"If people shift from search to sharing as the primary means to find information, then Google needs to figure out how to tap into social, and fast."
Ah, but how are people going to _find_ this information in the first place? Links don't just grow out of a vacuum. Someone searched for it _then_ curated it.
And, really, if Google wants to own the _future_ of consumer "information sharing" in this era, they don't have to become a lumbering Facebook me-too clone. Just buy Twitter (be ready to pay a soul-crushingly high premium for them, though). Boom, they'll now have 4 of the top 10 global Alexa ranked sites (after Google, Youtube, and Blogger). Integrate them all with some non-trivial alchemy, and you'll rule the Internet.
> Ah, but how are people going to _find_ this information in the first place? Links don't just grow out of a vacuum. Someone searched for it _then_ curated it.
No. In the first place someone created that content, then shared the link.
It's not necessarily true that the person who created the content will share the link. Even if they do, if they are far removed from my social network then the only way I will find that content is still by searching for it.
It seems like Twitter is the last piece of the puzzle for them. However, I think Twitter needs more time to mature from a good product to a great product.
I think it's strange that Google is going after social.
Search isn't going away. It's here to stay. Will search become social? I tend to think it won't. But if it does, I think it'll only be a small component and it'll occur in niches. For instance, searching for a movie on Netflix based on what your friends like/recommend may become more common. Though, searching for a pair of new shoes online won't be a social activity. I like what I like.
But Google should worry most about search. Google.com. Searching on Google has gotten worse and worse for me over the past 2 - 3 years. To find what I want (if I find it at all), I have to try several queries and comb through several pages. This is time-consuming and my solution has been to just search less.
Google needs to stop worrying about what others are doing and focus on Google.
Make search better. Once you've done that, keep making it better.
I know Google wants to build new things, etc., but it shouldn't be social.
Edit: (1) I could be totally wrong about this. (2) I think of Google going after social meaning it wants to build something that replaces Twitter, Facebook, Myspace, etc. Perhaps its social strategy is different than that.
>"I think it's strange that Google is going after social."
As a company whose revenue is based on data-mining internet traffic, it makes perfect sense because of the potential value of pushing ads to an individual based on knowledge of their social network, e.g. pushing Mercedes ads to a person whose friends all drive Porsches. And for Google, that's what better search means - it doesn't mean putting useful long tail information on the front page when such information is not easily monetized.
The ability to consistently identify the consumption habits of a small demographic with large purchasing power and target advertising directly at those individuals is immensely more valuable to advertisers than Adwords. It's the reason Apple does so much print advertising.
Improved browser speed and increased bandwidth means that you can perform more searches in a given time. Degraded search results mean that you will do so, and thereby generate more advertising impressions and hence more potential for revenue. Or to put it another way, anyone ever becomes so frustrated with the Google Search's results that they clicked on a sponsored link or other ad to see if that's what they wanted?
Have to disagree strongly with your first paragraph. What is valuable to advertisers is intent. It's why Facebook ads have such low CTR compared to Adwords. A person searching for "auto loans" is more valuable to the advertiser than someone whose buddies all drive Porsches.
Yet the bulk of advertising dollars goes to demand generation (i.e. Drink Pepsi!) and not fulfillment (i.e. searching for Pepsi on Google & seeing a targeted ad for Pepsi).
Companies pay a lot to get people that don't know about their products to be aware and interested in them. The other side is actually the smaller market.
For anyone interested, I just put together a link round up of some of the most interesting posts/articles of the CEO change starting from January till now.
I'm rooting for Google-- would love to see them kicking ass on more fronts.
The SVP of Social seems like a strange choice... Should be someone like Ev Williams. Instead, it's a guy who was an open source evangelist who also helped lead Windows Vista when he was at Microsoft. I'm sure he's a really effective guy, but does he GET social?
Honestly, is social that hard to GET? I think what Vic has shown at MS and Google (and I think its important that he showed this at both places) is that he can execute.
If Vic's mission is to make Google social big, period then he'll do well. If his mission is to make social big, and figure out how to monetize it too, then there will be problems. But I think Vic is bright enough to know that monetization is a second-tier priority right now.
If it's not hard to get, why hasn't Google gotten it yet? Certainly not for lack of trying or technical execution. It's a whole different beast. The first order problems (IMO) are around empathy, design, positioning, marketing, and community (things that Google is historically not good at).
If it's not hard to get, why hasn't Google gotten it yet?
The problem isn't that they don't get it at an individual level. It's that they struggle to see how to make money from it and have tried to get it complement search. That's my take on it.
To put it in perspective, Facebook did $2B in revenue last year. Google did $29B. In otherwords, if Google owned Facebook outright, Facebook would be about 6.5% of Google's revenue.
But that's why I said as long as Vic focuses purely on social, they'll do OK. But if they get sidetracked by a 3-year plan to get to $1B in revenue... which will be like a mere 3%, that's when things will begin to fall apart.
And that's why these sorts of things are easier outside of Google/MS. For a startup company $500M in revenue is pop the champagne. For Google and MS that's when you start thinking that there might be a business here, but make sure it doesn't canabilize the business that brings in $20B a year.
Again, aren't these just the people promoted? This isn't all of the org heads. There's still Location (Marissa Mayer), Google Apps, and others. I find it hard to believe that Page has no interest in Apps succeeding.
I'm glad to see Sundar will have the ear of the king, ChromeOS hardware may be the single most promising near term development in computer security for the common man. I expect to be buying several for my family once they become commercially available.
Chrome has a very robust security model that includes, among other things, auto-updating and a verified boot (version numbers cannot go backwards). For example, if a device is detected as being hacked, an update will be initialized and then a reboot. And if a device is stolen, it's basically useless since ALL user data stored on the device is encrypted (and can be remote-wiped anyways). Here's everything:
Everything that Matthew said plus the ability to easily reload from a cryptographically good backup copy of the OS if it detects anything has gone awry without disturbing your "applications". I'd highly suggest following the link he gave, it is a very interesting revue of many modern and practical security approaches.
What's the difference between Google +1 and Facebook Like? How are they differentiating their service? Just because the +1 is integrated somehow into search results doesn't really make it better. A community cannot successfully determine the reputation of it's members if their only option is to give it a +1 or a like. If +1 also came with -1 or it morphed to thumbs up/thumbs down, it could become more of a reputation generator for any person or web based entity which I think could be much more useful.
The difference is context within my social network. None of my friends have Google Profiles and are unlikely to reconstruct their graph on Google Profiles. Clicking +1 doesn't have as much social distribution as the Like button because of this fundamental problem. Facebook already has all my friends on it, so clicking a Like button actually has weight.
I wonder how much Google worries about the popularity of niche sites like stackoverflow. I go there for all my programming queries now instead of searching on google. If more and more sites take up niches like this the over all search volume should decrease for Google. Though I would think its not a lot as a percentage.
Ah, but how are people going to _find_ this information in the first place? Links don't just grow out of a vacuum. Someone searched for it _then_ curated it.
And, really, if Google wants to own the _future_ of consumer "information sharing" in this era, they don't have to become a lumbering Facebook me-too clone. Just buy Twitter (be ready to pay a soul-crushingly high premium for them, though). Boom, they'll now have 4 of the top 10 global Alexa ranked sites (after Google, Youtube, and Blogger). Integrate them all with some non-trivial alchemy, and you'll rule the Internet.