
Pandas and Lobsters: Why Google Cannot Build Social Applications - ssclafani
http://ifindkarma.posterous.com/pandas-and-lobsters-why-google-cannot-build-s
======
frossie
Quote:

 _Google's culture has no respect for successful social applications.
YouTube's office is still far from the Google campus to avoid the toxic
attitude described by a former Orkut employee, "[Google has] an environment
that viewed social networking as a frivolous form of entertainment rather than
a real utility, and I'm pretty sure this viewpoint was shared all the way up
the chain of command to the founders."_

I am not social networking's biggest fan - far from it. But the totally weird
thing for me has been how Google has stepped away from even search-related
functions of social utility, eg. withdrawing Public Calendar Search. The above
statement would go some way towards explaining that - I'm still so baffled by
the whole thing.

~~~
Tichy
Maybe they worry about causing a privacy disaster?

~~~
frossie
You had to jump through hoops to make your calendar public and searchable (it
was not the default option), so I doubt it.

------
greenlblue
The article misses one big point. Social is all about generating noise whereas
google products are all designed to cut through all the noise and bring you
something that you need by filtering all the noise. There has not been a
single social network I have been able to stand for more than 10 minutes
because of the noise problem whereas google products are a joy to use for
somebody that wants to get things done.

~~~
ThomPete
Buzz? wave? you call these designed to cut through the noise?

~~~
greenlblue
Wave certainly since it's a collaborative tool for people that want to get
things done. Buzz is a twitter clone but we already have twitter so I didn't
really understand why they launched buzz in the first place.

~~~
ThomPete
Wave is noise IMHO.

The very fact that you can go back in history and replay, have multiple people
talk together and the way that it's built up is not what I would consider
cutting out the noise.

But that might just be me.

~~~
roc
Would you say that's more or less noisy than the email chain that exchanged
and integrated as many changes and additions?

A busy wave _is_ noisy. But I think it can be quite an improvement over plain
email.

~~~
ThomPete
I think the problem is that Google does great when it comes to behind the
scene filtering.

For instance their spam filter in gmail is almost flawless at least from my
experience.

Anything that's about algorithms being part of the design they are great.

But they fail completely when it comes to allowing people to interact with
each other. They simply don't have the design principles for that. It's not
part of their DNA.

~~~
roc
I don't think that's fair at all. Google docs, gmail, gchat - these are all
inherently about interaction and they're great.

What Google doesn't do _successfully_ , is frame those interactions to make
their own network "sticky". It's those second-order interactions ("likes",
"reblogging", "fans", "mayor", etc) that Google doesn't seem to get traction
with.

But that's a very different thing than enabling interaction.

~~~
ThomPete
There is absolutely nothing elegant about the interaction of googles products
IMHO. What is elegant is the stuff that goes on behind the scences.

But the actual interaction part could be improved quite a lot.

~~~
jacabado
The proudly presented see-as-you-type Wave feature is a major example of what
you are saying.

Real people hated it because it was distractive, annoying and embarassing but
they never tought about that because it showed their big technical
achievement: the wavelet syncronization in real-time. REAL-TIME!!

------
wallflower
One of the more colorful, stream-of-consciousness opinions to appear on
News.YC. Some interesting observations in the prognostications.

> Google FAILED in acquiring and integrating other social products. Blogger,
> Picasa, JotSpot, Dodgeball, Jaiku. None are their category leaders now. Some
> are dead. Why?

Metaphorically, foursquare rose from the ashes of Dodgeball.

> Google cannot hire a Head of Social because no individual can change
> Google's DNA of building applications for pandas, not lobsters.

I wonder what Marissa Mayer thinks about Google's role in Social. I'm sure
they have something in the labs... but you can't grow a social network in a
petri dish.

Now I can see why Facebook probably won't ever merge with Google. It would be
like an arranged marriage.

Android is the wildcard wildebeast. Mobile phones are inherently social.

~~~
benologist
Someone will probably build a huge and successful social whatever on Android,
and maybe even the one that dethrones Facebook.

But it won't be Google.

~~~
byoung2
_But it won't be Google._

Then Google will buy them

------
sharan
An astute article.

 _"Understanding those concepts is not easy. It takes lots of practice, and
lots of patience, and lots of learning."_

I think that's an important precis of the article. Google's engineers are used
to designing and doing what's "right". They inherited the concept of search
and have built a sophisticated algorithm around that established notion same
with mail and their more successful products.

Social on the other hand is a fuzzy science, it's hard to know what works and
why ahead of time. It's much easier to do it in hindsight, but by then it's
too late.

------
guelo
Let's see how many Google products with massive social components I can come
up with:

    
    
      Gmail obviously
      Youtube obviously
      Earth has a huge community building layers
      Maps is used and embedded by every other social service out there
      Blogger of course
      Groups of course
      Knol, though I guess you can call it a failure
      Orkut is massive in Brazil
      Picasa photo sharing
      Reader has sharing
      Talk obviously

~~~
dotcoma
I'd say: (almost) none of these.

GMail is a utility. Same with Earth, Maps (we're talking about social
components for users, not for developers), Blogger (Tumblr, that is based on a
social component!), Groups, Reader and Talk.

Social sharing in YouTube is _extremely_ limited. I save my YouTube favourite
videos on delicious, just to give you an idea, and never receive more than one
suggestion a month about a video from the community.

Knol is a failure.

Orkut is strong only in Brazil (and India, perhaps) and is largely the (free)
Brazilian AdultFriendFinder (you dive deep into it, and then you tell me).

~~~
tansey
Interesting point about Orkut. I wonder if there is a Google Dating in the
works. It seems to fit their mission of organizing and helping people search--
one of the most important search tasks in most people's lives actually. It's
also inherently a panda task since you have a clear, stated objective that you
want to accomplish and then move on.

~~~
nl
Love to see "I'm feeling Lucky" on that site.

------
brown9-2
_Consider this example: Google Answers focused on answers and failed; Yahoo!
Answers focused on social and succeeded._

Is Yahoo Answers really considered a success?

And one-month-public Quora is "hot"?

Lots of hyperbole here.

------
nochiel
I'm uncertain about how this article ranked so highly on HN. It is such a
woeful, tasteless soup of mixed metaphors and trite aphorisms that it becomes
almost impossible for any well meaning person to tolerate it, read it and
extract new insights, if any, from it.

------
DannoHung
I still think Wave is a cool idea :/

I wish people I knew used it.

~~~
waterlesscloud
I think Wave's biggest obstacle was a clunky, slow interface. The concepts are
quality, it just needs a real UI.

~~~
rortian
When was the last time you used it? Wave is not slow currently.

~~~
Maro
I just logged in, it still lags behind as I type.

~~~
moultano
What browser?

~~~
Maro
It can be slow on FF3.6, fairly fast on Chrome.

------
aaronbrethorst
I haven't gotten around to reading the linked article yet, but the first link
in the linked article is a great way to end a long day of hacking code and
building businesses: <http://ifindkarma.posterous.com/what-do-pandas-do-all-
day>

------
msy
>As opposed to Facebook, which hates whales because whales distract the
lobsters from the traps.

I _agree_ with the article but I would never forward it on because it's so
goddamn thick with unnecessary and absurd analogies and allusions.

~~~
joubert
I thought they were kind of fun and matching my temperament this morning.

------
spydum
"Facebook is literally filled with master baiters"

How can you go wrong with a quote like that.

~~~
mahmud
The whole article was written for virality and news aggregators. Way too many
interweb inside jokes, too many distracting links, way too much knowledge
about flimsy websites, etc. I really felt tired reading it.

------
robryan
Does Google need to conquer social though? I guess in a world of shareholders
and delivering ever increasing profits they need to try. From the outside it
seems it would just be smarter to consolidate a bit, focus on what they can do
in the social based search space, do a deal with Facebook ect.

I think they spread themselves across way to many areas without perfecting the
core, like better support for the advertisers driving their massive revenues.

~~~
wdewind
Google doesn't necessarily need to conquer social, but they definitely need to
understand it better. They wasted a lot on wave and pissed a lot of people off
with buzz. Plus the way the gchat contact list and the greader following work
is completely mysterious, and that's kind of an important aspect of their
social backbone.

~~~
mindcrime
Buzz and Wave both still have potential though. For me, if they would just
roll out a standalone Buzz site that lets me view Buzz's and post without
going into my GMail inbox, I'd use it a lot more. But having to go through
GMail just feels incredibly clunk.

Wave also has tons of potential, but they need to do a better job of
explaining to people what it's useful for. And as somebody else pointed out, a
better UI would be nice as well. Using Wave is still confusing to people who
are used to different metaphors.

------
scottporad
From the perspective of an investor owning or considering GOOG, here's what I
think about:

Over the next 5 years which is going to be more valuable: leading in social
apps or mobile OS (with Android)?

I don't know the answer to that question, but it seems like Google is placing
their bet on mobile OS.

Which do you think is more valuable...the OS or the social apps?

~~~
jsz0
Betting on the mobile OS seems old fashion to me. In a few years we'll have
complete parity in mobile. It really won't matter what OS you use. Even today
we're pretty much there. I don't think Android can Windows-ize SmartPhones.
There's too much competition and already too much parity. Google has a big
problem if people are buying Android devices to mostly spend their time in
non-Google services with non-Google ads. They'll still have a lot of mobile
advertising but it may not be in the same ballpark as more targeted ads closer
to the services/apps people are sharing data with.

------
code_duck
Chrome makes me feel like lingering and luxuriating, in fact it's the way I
linger everywhere else... so maybe they'll find a new niche with that sort of
basic platform hardware and software.

------
gcb
from tfa : google should be concerned because fb serves bazillion likes clicks
a day.

so what? the department of water should be concerned because coca cola sells a
bazillion cans a day?

who will ever go to Facebook to search how to buy some power tool? I already
have ppl from the office telling me all the brand stereotypes. I want to see
tables of rpms and torque. and price on stores. screw my friends opnions. I
already got them offline. Facebook will only replace email (if ever) or IM.

how to search case insensitive in less? have you ever seen one question like
that on fb? I just got my answer on google. and I don't want to look nerd or
newb on Facebook while doing that.

so, great article on the initial reasons. but tried to stretch too far.

~~~
doron
"the department of water should be concerned because coca cola sells a
bazillion cans a day?"

That is exactly the point, Google is not a public utility service, it is for
profit. Google should be concerned in the same way Coca Cola is concerned
about Pepsi, they dominate a certain market, but a moment of hesitation, and
oops, you just lost the young demographic.

When Google appeared, Yahoo ware an empire, Alta vista ruled certain searches,
where are they now?

~~~
gcb
my point is actually the opposite of what you assume.

my point is that facebook does not supersede google. as you assume saying
cocacola vs pepsi.

google search superseded yahoo search and altavista search.

coca cola also does not replace DWP mainly because as much as people drink
soda instead of water, they will ever hardly cook and bath in it.

so, the article talks about two ways to lure users. but they aren't
exclusively.

