

Tim O’Reilly: Google’s got problems - ezdebater
http://gigaom.com/2012/07/06/tim-oreilly-googles-got-problems/

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debacle
The actual Tim O'Reilly post:
[https://plus.google.com/107033731246200681024/posts/jP4g9KKT...](https://plus.google.com/107033731246200681024/posts/jP4g9KKTUK8)

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harryf
Reading that reminds me: we need to stop calling wasting people's time
"social". In fact it's astounding how many of the outcomes for users of
"social" are in fact anti-social; too much time online, ego-centrism,
attention deficit etc

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pselbert
Anti-social is much more precise. It is primarily a tool to specifically
target marketing, experimenting with extra-relational flirtation, and maintain
that high school sense of social competition that we were all so happy to
depart from.

When developing I cringe any time a "social" feature gets involved. Rarely are
people's lives enriched from it.

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alttab
I agree with this as well. When Google+ came out I was thinking "Why are they
afraid of Facebook?" Generally, the utility of Google will always far surpass
the utility of Facebook. They may "compete", but only in the sense that both
of their users spend time on the internet, and they both make money from
online advertising.

It is a huge strategic mistake for Google to look at Facebook think that
Facebook makes money due to how long people spend on their site.

Facebook makes their money in volume of page views. Google makes its money in
quality of page views. Trying to be social and dragging people out of Facebook
is going to be impossible. Conversely, Facebook trying to do search and
dragging people out of Google is futile given their core business.

The Google guys are smart. I can't imagine how they are afraid of Facebook.
Social data requires context, which is hard to get. Facebook screws it up all
the time. Data-data (not social drivel) requires discovery, which is much
easier to execute on and Google has done that really well.

My advice to Google: stop sweating Facebook. Like your momma always told you,
"Just be yourself and everyone will like you."

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SoftwareMaven
_If_ FB figures out social searching (combining intent-based, search driven
advertising with social qualification), Google will be in trouble if they
don't have a matching strategy.

That _if_ is a really big one. In the meantime, Google has lost its way. I'm
using it less and less as it tries to be more and more.

The other big problem is I've lost faith in them to be good with all my data
they hold. Once upon a time, "Don't be evil" seemed to be interpreted as "Be
good"; now, they may not be outright evil, but I think they have moved away
from "Be good". Because my email and search history contains more sensitive
information than the stuff I allow on FB, that is concerning.

So, while social _may_ be important for Google, the bigger issue I see is that
they've lost their identity. I no longer really understand who Google is and
what it is trying to accomplish. Maybe that is inevitable at a company their
size (Apple, an obvious counter to that, is anomalous in many ways).

In the end, I miss the simple search interface.

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myko
What's not simple about the current interface? Just because you can use extra
features provided by Google+ doesn't mean you have to!

> I no longer really understand who Google is and what it is trying to
> accomplish.

The same as it ever was - organize the world's information.

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SoftwareMaven
It's distracting, cluttered, and inundated with results that attempt to drive
you to Google's own properties. It's the last one that bugs me the most.
Valuable real estate and attention is being used in an attempt not to give me
the best information for _me_ , but rather the best information for Google to
have me look at.

> The same as it ever was - organize the world's information.

But too often lately, they seem to be forsaking the _world's_ information for
their own.

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vmanju
Tim doesn't make a case for his statement here. While Google has grown large
not only as a company but also in terms of businesses (it is no longer just a
search company), it is extremely hard to still remain focussed and innovative
as they are right now. Hard to see how this compares with Yahoo! at all...

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spiralpolitik
As you grow as a company (especially if you grow quickly or through
acquisitions), the more integration points between parts of the company to
have.

You eventually reach a point where you are spending more time on integration
parts of the company than innovating to keep ahead of competitors. At this
point you are dead in the water while your competitors start to catch up.

Yahoo hit exactly this point. If Google is not careful they will also hit this
point.

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writetoalok
No clue in the articles about how, or why. Just because Yahoo lost its way (if
they did at all) doesn't mean everyone else has to as well.

Time on site is an important metric, no matter what Tim or Tom says.

