GOOG? MSFT? AAPL?
A good intellectual discussion on Google’s Strategy, between two great thinkers on Planet Earth.
Me After relentlessly aping Yahoo (email, maps, search, messenger, local), Apple (G1, App Store, et al), Microsoft (OS, Live mail, Docs, Browser), Google sets its eyes on Facebook. I think they should get an award for being the least creative company in the world – the only innovation they came up with was Google Wave – which no one uses anyway… …forgot to mention Google Buzz – which was a Yahoo innovation about half a decade before Google.
More on Google’s ‘Facebook Killer’ – Google 24/7 -Fortune Tech
Me Google! Here is a good idea for you to copy… hurrryyyyy up….!!!
An Introduction to Firefox’s Tab Candy
Amigo methinks they’ve been working on it since acquiring bumptop in may… http://youtu.be/M0ODskdEPnQ
Me Ah!! I remember you showing me this… but did they do this for the browser…? Its just a desktop organiser…I think the first such thing was Fences – http://www.stardock.com/products/fences/
Amigo it’s likely for chrome os, which might as well be a browser. the desktop becomes your browser, and tabs become stackpiles. the lines between browser and desktop will ultimately be blurred…
…I still have my doubts for chrome OS… Google scrapped the Nexus phones project… an OS is a far cry for Google… unless ofcourse they do what they do best – dish out a sub standard, half baked OS and rely on the users to fix/open so…urce modify, it…
:p :p :p An OS for Google is a whole new ball game I guess, MS and Apple have like yearssssssss of experience, in the OS market, Google, however large, is just a new kid around the block.
Let’s see. :)
Amigo i’d concur if only os’s were to stay bound to the desktop. but considering that the internet is becoming the platform of choice, google has a good chance of capturing the market. they are light years ahead of ms and apple in cloud computing, and whoever controls the cloud, i think, will control the os industry. of course, they should do things right. nexus one failed purely from a commercial standpoint; android, however is fast becoming the mobile os of choice.
Ummm… can’t say really. The concept of a blur in the distinction between OS and Browser is based on everyone having access to continuous internet bandwidth, which Google is still “working on”. Infrastructure-wise it’s a long way to get th…ere even in developed countries.
Thing is that Google cannot control the cloud – there’s too much competition around for letting any one company do it. Even if Google comes up with an application akin to Google Search that is to the cloud what Search is to internet, still it won’t exactly be “controlling” the cloud any more than it controls the internet today.
Google comes across as a jack of all trades and master of none. Remember Linux – it was open source and way better than existing OSs – people used it but what is the market share as of now? Google, in my opinion should realize that customers are here to enjoy the products and not act as a free feedback/R&D resource for them… ;)
Amigo August 2 at 7:43pm
what’s up! i found an interesting article that i think sheds some light into how i think google’s chrome os will scale and capture market share rather quickly. the article talks about how in 1.5 years they’ve grown android to become what it is today.
the question is if android is a proxy for chrome os.
We’re Lucky Google Acquired Android, And Here’s Why [Opinion] | Android Phone Fans
Me August 2 at 8:52pm
…hmmm. I agree on the point that Android just might become the next platform for all smart (phone?) devices – just like Symbian became for phones early in the decade. But again, Apple is too smart to let it happen. However, desktop OS, I retain, is a different ball game. If open-source was the panacea for all marketing problems then we would be running our phones on Linux as of now ;)
The only thing Google loses out on, again, is that they conceive (copy) an idea and then leave it there. They took out the Beta tag from Gmail, introduced Wave and threw it to shambles and so on. The fact will remain that they rely on their customers to improve their products for themselves, I don’t think that is a sustainable model. Microsoft alone is a huge market driving force to reckon with, leave alone Apple combined with it. [c.f. The sales of Apple Mac were actually more than the sales of Apple iPad!] So, people might adopt Android as a part and parcel of their lives – but the target market segment will remain as those technos who can devote their time to rectifying Google’s products! :) Which, I’m sure is a minority.
Talking of services – how many people actually use Google Shopping, Google Books, Google Scholar, Google News etc, as compared to Amazon, Wikipedia, BBC/CNN etc? I never recall looking up anything on Google Shopping vis a vis on Amazon, for example.
Again, jack of all trades and master of none. The argument stands :P
Amigo August 2 at 10:03pm
with regards to the google topic, which i find so fascinating (hehe), the “jack of all trades, master at none” certainly applies if you measure google as a media, or “content creation” company. indeed they are not a media company, nor are they a retailer. their mission is simply to “organize all the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful”. now, if you measure them by their mission, they’re doing well in archiving all of human information and knowledge (from the past and present), including all our communications, documents and files, news, etc. and then they make sure you can access this information on any device, in any language, and in any geography. this prehaps, helps explain why theirs is a vision to build an os as a platform that not only sits in pc’s and phones, but an os that will be capable of running in your car, your tv, your watch, your home’s electric/water/gas meter, even your microwave oven, your fridge, and washer. this is where i think mac and windows will fall short. because they are device-sepcific os’s. theirs is not a vision to “organize all the world’s information and making it universally accessible and useful”, and, that, i think is the difference.
anyway, with regards to google books… it’s right now the world’s largest book archive with an estimated 12+ books, and as soon as they get the litigation case cleared, they will be able to commercialize the service and sell in-copyright books on the much anticipated google editions (http://www.theatlantic.com/culture/archive/2010/07/what-is-google-editions/60061/). the difference, once again, is that google’s open system will allow any manufacturer of e-reader tablets to “plug into” its books archive and sell e-books (sony reader is already in the bandwagon, and other manufacturers are rumored to have signed similar agreements). what’s more, google editions will allow the corner bookstore down the street to resell e-books from their own websites (a university, for example, will soon be able to sell its students electronic versions of its textbooks, for example, leveraging google editions and making a revenue on a fraction of that sale — similar to how adsense works). this, i think, will change the way books will be sold and distributed, not to mention magazines and newspapers. to be fair, the ipad is already doing much of this, but it is not universal, nor does it encompass the millions of books google has in its archives.
google shopping is great to do comparative shopping. i also prefer to buy from amazon, but i’ve come used to comparing prices and products on google first because they include retailers from every corner in the globe that sometimes have better deals (i recently found a cheaper gift that i am buying a friend on google shopping than on amazon, for example, and i will be forgoing amazon for this particular product).
google news is an aggregator, nothing else. but it sure does a great job at showing me the bbc/cnn news in a meaningful way clustered with similar news from huffington post, techcrunch, cnet news, and other lesser-known but excellent news blogs and sites (this is why google reader is such a fantastic service, for example).
Amigo August 2 at 10:04pm
*12+ million
Regarding Google’s strategy: Let’s take it step by step – time to bring in the emmm beee ayyyy! :p
Ultimately any business has to be profitable. Google has grown exponentially over the past decade.
Google’s average share price in the
1) Last month = $474.64
2) Last year = $526.37
3) Last 2 years = $449.56
4) Last 5 years = $460.69
5) Last 10 years = $418.53
Even a cursory look shows that its steadily destroying shareholder value, and therefore all acquisition and diversification is just a consequence of managerial entrenchment. Would you agree that Google has been destroying shareholder value – or should we do our detailed analysis and compare results!! :p
Furthermore even though Apple has a lower share price than google but much more market cap – and a look at the comparative yield curve shows that investors really believe in the power of AAPL than GOOG. [5 yr returns are 495% and (just) 62%, respectively!!] I would not buy GOOG shares if I had the money man :)
http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=microsoft+goog+aapl
microsoft goog aapl – Wolfram|Alpha
www.wolframalpha.com
Me August 2 at 11:58pm
…and I hope you looked at Android data carefully!! :)
Data Showing Android Pushing Past Apple Does Not Include iPhone4
Me August 3 at 12:02am
…and another one… let’s do a blog-entry debate on this whole issue! I’m sure we will reach some insight… and then we can sell it to a consulting firm for a million bucks or so..!! what say!! :P
Wait, So 20 Phones On 4 Carriers Outsold 1 Phone On 1 Carrier?Shocking.
Amigo August 3 at 7:50am
if you knew google (really its two founders), you’d know that short-term financial gains is not of their interest. in this sense google is unique in that it still preserves its dna of going after long-term, risky ventures rather than short-term conservative ones. android, for example, is a business that is expected to grow to a $10 billion for google in the long-term, but as of today i doubt it has garnered them any profits. the same applies to virtually every service they’ve released since. their planning horizon is not 5 years, it’s more like 20-30 years. and this is why it’s trivial to even measure their success by stock market factors.
if you haven’t read google’s ipo prospectus, written in 2004 by brin and page, i highly suggest you do, because it sheds a lot of light on what their strategy is (in particular the section titled “RISK VS REWARD IN THE LONG RUN”. the buyer of a google share has more in common with a buyer of a berkshire hathaway share than a buyer of a microsoft or apple share. and this is what i think is the difference. you buy a google share for what it will do in 20 years, not in 3 years. after all, organizing ALL the world’s information and making it universally accessible and useful (which implies the gargantuan challenge of not only archiving EVERYTHING but also translating it into every conceivable language and creating industry standards so that different technologies have access to it) is a task that will surely take many years, if not decades.
a good example of this is the google transit feature in maps (google essentially created a universal standard for transport agencies all over the globe to be able to upload their bus/train/ferry/subway schedules so that their mapping service can provide public transit routes to us). this has been a long-term undertaking by the maps team that is only now (after more than 5 years since inception) starting to see commercial use as people commuting to work by public transport can access/use this information from google maps in their smartphones.
and yes, i think the blog idea is a good one. the only thing is that there are so many other blog sites that specifically cover google and apple and the like, that how could we differentiate? :-/
2004 Founders’ IPO Letter – Investor Relations – Google
Me August 3 at 1:51pm
20-30 years!?!?! That’s tooo far a horizon for an advertising/internet technology company. Also, I think it doesn’t make sense to project a $10 billion revenue without seeing the current market share in the market. I mean, what is that projection based on? Just because Larry and Sergey say so, doesn’t make it the truth! And I’m not even sure if Google’s aim of “consolidating and making accessible” the world’s information is going to be relevant 3 decades from now. I mean email was trivial 15 years ago and today its a part of everyone’s daily routine. Who knows something like the “6th sense device” takes the market by the storm and suddenly “organising” the world’s information becomes a redundant aim in the first place.
Furthermore, the rate at which information is being added every day to the internet – via blogs, journals, papers – organising an ever increasing pool of information is like a dog chasing its own tail! I think tools like Wolfram Alpha and Microsoft Pivot do a better job in deriving insights from collected data rather than just trying to amass heaps of data for the fun of it. Be honest man – how often do you see the second page of the millions of search results on Google, rather than changing the search term itself?
I think comparing Google to Berkshire Hathaway is a bad analogy. A Berkshire Hathaway share is like a portfolio of shares each of which have a defined revenue stream. On the other hand most of Google’s services are free and have no revenue stream – their major revenues coming from search and advertising. Most of the competitors in the market have already started beating Google at their own game – dishing out better products than Google does.
Finally, it cant be said that financial analysis is trivial. After all, Google did feel the heat of the recession (attached link), and its a corporation – it needs to make money to keep shareholders satisfied, simple. :) Frankly, I have my doubts over whether Google will even exist 3 decades from now! :)
Google Feels the Heat of Recession – To Lay off 10000, Stops New Services, Freezes Hiring
Amigo August 3 at 8:42pm
i would argue that “search” is perhaps the most intrinsic of human characteristics that separates us from all other animals. it is our relentless quest for knowledge that has been in our dna probably since neanderthal times. so i digress in the thought that google is a temporary phenomenon. i think, if anything, that they are the quintessential model of the information age. much like the oil, steel, and commodities giants are/were the beacons of the industrial age, it is google, beyond any other company that truly embodies the information-driven world we live in today. search, as it happens, is something we’ve been doing all along, just not from the comfort of our palms or laps, which is essentially what google has done. so i do think they will be very much relevant 30, 40, 50, heck, even 100 years from now. because no matter what, so long as we continue to be human we will always seek out knowledge and information. the proverbial “search box” may or may not last that long.
indeed, the 6th sense device may very well make typing a query redundant; but then again, this is why we see google pioneering visual and voice search. i would nt be surprised to see a 6th sense device powered by android, for example. and as of competitors dishing out better products than google’s, i have yet to find one. beyond search (and by that i mean in text, voice, and imagery) – which they clearly dominate and outperform anyone out there – their webmail, mapping, reader/news aggregation, video hosting (youtube), voice recognition, and web translation/transliteration services are all superb. sure, they’ve had products that have flopped. but, if anything, this shows that they are willing to take risks and try new things and that they are ok with the idea that they are not perfect.
in the end, google’s relentless work in eradicating barriers to entry to the world’s knowledge, enabling any high school student from any corner of the globe to access all the world’s literary works, maps, audiovisual media, etc, and on top of that create their own information and share it with others, is as compelling and noble of an ambition as that of so many ngo’s striving for providing everyone in the world with equal access to clean water, healthcare, and education. and, to be frank, this is quite simply the root cause of why i will forever support google more than apple or microsoft. because at the very least, google’s goal is to make all the world’s information available to EVERYONE (let’s not forget that besides their impressive translation work, they also work heavily in making their services available to the blind and deaf), whereas apple and microsoft do not. =)
did you know…
that everytime you use google voice search (whether from your smartphone’s google app, or by calling goog-411) and everytime you leave a voicemail on google voice, you are training google’s voice recognition systems which directly improves their youtube captioning technology, so that the hearing impaired can increasingly have access to the millions of videos uploaded each day?
and that every time you use a captcha service (google acquired the company that invented it about a year ago), you are helping improve google’s ocr (the optical scanners that they use to scan books and pdf documents that makes them searchable) technology? (google books offers a service for the visually impaired, that uses text-to-speech technology to read out loud the text in books, but without 100% readibility, these technologies are not that useful, for example)
pretty cool, no?
Me August 3 at 9:11pm
…comparing Google to oil and steel is way way way way off!! I don’t fully agree that search sets us apart from animals – the thing that does, in my opinion, is that we are the only species who can witness our own behaviour and not act on instinct.
Searching is relevant, yes, but finding insights in the gazillions of search results is what is much much more important, I think.
Nobility alone cannot get Google anywhere, if they are serious about their business and want to get where they see themselves in the future they have to play by the market. The world is a graveyard of noble ambitions – I do support the company in doing what they are doing but the way and pace they are doing it in is just not competitive enough. Google can continue to play the rebel and try their hand at everything but the world wont be kind if you don’t measure up to customers expectations.
As for NGOs – Bill & Melinda Gates foundation is enough proof (they made the greatest donation of $5b to provide healthcare solutions to the poor) that nobility can be pursued only if you have the money to back it up. Bill Gates is accused of stifling competition and monopoly but his donation of $5b (and that’s only one) proves beyond a doubt that alongside the aim of building a reputation for Microsoft he had a soft corner for the poor as well. What was his incentive to donate such an exorbitant amount to a charity – I’d say nobility. He might be under trial for a million anti-trust court cases, but if he can think outside of his business and donate such amounts to solely improving world healthcare – I think he should run for the President of the US ;)
I would never agree that just by providing a better search engine or operating system, Google are doing a job that can be compared to something as noble as providing better healthcare for countless millions. If Google thinks that just by experimenting in OSs and better operating systems they can be considered to be “noble” – they can dream on :) as Lorenzo would put it – “dreaming is free”.
And as far as the aim of making information available to everyone – including blind and deaf, is concerned, I could give a dog tonnes of cat food, and it would still be hungry. I will still need convincing how a homeless blind and deaf fellow will benefit from a faster search algorithm than two decent meals a day.
BBC News | YOUR MONEY | Bill Gates’ $5bn donation
Me August 3 at 9:24pm
…actually dogs can eat cat food happily. Bad analogy, but I hope you know what I meant :)
Me August 3 at 9:29pm
and some more charity…
By now, Bill Gates’ philanthropy efforts are well known, but the billionaire co-founder of Microsoft may have still managed to surprise a few people by promising to donate $10 billion (through the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation) over the next decade to fund new vaccines to fight diseases in poor countries around the globe.
“We must make this the decade of vaccines,” Bill Gates said at the press conference to announce the donation. “Vaccines already save and improve millions of lives in developing countries. Innovation will make it possible to save more children than ever before.”
The $10 billion pledge comes in addition to $4.5 billion the foundation has already tossed towards the research, development, and launching of vaccines, CNet reports. With the $10 billion in additional funding, Gates believes there’s a good shot at turning around the childhood mortality rate by the end of the decade.
“We’ve made vaccines our No. 1 priority at the Gates Foundation because we’ve seen first hand their incredible impact on children’s lives,” Melinda Gates added.
…anyways, the point is that Microsoft has done much much more towards vaccines and healthcare than Google can ever imagine (or pretend) to do in the next couple of decades :)
http://www.maximumpc.com/article/news/microsoft_donating_8_meals_each_ie_8_download
Microsoft Donating 8 Meals For Each IE 8 Download | Maximum PC
Amigo August 3 at 9:39pm
i applaud bill gates. i think the guy is a genius. i don’t have anything against him, actually. i think ballmer is the idiot driving ms to the ground.
definitely i don’t think building a mere os and search engine is grounds for nobility. indeed it is not the “what” google does that makes it noble, but they “why” and “how”. android is free to manufacturers, and is continuously improving it and making it readily accessible – for free – to the developer and manufacturing community. they’ve in effect, lowered the barriers of entry in the walled-garden world of mobile devices (and soon televisions, car infotainment systems, and numerous other peripherals) so that low-cost phone manufacturers from china, india, and elsewhere can have the same access to information and communication that more expensive blackberry’s and iphones provide to the upper middle classes of the developed world.
i agree that a homeless person would have little to no use of google. for them, water and food is their only concern. our thirst for knowledge will never be greater than our thirst for water. this i fully agree. but if and when someone’s hygienic needs are met (i.e. health, water, food, shelter), then the second most important need to fulfill is education. and at the very least, google is helping lower the barriers of entry to education and accessibility to information. the one laptop per child programme may or may not be a success as it was expected to become (by the way, i read that a $35 laptop is in the works in india, which i think is great!). but the sheer fact that thanks to google, a child with such a laptop in, say, kenya can search for whatever their heart desires (even peruse google earth or discover a world of new things on the internet) and communicate and share with his/her friends in swahili, for free, is commendable. (lest not forget that google has been and is still working with universities and enterprises in these countries to provide free services to people in countries such as kenya).
so this is what i meant as a noble mission vis-a-vis microsoft’s or apple’s. bill gates, unfortunately, is not microsoft. the guy’s a legend, the company not so (although it used to be).
some links i highly recommend checking out:
Google.org :: http://www.google.org/
Google Trader (Uganda) :: http://www.google.co.ug/mobile/sms/#intro
Google Apps in Africa :: http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2007/03/google-apps-now-south-of-sahara.html
Me August 3 at 10:02pm
Yep, so Google is
1) In the developed world doing what any other company of their caliber and vision would do – creating a series of disruptive innovations to stall the competition.
2) In the developing countries trying to unleash individual creativity by giving affordable technological access to everyone.
I had actually looked into the RE<C project in quite some detail when writing Marketing Myopia for the Green Energy industry and found out that (like other projects) that too is a half-hearted effort.
So, I will say it again, if Google really wants to be known to add any value to society then it must concentrate on doing a few things better than the others, rather than half-heartedly pursuing everything under the sun. This, and only this, will enable them to make enough money for a sustainable future!
…and I think with that we’re back to square one!! hahahaha!!!