Yet More Google Gazing

povvell writes "Bob Cringely has joined the club and just set out his personal vision for the future of Google now that it's flush with cash, thereby joining a happy band of Google gazers. But is he right, and are they? My own guess is that the company intends to become the biggest advertising platform in the world. What's yours?"

Making Mistakes

[Klar]

I like this paragraph from TFA:

There's an interesting effect here that I've noticed over the years -- smart people don't make the same mistake twice while REALLY SMART people don't make the same mistake three times. Since they tend to make fewer mistakes to start with, really smart people tend to repeat the mistakes they do make because they are initially convinced that the outcome was someone else's fault or perhaps because of cosmic rays.

I think it really holds true. Maybe really smart high level execs need more really smart high level people to help look over their mistakes privately so this doesnt happen as much.

Wow, he's full of himself.

[garcia]

Heck, if I can't get an interview, hardly anyone can get an interview.

I am sure Google really wants to have an interview with an asshole that complains of their micromanagement.

I am no Googlelover (as far as their IPO/business practices go) but I don't think it's a bad idea to ignore Cringley.

All I know is...

[suso]

that I never really thought of Google as a company. For the longest time I was wondering how they were even making enough money to pay their employees.

I thought of them more like "A group of SMFs that wanted to make some neat shit". Which they accomplished.

So with all this money now, its almost as if the impression that I have of Google has died and something else has taken over.

As long as google doesn't break

[Alain Williams]

I don't really care what extra things google will do as long as they continue to be a great Internet search engine

Hanging on too tightly

[ElForesto]

I see an excellent point made in the article, which is that the founders want to maintain control of the enterprise as much as they can. The problem is that as soon as you've taken a company public, it isn't your baby anymore. It sounds like decisions need to start being delegated before the founders wear themselves out from working too hard.

I've worked at more than one company where the founder(s) micro-managed the entire enterprise. The did themselves a tremendous disservice in the long run by discouraging independent thought and actions.

But is he right?

[stratjakt]

We're talking about Cringley. So, uh, no.

Attitude

[rleyton]

Whilst I do like Google, I think they need to be very careful about the next few years. There *will* be rivals (Microsoft foremost, of course) in the search-engine space. Ads are one thing, but if people aren't visiting google out of preference for their search engine needs, much of the rest of their business model falls apart.

The hype - almost hysteria at first - surrounding the Google IPO has so much resonance with the dot gone fun of a few years ago, they would do well to look to the future without forgetting the pertinent and still relevant lessons of the past. Just because the stock market thinks you're worth $billions, doesn't mean it'll stay that way, or that you really are worth that much.

Remember Netscape? The parallels are noticeable. Cornered market until MS got there with IE and ownership of the desktop. It's a different political world now though, but it's worth remembering.

And for a company that's historically been very secretive, how will that play out in the publicly listed world?

In an ideal world...

[rokzy]

Google does become the biggest advertiser and continues a policy of clean, unobtrusive adverts. not only does this reduce the percentage of annoying adverts directly by market share, but it makes people more sensitive to annoying adverts and eventually the stupid dumbfuck marketers realise the error of their ways and also adopt unobtrusive adverts.

Google uses its money to start buying up real life billboards and dismantling them, thus improving real life too. this turns out to be one of the greatest moves in marketing history and Google continues to prosper.

Re:Wow, he's full of himself.

[stratjakt]

Does Cringley think he's like journalisms top brass? Most people don't know who the hell he is.

If it wasn't for slashdot posting about it every time he updates his column, I wouldn't know who he is.

Re:Sick of it

[Anonymous Coward]

The company itself was founded on a relatively good concept, which in turn became a very good product.

All of the techies are fascinated with it because they have used it for so long and want to see the company prosper, that is, as long as the product doesn't suffer.

All of the suits are fascinated with it because they want to make tons of $$ by exploiting something they probably didn't know existed until a few months ago.

Everyone else is fascinated with it because the news keeps shoving it down our throats.

It's almost like seeing your favorite "underground"/local band get signed to a major record label, then end up on MTV's TRL. Oh you like their music and are happy they have become successful, but you don't want it to get fucked up by catering to what the suits at the record label (shareholders?) think is best.

Rich and powerful, yet good

[otisg]

How about something more meaningful than 'the biggest marketing company'? How about taking all that money and being the leader among big companies with loads of money by showing that being big and powerful does not need to turn you into a monster.
How about that?

Google Conquers Online Advertising

[dunsel]

The problem with online advertising in its current state is that we, the consumer, do not want or like it.

We do like google. And when google started running little text link adds off to the right, I said "Way to go, google, now you can mage something for all your hard work." A lesser company might have sold "preferred listing" links *COUGH* YAHOO *COUGH* but Google remained honest and our friends.

And now, I see that google's little text links are actually usefull to me. I'm searching for airfare, and google suggests that I try an online airfare that I hadn't tried before. I do and I get a good price! And that place gets my business, and Google gets a few millicents for my click.

As long as google can remain my friend, I hope they do take over all of online advertising. Adds that arent' hideous in some way and actually advertise things I'm interested in will, in my eyes, revolutanize the online world.

Way to go Google.

Re:Microsoft buyout

[ron_ivi]

I expect plenty of mergers (perhaps them buying, perhaps someone buying them); but perhaps not Microsoft.

Here's the trend I see of lots of Kleiner [kpcb.com] companies like Sun, Compaq, AOL, Netscape, Electronic Arts, and yes, Google.

The begin with lots of top-talent in lots of areas - academic, practical, financial, etc. Eventually they do very well (Sun, Netsape and AOL come to mind as the examples most familiar to /.); and some of the bright peole move on - some to start their own things, some to retire, or get promoted to management. Whatever the reason, most (notable exceptions, electroninc arts, genentech) fade after a while; IMHO because the best people moved on.

Then KPCB'll invest in those best people's next venture that will once again take on Microsoft in the next hot area of High Tech.

IMHO it never was Netscape vs MSFT, or Sun vs MSFT or AOL vs MSFT -- it's always been KPCB vs MSFT; with Sun, NSCP, AOL, Google just minor divisions of KPCB's virtual company bound together by a common culture of great innovation.

Re:Making Mistakes

[NoMercy]

How do you know it's a mistake until youve tested it and proved it was a mistake :)

Though I guess the really really really smart people make a 2nd mistake in a isolated model where they controll each of the parameters.

Refinement, branching.

[yoshi_mon]

If the people at Google know what's good for them, and a suspect they might, they will keep their search engine clean and fast. Refineing it such that it stays on top. No more wading though countless newsgroup posts to find what your really looking for. Or a better way to refine searches that do hit things like newsgroups.

After that they can branch out and play in the market. Gmail is one such venture and there are others that are worth a stab at such as the peoplefinder thing that I don't remember off the top of my head right now what it's called but it's been a pet project for a while now. Other things such as Froogle seem to be worthy of more development.

However key to all the fishing they might want to do they have to keep that main engine humming. Do no evil! Keep the respect of the geeks and lusers alike. Computers move fast and the internet moves even faster and once you slip it's very hard to go back.

Re:Microsoft buyout, not likely

[Kurt Gray]

Not really. The buyout would still have to be approved by Google executives and shareholders, the only reason they would approve that is if Microsoft offered more than the mid-term market value of the stock which Microsoft is not likely to do especially at these prices.

Re:Attitude

[stratjakt]

Let's go offtopic with Netscape.

Netscape used to be the best browser, and that's why I used it. I remember IE 1.0, it was fucking aweful. Then IE 2.0, still aweful. Then IE 3.0, which IMO, was right about on parity with Netscape.

Then IE 4.0 came out, and I switched, because it was better than what Netscape had. Netscape stopped developing, and channeled it's dollars into a legal fight with MSFT.

So, blah blah, AOL comes along and dismantles Netscape. The OSS community takes over the day to day of mozilla.org, and the focus is once again on development.

Now I use FireFox, and more and more switch daily. Hell, articles run in MS's own Slate magazine recommending FireFox.

I use it because it's the best browser, IMO. Just about everyone I've showed it to has switched. Because they think it's better than IE. They like the speed, they like the tabs, they like the popup blocking, etc. I don't even have to sound like a tinfoil hat and rant about security. The fact that it's a better browser has been enough to convince people.

Thats why I never bought into that "Microsoft killed netscape by bundling IE" bullshit. I never used IE because it was bundled, I used it because it was better and didn't bork my box like NS did.

So how does that relate to Google? If Google focuses on legal fights with MSFT, or other silly nonsense a la "you set the default home page to msn.com and thats an abuse of yer monopoly", then Google is doomed. Who cares what my homepage is, I use google because it's the best search engine (right now). The day it's no longer the best search engine, IMO, I'll stop using it.

Hopefully they spend the money on developers, not lawyers.

Re:i hope

[Valar]

Part of the reason google is so sucessful is because they DON'T use the model you are talking about. It isn't as simple as 'more ads == more money.' If the quality of the service is hurt by attempts to make a profit, it will drive away the users, which will drive away customers (advertisers won't pay for all those ads unless somebody actually _looks_ at them). It is pretty hard to make a profit with no customers.

Re:Sick of it

[Apreche]

The fascination with google is simple. In today's broken capitalist economy it is very hard to get ahead. The biggest most powerful corporations are those that do "evil" and use lots of advertising and lies to get ahead. Google is the first company to hit it big in a long time in the true Adam Smith capitalist sense. They made the best product, they did right by the customer and they have a policy of "no evil". People voted with their dollars and now google is on top. If only the same thing happened in all markets and not just web search engines we might live in a much better place.

Imagine if your car was as good at being a car as google is at being a search engine. Imagine if the tv channels and radio stations you watched had a similar advertising policy to googles.

Google is fascinating because it proves you can get ahead without underhanded business tactics, coercion and lies. You can just make a product that is better than everyone elses, quality wise, and that's enough.

Expansion

[bStrom]

It seems that, while ad revenue has made Google what it is, ad revenue can not be the company's only source of income forever. They have to expand into other areas. Everything they do seems to be based on the expansion of their ad revenue (i.e. - GMail, Froogle, etc.). They also bought they recently bought Picasa [picasa.com], so where else will they expand and how will they make money doing it?

What I'd like to see...

[maxchaote]

If the rumors of Google's 100,000 servers and proprietary grid/cluster OS are true, then what I think would make the most sense for Google is to offer free access worldwide to their supermachine from any standard computer or through special terminals. Google could essentially be the next OS: virtually unlimited storage, bandwidth, and information at your fingertips from anywhere in the world. People could log-in from anywhere in the world and have access to vast resources for running applications remotely, instantly searching and sorting all your files, or managing your personal email or other information. And all you have to do is put up with a couple of unobtrusive text-based ads, or pay the low, low subscription fee of $29.99/month.

Goal: marketing information

[bigberk]

Information about consumer habits and desires drives product development. Knowledge is power, and many companies are driven by marketing initiatives. In other words, marketers determine the need and direct product development.

Credit cards provide a useful way to track consumers and build files on their habits. Other electronic cards (club card memberships, air miles, etc.) provide similar ways to gather consumer information. The companies that gather this information then sell it out to other marketing firms.

It's safe to say that Google is an internet search used by everyone. This means they have some of the most valuable information for a consumer world. They could easily make billions packaging this data properly and selling it to marketing firms.

They'll need more than search

[Ars-Fartsica]

How much of your time do you spend searching anyway?

Re:Goal: marketing information

[bigberk]

It's safe to say that Google is an internet search used by everyone. This means they have some of the most valuable information for a consumer world. They could easily make billions packaging this data properly and selling it to marketing firms.

Following up to my own post... what's interesting about this business direction, should Google decide to go that route, is that they won't have to litter their search engine with ads. They could keep it running exactly as it currently is, with the efficiency and simplicity we enjoy. After all, it's the information obtained via regular searches that is valuable, not any direct actions (ad-clicking) by the users themselves.

Dominate supercomputing & buy SUN. Seriously

[ron_ivi]

Google almost certainly already has the most scalable database, and scalable file systems in the world. What they don't have yet is a way to capatalize on their supercomputing expertise.

I think they will buy Sun, who has a different set of strengths in high-end computing (customer contacts).

This is made more likely because of the personal connections between the companies, including having the same investors, whose portfolio companies often help each other long after they're small (remember AOL,NSCP) [slashdot.org], and recieved their seed money from Andy Bechtolsheim one of the founders of Sun Microsystems [google.com] .

Re:i hope

[stratjakt]

If they're so successful, why the need to go public?

As the shareholders get more and more say, they'll try to make it as simple as "more ads == more money". That's the road Yahoo went down, well that and the silly "internet portal" thing.

You're right. It is pretty hard to make a profit with no customers. That's when you haul out the lawyers like Netscape, Sun or SCO.

They all turned to litigation as a source of revenue, whether they sued MS or linux users is pretty much irrelevant.

I'd like to see Google stay the way it is, and simply improve incrementally as it has been doing.. But I'm afraid the writings on the wall.

They got a whole new rulebook. If they want to keep the war chest full, they have to make investors happy, and investors may not share the founders world view.

The sad truth: Google is getting worse

[fname]

Unfortunately I think Google has been getting worse at its primary function, finding relevant webpages based on simple queries, for years. I remember back in 1999 when i 1st discovered Google. The results at Altavista were littered with spurious results, and I usually had to use long boolean searches to get decent results-- usually on the 3rd try and the 4th page of results. Google came along and blew that all away, and there was 1 big reason-- no one was trying to SPAM Google's results, and I doubt anyone even knew how.

Fast forward 5 years. So many SEO types are now infiltrating Google's results that they are not nearly as relevant as they once were-- remember when Google was sued for downgrading linkfarm results, and they backed down? Anyone use the "Feeling luck?" button anymore? It's nice you can see 100 results per page, but I usually end up doing 2 or 3 queries to get the proper result these days. I still use Google, but Teoma (Ask.com, I believe) seems to work equally as well, and if Google doesn't improve their search results, they will have a long, slow decline.

Their other innovations are nice (Froogle, Google News, GMail), but they are really just sidelights to their core competency-- finding relevant webpages. I'm hoping they figure out how to do it.

Re:All I know is...

[wdavies]

To paraphrase the Wall Street Journal last week, the settlement between Yahoo/Overture showed that for such a technologically advanced company, their revenue depended on an invention made by another company.

Just so you dont forget it. They have now LICENCESED bidded text advertising concept from Yahoo/Overture (formerly GoTo.com).

That admission cost em 300 million dollars. Remember it next time you praise Google for inventing it.

Reintermediation

[Phaid]

Isn't it funny how, in the dot-com boom of the roaring 90's, "disintermediation" was the buzzword for the phenomenon that was going to make everyone super rich? Cut out the middleman, allow shoppers to directly access your site, and watch the dough roll in.

And isn't it great how the most successful web businesses, like Yahoo, Amazon, eBay, and Google, are all busy making money through "intermediation", acting as the middleman who points buyers to sellers, and making money by selling ad space and transaction fees?

I love it when a plan comes together :)

Re:Dominate supercomputing & buy SUN. Seriousl

[cpeterso]

Why in the world would Google buy Sun? Google does not want to sell hardware or Java. Google's data centers run el-cheapo commodity x86 servers. And Sun is not even profitable.

Mod up the AC

[mdfst13]

The AC is absolutely correct. Buying their way in is absolutely the Microsoft way. However, this is more a revision of the grandparent's point than a refutation. Once in, Microsoft simply abuses their market share in other areas until they bury the competition. They do not buy out competitors. They only buy to get a foothold in that market. Then they outsource (recently offshore but traditionally in the US) improvements to that software.

Another aspect of Microsoft: they team up with a company to develop an extension to their current software then dump the partner. Both Roxio and Citrix fell for this.

Microsoft probably would buy out the competition but for those pesky anti-trust laws.

Re:Sick of it

[WuphonsReach]

Google is fascinating because it proves you can get ahead without underhanded business tactics, coercion and lies. You can just make a product that is better than everyone elses, quality wise, and that's enough.

Well, at least as far as we know about.

There's been enough shills and shysters along the way (Sunbeam and the exec who was known as either the axe-man or the fixxer-upper dude) that it's best to wait and see for a few years before annointing them saints. Wal*Mart used to have a good corporate image as well, but I refuse to buy from them unless they're the *only* place where I can get product X. (Happened once last year.)

So far, Google looks clean... if they still are clean 5 or 10 years from now, I'll agree that they are truly a company to be admired.