonkey
Thanks for the info, "spin-ins", is exactly the idea I was trying to describe.
And I agree with you, in-house incentives are probably far from being enough.

------
perfunctory
Google is a public company whose goal is to make money for their shareholders.
How projects described in this post help them achieve that?

------
robg
All good points on openness, but I don't want services built off of my
searches or history. That's their core product but it's one based on the
assumption of privacy, not sharing.

------
izietto
In Italy we say "missed the train" :-)

------
BorisMelnik
Ohhh love the site framework and use of snap.svg. Interesting how he didn't
mention Google+ not once.

