
How can you compete with Google? - gthank
http://jessenoller.com/2010/10/14/how-can-you-compete-with-google/
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moultano
Whenever a large company does something, people always over-estimate how many
people from that company did it. The organization as a whole doesn't train
it's eye on each little problem, saturating it with thousands of engineers.
Instead, a handful of engineers decide they want to do something, do it, and
then eventually move on to other things.

You may not be able to compete with Google's infrastructure, but you can
certainly compete on focus.

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ajdecon
IMO, the best way to compete with Google is to actually pay attention to your
product. Outside a few core apps like search and Gmail, it astonishes me how
little Google seems to care about their work once it's launched. They just sit
there, accumulating dust for years until they get revamped or taken down. If
you can launch a competitor that has frequent updates, builds a community, or
really just conveys the idea that there's a man behind the curtain, I think
you can do ok.

This doesn't help much with trivial webapps, and I'm not sure I feel good
about other URL shorteners right now. But any product with some complexity
will benefit from attention, and Google doesn't spare a lot of that for niche
products.

Edit: word choice

~~~
Pewpewarrows
It always irks me when people say that Search and Mail are the only successful
products to come out of Google (I know that isn't what you said specifically,
but it sparked the memory).

YouTube, Google Finance, Google Maps, Blogger, Google Docs, Google Groups,
Google Reader, Google Talk, Google Voice, Google Calendar, Chrome, and the
entire Android platform are all things that I use on nearly a daily basis.
Most, if not all of those are the leading product in their field. Companies by
the boatload switch to exclusive use of Google Apps for almost all of their
needs, and there's a reason behind it.

That's not to say that they're flawless. Google Video was pretty terrible
until they killed it for YouTube. Knol is a pretty big failure. They never
really did anything with Picasa on the web side of things (I thoroughly enjoy
the desktop app however). They really dropped the ball on Wave in terms of
marketing and deployment. Wave in particular saddens me, because it could have
so easily gone the other way and been an excellent successor to email. And I'm
sure they have hundreds if not thousands of products that we never hear about
and never will see the light of day.

But saying Google has only succeeded in Search and E-mail is just silly.

~~~
ajdecon
Oh, I'll agree that a lot of their products are fairly successful in terms of
being widely-used. (Revenue? No way for me to know.) But how many of them are
evolved or improved on a regular basis?

Reader has had some social enhancements, but I don't know if I've seen
anything in the last year. Google Groups spent a long time sitting dormant
after they bought DejaNews. Much of the Google Apps suite stays static for
long periods of time. Chrome I'll give you, and I'm sure there are new
features for some of the others that I haven't followed... but Google seems to
be very good at creating apps which are just good enough that they don't need
to do anything further with them. More power to them for that, I guess, but I
do like to see products evolve.

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salemh
Somewhat related from the article:

"It’s easy for Google to build something fifty percent of the way and release
it, therefore sucking the air out of the room. They don’t even need to
“finish” it – the very fact they’ve made it and put it everywhere is enough to
make a market dry up and users to flock to it. It will have enough
functionality – and just enough – to get the job done (“perfectly functional,
albeit Spartan”)."

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DJN
The way to beat Google is to create a product with a superior user experience.

Two notable examples:

1\. Facebook beating Google's Orkut. 2\. Youtube beating Google Video.

In addition, the fact that some of Google's products launch with ugly or
complex user interfaces creates a clear and present opportunity for startups
with good design skills and a focus on usability.

For example, I created Trafficspaces simply because I felt Google Ad Manager
and OpenX were both a royal pain in the ass to use.

~~~
jnoller
I think I said that in the article :)

~~~
DJN
Consider it an extra validation

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lukev
Everyone used to say this about Microsoft.

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jnoller
Yup. It's startling how many corollaries can be drawn. But I have to hand it
to redmond: they had the better UI design, if not the better UX.

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cryptoz
Wait, are you saying you think that Microsoft products have better UX than
Google products?

I'd like to disagree there. My experience with MS products (Windows from 95
until 7, Office, IE) is that they get in your way a lot ("are you sure?" "are
you sure?" "your computer is about to reboot", etc). They have lots of focus-
stealing dialogs and constant interruptions.

Google (search, gmail, maps), on the other hand, tends to stay out of your way
and be invisible while you're using their products. I'd consider their UX to
be many times better than Microsoft's.

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jnoller
No, I meant in the past - when Microsoft was the top-dog and people were
talking about them much in the same way as people (I) might be talking about
google now. Windows had very valid reasons for becoming wildly popular -
ignoring the more questionable practices of their management.

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d2viant
You can easily compete with Google on UI/UX. It's a company run by engineers,
so traditionally they've been horrible in this respect, focusing mainly on the
engineering behind the product rather than the eye-candy.

~~~
jnoller
Less directed at you - but personally I've grown frustrated with the
dismissiveness of the term "eye candy" - having a good design, and good UX is
a good thing. Designing with the user in mind, and making tradeoffs in favor
of the user is just good practice.

I've seen a lot of people use "eye candy" as a term that somehow excuses their
crappy UI and UX, time and time again it comes up in discussions about open
source and linux UIs. The users matter.

