Well, yes. If an individual struggles with a $50 billion company,
the individual will always lose, right? The post from Owen was
not bad. Let us take a look at the origins and the good sides.
They will have noticed your frustration by now.
I think Google is (still) awesome.
Google has the best software engineers, the best search
engine, the best maps, and it tries to keep a balance
between engineering (good) and marketing (evil).
Apple had that balance in the beginning, too, when
Jobs and Wozniak complemented each other perfectly.
Much later after Wozniak left and Jobs took control, it
shifted strongly towards marketing.
It is questionable if the approach Apple uses now, i.e.
offering the full stack from hardware to software wrapped
in beautiful design does have a future, see for example
https://rachelbythebay.com/w/2013/02/22/mac/
During the history of mankind, full stack solutions and
totalitarian control in other systems lead to all kinds
of evil *ism's. For example if we bring the political system
in line with the economy ("Gleichschaltung"), then we get
a kind of communism:
- nationalism (merging of culture+political),
- imperialism (merging of military+political),
- rascism (merging of biology+political/ideological),
- communism (merging of economy+political),
- nazism, totalitarianism (merging of everything above)
-J.
On 02/26/2013 11:30 PM, Douglas Roberts wrote:
What is Google? It is a $50 billion company. That's what it is.
--Doug
On Tue, Feb 26, 2013 at 2:13 PM, Eric Charles <[email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
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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[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>/
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