I appreciate the fresh view of the situation, while I thoroughly admire
Doug's "Pester Power" (admire, not envy, nor aspire to), I think it
assumes something that is not neccesarily true about Google. They just
are not who we want them to be, and perhaps not even who we think they are?
Owen's analysis is very pointed and I find it convincing for the most
part. For what it is worth, Google is still a very YOUNG company,
despite it's breadth and depth. Think Apple and Microsoft *back* in
the 80s, maybe early 90's. The founders are still clearly driving and
apparently with NO contention (as opposed to Apple/Jobs in the 80s). I
don't follow tech news closely, so I could be missing something.
They claim that their model is to "do one thing really well", when in
fact, they either do that one thing (search) really well, and dozens of
others pretty well, and a few things poor to middling (but not for very
long?), or they just keep expanding what they mean by that "one thing"?
While they operate within the existing economy and technical landscape,
they are also redefining it by their existence as well as their nature.
Whatever we may think about their play in the telephone market, it *has*
significantly changed the game all around. Would the iPhone be what it
is if Android hadn't been introduced?
"The best way to predict your future is to create it" - Abraham Lincoln
For some reason, I have often heard this attributed to Steve Jobs... in
any case, it would seem that Brin and Page (and Schmidt?) are doing
their best to re-invent the concept.
- Steve
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
------------------------------------------------------------------------
*From: *"Bruce Sherwood" <[email protected]>
*To: *"The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group"
<[email protected]>
*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 <[email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]>> 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
<[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
There, fixed that.
http://things-linux.blogspot.com/2013/02/96-days-and-counting.html
<http://things-linux.blogspot.com/2013/02/96-days-and-counting.html>
--
/Doug Roberts
[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>/
/http://parrot-farm.net/Second-Cousins/
<http://parrot-farm.net/Second-Cousins>
/
505-455-7333 <tel:505-455-7333> - Office
505-672-8213 <tel:505-672-8213> - Mobile/
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