Has Google Peaked? 332
nile_list writes "Robert X. Cringely's latest column explores just what the heck Google could be doing. 'Google likes to play the Black Box game. What are they DOING in all those buildings with all those PhDs?' He concludes that it's likely Google has peaked as a company: 'What if everyone is mainly wrong? What if search and PageRank and AdSense are Google's corporate apex. Most companies would be content with that, but Google isn't supposed to be like most companies. But what if they are?' His conclusion is that 'Microsoft's clearest threat still comes from Apple, though not the way most people expect.' It's an interesting read."
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Google hasn't peaked. (Score:5, Insightful)
I dunno, the article sounds rather like pretty wild speculation to me. Not that speculation is wrong—the author admits it's speculation—but if any of this stuff comes to pass, I would chalk the author's correctness up more to luck than to keen insight.
Google has a lot of project in the works, including Gmail, Gtalk, Google Desktop, etc. These projects are anything but mainstream and have a LOT of room for growth. Hell, there's still even room for growth in their primary market, the search engine. Though they are huge, they are far from owning that market.
And Apple knocking off Microsoft? Maybe, but if they haven't done it yet, I don't have much reason to believe they'll do it anytime soon. I will admit that there was an interesting speculation in the article:
Wild speculation, but man, it would be fun to watch the resulting scramble.
As for me, I'm convinced that if anyone will ever knock off Microsoft, it will be an OS that gets game developers behind them. I've said for years that as weird as it sounds, gamers drive the market. Not many people use computers at home or school for productive uses, most people use them for playing games. The most popular "applications" on my own computer are probably Firefox and City of Heros. Firefox already runs on a zillion platforms. If City of Heroes ran on Linux, I would probably go ahead to switch to a Linux-only system, if for no other reason than it's free and I don't have to buy a new version every few years.
Once everyone is using an alternative OS (not necessarily Linux, but something other than Windows) at home for games, then they will all want to use it at work and school for productivity and educational applications, and that familiarity will drive more and more companies and schools to switch desktops.
But that's just my wild speculation...
Yes (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:How do you know Google is telling the truth? (Score:2, Insightful)
Make use of the information you received from the search. Did the information help you solve the problem that led you to make the query? If it did, then the information was relevant.
Re:What are they DOING? (Score:3, Insightful)
He's working. As a journalist and columnist, it's his JOB to write stuff.
I hope Google has peaked (Score:5, Insightful)
Its hard to hate a company that usually has the far superior product, but Google is getting huge and a little scary.
Re:Of course Google has peaked (Score:5, Insightful)
Just Cringley being an Apple fanboy again (Score:4, Insightful)
Didn't we all get tired of hearing this same song from the Amigans, how any day now _insert company who owns em today_ is going to come back with something wonderful and all the infidels on PCs and Macs will be wailing and gnashing their teeth?
Apple is a bit player now, will remain a bit player after Intel. In fact, after they perform this one last act for Mr. Gates (get TCPA into mainstream use, something Gates was rightly pilloried for trying under the Palladium name) I'd expect the coup de grace to finally be administered.
But leave off the last part of that collumn and it does raise an interesting question. Where does Google want to be in ten years?
Google maybe, Apple no (Score:3, Insightful)
Wow (Score:5, Insightful)
This has to be a new low. "I don't know what Google are doing, so I'll write about how I don't know what Google are doing!"
I thought this "OS X on generic Intel boxes" thing had been done to death? How are Apple going to solve the driver problem? Giving away a free older version that doesn't work with half your hardware is going to make a negative impression, not a positive one.
Feeling Lucky (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Google hasn't peaked. (Score:3, Insightful)
Yes and no. I agree with your opinion of a game-oriented OS having enormous potential - but PORN, not gaming, according too all the internet statistics I've ever seen - drives the market - the truth is not always pretty. Gaming simply has overcome all other forms of popular - and mainstream - entertainment - deriving more revenue than the movie industry, etc.
robots.txt (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Blah blah (Score:4, Insightful)
There's a lot at stake here for a lot of people; Google has collected a huge pile of investor money, and they should expect to be scrutinized, speculated about and puzzled over endlessly.
I wonder how much longer they'll be able to get away with their "black box" style of product development before investors get nervous about it and run away? This article is a symptom of that nervousness, and represents a great example of the media doing it's job to raise questions.
I agree on some point on Apple (Score:3, Insightful)
The other reason the Intel move hurts Microsoft is less subtle. By switching to Intel, Apple hurts development on the new Xbox360. Right now development is done on Apple G5s probably because of the similiarity in chip architectures. By moving away from PowerPC, Apple makes it harder for game companies to develop. Sure developers could probably use something else like Intel emulating PowerPC or an IBM PowerPC machine. But the later is very expensive ($5K a piece) and the former doesn't provide for real-world simulations.
Re:It is obvious isn't it? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Blah blah (Score:4, Insightful)
Google Earth isn't even THEIR PRODUCT, they bought it, that's not innovation therefor it can't drive their peak higher, that said what the heck is it even good for, I'd file it under GAME.
Ok so what do we have that's spectacular, made by them, useful and recent, Gmail. But wait! That's not innovation either, heck I've been able to get to my IMAP mail for YEARS and do full text searches on it and even gasp STORE MORE THAN A GIG! Heck it even has a spiffy web interface, but who cares, I just keep a copy of my Thunderbird configuration on my web server and use Thunderbird wherever I go, however I will give FULL POINTS to Gmail because my mail setup is more complex and expensive, ie not free. Also it doesn't have clever targeted ads to remind me that I need to consume something.
Ok so we've got a search engine that's pretty good, oh but wait, have you checked out another one in the last six months? I imagine you have not. The competition is getting pretty darn good! Worse still the SEO companies are getting pretty good at tricking Google.
So has Google peaked? We won't know until they go bankrupt, which will eventually happen, or someone will buy them or the Internet will be phased out but corporations don't last forever, whatever the case may be the post mortem will be facinating. Until then, I'm happy to use their search engine every day and play with http://maps.google.ca/ [google.ca]
But do I think their the be all to end all like the rest of the slashdot fanboys, no.
Do I think I could do better? Oh probably not but I do know some ways that Google could make it's services better.
Search Engine:
*Allow me to specify a set of web sites I NEVER want to results for.
*Allow me to specify that I never want to see another damn
*Allow me to sort my results by AGE, how can you know how old it was, crawl the sites and when it changes the contents of more than x percent of the sentaces longer than x mark it changed.
*How about a ranking system? Give me the option to mod down a site and once a domain name gets enough people saying it's crap (*cough*about.com*cough*) drop it from the index
Gmail
*DON'T HIDE THE GOD DAMN DELETE FEATURE UNDER A MENU! I don't care if you want me to keep my shit around forever I don't want to keep some moronic E-Mail about kittens, but that doesn't mean my friend is spamming me!
*How about we have the notify app remember my password? That one would be super cause I already have to log onto my system and if little sally doesn't want her brother checking her email she can turn this off, or atleast give me the option to turn it on.
Talk
*Make it connect to the MSN server too like GAIM does, Ok so I can use GAIM to connect to Talk but still, I'm not a GAIM fan.
Earth
*How about a high speed grayscale only mode and integration with Talk so that I can put a pushpin into my map and send it to my friends?
*Why does maps.google.ca have roads for places that Earth doesn't?
Toolbar
*How about it could come with an integrated tool that stops other toolbars from being installed? That'd be fantastic then I could just put it on my family's computers and not worry about them installing more tool bars, or any software for that matter!
*Integrate a clock, people like clocks! Oh and make sure it stays up to date
Desktop Search
*Make it work on more than one user, this shouldn't even be that damn hard what's wrong with you people?
I've lost my rant will....
I'm going to go drink Tang now..
Apple can't give away OS X (Score:3, Insightful)
I can't imagine that these people who continually suggest that Apple get OS X working on commodity Intel boxes have ever really used Macs. Apple doesn't sell a computer--they sell a user experience. Seriously. From the moment you plug the computer in, you're in a little Apple dream world, full of eye candy and "everything works" and stuff that's easy to use. Do you think replicating that experience on commodity Intel boxes is easy, much less even possible? Do you think that Apple would want to risk their image on such an outrageous gamble? Not a chance.
Dlugar
Re:I hope Google has peaked (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:OSS Google Killer? (Score:4, Insightful)
But the idea is intriguing. What I've been thinking is that if something like that should be made, it should be done as a part of Firefox. Every page you visit could be indexed by Firefox. Not any other pages. There's not a crawler involved, because you're the crawler: Your surfing habits decides which pages are indexed and which are not.
Now think about BitTorrent: The more people sharing the same file, the faster you can download it. Imagine if the same applied to your distributed search engine: Often and much visited pages would have a high distribution, and would therefore "be more searchable" and therefore automatically be ranked highly.
With this you'd get a search engine where pages could be ranked according to popularity and freshness in a way that ordinary search engines cannot do. It would be a kind of social bookmarking service for search.
Re:Blah blah (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Blah blah (Score:5, Insightful)
It started up when they announced they were going public. Yeah, there were a few anti-Google articles here and there, but I noticed a dramatic increase around that time. Suddenly "don't be evil" stopped being a good principle and started being spun as deception. Articles that would have been written as "Google are unlikely to do this because of their Don't Be Evil rule" are now written as "If Google do this, then so much for Don't Be Evil!". It's a subtle change in language, but a big change in tone.
Dunno why it is, mistrust of public companies, jealousy, the sudden disappearance of underdog status... it's probably a combination of things. All I know is that once, the fact that Google did good things and not bad things was seen in a positive light, and now that isn't good enough - people want a guarantee that Google will never do anything bad, which is an impossible expectation that nobody could satisfy.
How does Google make money? (Score:1, Insightful)
Now what? Desktop Search, Google News, Gtalk, Picasso, Gmaps, GEarth are all interesting apps/services, however, they...don't...make...money.
Microsoft has like 10 different revenue streams, some completely separate from Windows (e.g. Xbox), so does Apple and so do most companies who are smart. Even Yahoo has diversified, offering paid services, making deals with cable providers. Google is very very dependant on search.
Re:Blah blah (Score:3, Insightful)
I guess we have different understandings of the term "general sentiment".
Elegance not excellence (Score:2, Insightful)
Did you actively think not having a 1 GB e-mail account was a problem before GMail came along? Did you not manage to get any maps off the net? Did you not have other IM clients? Did you have a shortage adverts to put on your site (if you had/have one) to generate revenue?
They exploit niches. None of their 'products' are profound, but they've reawoken long forgotten tools (XMLHTTPRequest), and used existing ones like Javascript to their potential (circa Google Javascript was seen by most as dirty and evil and no good except for form validation). They've made adverts less intrusive, (although alot of sites don't place adsense very smartly). Everything they do is elegant, and clean - not excellent, innovative or terribly wonderful. I think that appeals to geeks more than anyone else.
I'm not anti-Google, I love what and how Google do things and use alot of their stuff. The way they create more buzz by disclosing less than most companies do with a marketing fanfare, that is genius.
Re:Blah blah (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Google hasn't peaked. (Score:1, Insightful)
Um, this is the stupidest thing I've ever heard. You might hang out with the "unproductive" types; e.g. losers who do nothing but play computer games.
In my experience, *everyone* I know who has a computer uses it for productive purposes: writing, photography, video, design, business, etc. These are the people for whom computers matter, and they can't afford viruses, etc. And there are hundreds of thousands of these types of people visiting Apple stores with renewed interested these days.
So called "gamers" can get an Xbox.
Re:Has Cringely Peaked? (Score:2, Insightful)
There are countless writers out there whose job is to do exactly that - to speculate and postulate how organizations, the markets, and the world are going to change. Perhaps you're the sort that simply waits for the world to change around you, always on the trailing edge, but a lot of people like to be in a position where they're not just along for the ride.
What I'd really like to know is why you felt it so important to purportedly read the article, and then to comment on it? If speculation isn't your cup of tea, then move on. Instead I think you're driven by some sort of desperate Google-love, fanatical in your quest to piss on those who dare to question the almighty Google. That particular disease is pretty rampant around these parts.
Re:What if Apple has peaked? (Score:3, Insightful)
I honestly can't understand the latest popular mantra: "Google has peaked". It seems that those espousing that view or so deeply rooted in traditional ideas of what or how a business should perform that they fail to see that the real beauty of a company like Google is that it doesn't set its sights on any one particular market or business because it understands the fluid nature of the tech world.
From the article: It will take the company another five years just to mature the businesses they already have
That statement is screaming ignorance of the tech business world and a devotion to old fashioned thinking. Specifically: "Find a product or service, slowly develop it over a period of years, fight competitors for market share, and comfortably become one of the leaders in the industry". That way of thinking might work great if your in the business of selling bird feeders, but it's folly to suggest it should be an acceptable business plan in the tech world.
In another five years, the "businesses they already have" may be irrelevant. Remember, Windows 95 was released only 10 years ago last Wednesday. In August of '95, very few companies even had web pages. IT was exclusively a productivity focus, and had next to nothing to do with marketing. Assuming a geometric increase in change (which isn't all that unreasonable), we can only speculate in dim generalities what the tech world will be like in 5 years.
A company that's going enjoy long term success in the ever changing tech world is one that doesn't spend too much time developing any one product line, because something else can come along which literarily overnight renders that product or service moot.
Google seems to understand this. While their roots are in the search engine, they've proven to be quite adept at entering new avenues and in a very short period of time offering a service which is significantly better then their competitors.
While no one other then those who are the inside can say for sure, it appears that their path to success is pretty simple:
1. Find out what people want, and give it to them. While Google was working on making their search engine faster and further reaching, Yahoo was trying to turn their search engine into an "Internet Portal". The thing is, people wanted a better search engine. Nobody wanted, or even asked for a portal. Google says "We're going to provide for people what they say they want" while Yahoo was saying "We're going to provide something for people that we think they want". While Yahoo's search page was becoming more and more cluttered with useless widgets, Google's page was simple and to the point. (to see what I mean, go to http://www.yahoo.com/ [yahoo.com] and then http://www.google.com./ [www.google.com] If all you want to do is search for a webpage, the simple design of Google's search engine suggests a greater utility).
2. Don't fill customer's heads with marketing hype about how you think your product should be used. Instead, make your product versatile and flexible enough so that others can discover a way to use it to its fullest potential. Google maps (maps.google.com) is a great example of this. Take a look first at one of Google's competitors in this field: Mapquest. At the top of the page is a claim of what Mapquest can do. "You can find it!". There's another blurb at the bottom about how great they are because you can use Mapquest to link maps from your website. A full quarter of the page is devoted to an advertisement. There are links for finding everything from Hotel rooms to fishing trips. Yet, despite all of these fancy, in your face claims of how great Mapquest is, it's still little more t
I like Google (Score:2, Insightful)
I'm not going to blindly follow some faceless comment or story telling me to think Google is evil *or* good. I make up my own damn mind!