“The Google I was passionate about was a technology company that empowered its employees to innovate. The Google I left was an advertising company with a single corporate-mandated focus.”
Another great, honest piece of writing from someone who had once been in love with Google and everything it stood for. It’s too bad the ethos has changed so much at Google, mostly thanks to this solution to the lack-of-problem in “sharing”, which is all based upon building a competitor to Facebook in order to gleen more money from advertisers.
Facebook succeeded because it was an earnest attempt at changing the world – a genuine one. Ads came as an afterthought – connecting the world came first. And despite all the tough decisions Mark has made, he has, and continues to, change the world.
Google needs to start looking ahead to find the next big innovation, rather than trying to beat Facebook in what looks to be a purely defensive maneuver at best. Maybe they can fix email, or make a service that has no rival in terms of making your life easier. Something, anything besides continuing to put wood behind the failure that is Google+, something they can’t even put reliable numbers to.
I always thought Google was more powerful as a search company, and that its future as a source of innovation would have been secured had it not tried to fight on every front. But alas, it’s too late to turn back now. So long, old Google of yore.
Is James Whittaker right that focusing heavily on Google+ has made Google worse and broken its culture of innovation?…
Focusing on Google+ has been a major shift in strategy for Google, in that now it has a focus. One of my favorite pieces on this was from Ben Horowitz, juxtaposing Schmidt and Page as peacetime vs. wartime CEOs [1]. What does this mean? A radical cult…
[...] form. From a user perspective, Google has lost sight of its core mission, and more importantly, has lost sight of where the next innovation may lie [5]. Even in Google Play, something as core as searching through my personal collections on the [...]