Owen, Based on your analysis, Google is a venture-capital company that likes to play things close to the chest, and sometimes pretends to be an advertising agency. Their core stregnth is seeing projects through to deployment, and so long as individual project's R&D budgets stay in line with the proportion of projects that succeed, then who needs focus?
So... Those phones didn't work? Well, we can always try again, because the majority of consumers have short memories. Or we can drop it and transition the resources to one of our 815 other projects that seem more promising. The only way to loose is to commit too much to a project that fails, so being less committed to follow-through is a form of protection! If that is what they are doing, you are right that their business model is structured screwy. On the other hand, if they were " Google Group LLC " then they would have to officially close companies when projects fail. Certainly they would be viewed more negatively if they "closed 7 companies last year" then if they "ended 7 beta-tests". Never mind that the beta-tests were 8 years long and had a dedicated staff of 350 people; carry on, nothing to see here. Eric -------- Eric Charles Assistant Professor of Psychology Penn State, Altoona ----- Original Message ----- From: "Bruce Sherwood" < bruce . sherwood @ gmail .com> To: "The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group" < friam @ redfish .com> Sent: Tuesday, February 26, 2013 4:13:44 PM Subject: Re: [ FRIAM ] Wow. 6 whole days without a Nexus 4 post. Nice analysis, Owen. Makes a lot of sense. Bruce On Tue, Feb 26, 2013 at 9:12 AM, Owen Densmore < owen @backspaces.net > wrote: Doug: I've been thinking about the google difficulty with managing their own hardware. It occurred to me that its history .. i.e. Apple didn't just invent a phone out of the blue, but instead had a long history of small personal devices. Their mp3 players. And they eventually evolved into a the iPod , a very sophisticated mp3 player plus much more. Then the iPhone . This is also true for the Palm Treo . Palm had the PDA .. the Palm Pilot which had years of evolution and maturity. Only then did they attempt the jump to a phone. In google's case, nada . No hardware history to speak of. So its not surprising that they did not succeed. Also, google as a company lacks the coherence and focus that both apple and palm had. They knew their markets and they knew their customers. They had considerable experience directly connecting to the customer. Apple even went so far as to have stores .. very direct connection with their customers. As much as I love the " google ecology" for mail, docs, search etc .. and admire their 2-factor authentication, I don't think of them as a single entity .. but a bunch of "loosely coupled, tightly aligned" services. But the internet is not a market, its a utility like water. So a google phone is sorta like a Facebook phone, or a Twitter phone. Indeed, because they are both greatly engaged with communication, they make more sense to me than a google phone. Android came out of google's several attempts to gain traction in the web/ internet world, a "web os ". But even there, they really didn't go the extra mile. I'd expect Comcast to build a more effective web device .. internet is a core competency for them. Google uses the internet and has data centers, but they are not in control of the network aspect. So google has an identity problem. They apparently make their jack on advertisement. Would you expect an advertisement agency to build a good phone? Where I think google does have identity is in the browser. Chrome is abs fab, must have, and way ahead of the pack. V8 redefined javascript . So they do own their destiny there, although unfortunately for them, chrome is not pre-installed on mac and windows. No problem for us but quite an issue for others. Google really should be called Google Group, LLC with several separate competency centers that go whole hog after single, focused markets. G+ is a winner, but they need to treat it like Facebook , not part of google . Android is an OS. Sun found out selling OSs doesn't work. And worse, android, in the phone market, is split between the Unholy Trinity of carrier, handset provider, and google as OS. So either google catches up with history, slowly, as done by apple and palm .. and plans for that type of evolutionary progress, or google will distract itself into other ventures like "big media" and even "banking" like google wallet. Here's a question that focuses: which industry would google do best to acquire dominance? Should they buy Verizon or Comcast to own the internet they so well understand .. google fiber to the home? Should they buy Disney or CBS or MSNBC or Sony to become a media giant? Should they buy Amazon to become e-commerce giants? Should they buy AWS to own internet IT? Amazon is actually a great example .. I really do "get" Amazon and understand their evolution. Kindle, sure obvious. AWS , sure why not outsource IT if your already the best? Cloud music? Sure, already sell it so make it a "library in the sky". Google refuses both history and evolution and focus. They say they're and advertisement company. Would you buy a phone from an advertisement company? Until coherence, no success. -- Owen On Sat, Feb 23, 2013 at 10:39 AM, Douglas Roberts < doug @parrot-farm.net > wrote: <blockquote> There, fixed that. http ://things-linux. blogspot .com/2013/02/96-days-and-counting. html -- Doug Roberts doug @parrot-farm.net http ://parrot-farm.net/Second-Cousins 505-455-7333 - Office 505-672-8213 - Mobile ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http :// redfish .com/mailman/ listinfo / friam _ redfish .com ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http :// redfish .com/mailman/ listinfo / friam _ redfish .com </blockquote> ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http :// redfish .com/mailman/ listinfo / friam _ redfish .com
============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
