Google, Blogger, and the Stupidity Temptation
Now we see what Google is made of.
Google got to be the #1 brand name world-wide, beating Coke and Osama not by out-spending them or by having a catchier jingle. No, they did it the way (frankly) Cluetrain said: by having value and values.
Marketing was invented to solve a distribution problem: How do we let potential buyers know about what we have to offer? The answer was to buy distribution channels that, by their nature, reached a mass audience with a one-way communication, AKA “a message.” With thirty seconds to make their case (or, in the print world, with the time it takes to flip a page), companies treated their messages like dumdum bullets: hollowed them of content hoping for maximum impact. Marketing, which should be about communication and conversation, became a cynical numbers game, the apotheosis of which is spam.
But the Internet has solved the distribution problem. Everyone is connected to everyone. We fill the Net with talk about everything we care about, including the products we buy, bought, or will never buy again.
In this environment, a company like Google succeeds by offering something of value and by acting with values that let us trust it. So far — despite some fear-mongering recently — Google seems to have earned our trust. It’s one of the best examples of a company adopting the “End-to-End” principles I talked about in the lead article in Friday’s issue of my newsletter.
But Blogger offers such a temptation to go wrong. What, after all, is Google’s business case for the purchase? For example, the purchase of Deja.com gave Google content that drew more users and, more important, gave them more pages on which to sell ads. Google’s ad policy maintains its value and its values: the ads are unobtrusive and are listed in order of their utility to users (based on clicks). But with Blogger, there are two tempting ways Google could violate the trust they’ve earned: They could start charging for all Blogger accounts, and they could weight searches towards Blogger blogs.
Weighting searches would clearly violate the principle that has built Google’s presence: rankings that try to reflect the Web’s own preferences. Charging for all Blogger accounts would violate the implicit bond that has made Google not only known and used but loved, for it would make the Web a worse place overall. Google’s record so far has been great: Whatever the business reasons for rescuing Deja, the purchase also preserved the UseNet archives, making the Net a better place. And, of course, the superiority of Google’s searching ability has made the Web a far better place than it was before.
Many companies get stupid when they get big. So far, Google has bucked the trend. Let’s hope it doesn’t give into the temptation to get stupid now.
Categories: Uncategorized dw
Not sure why I’m being anomalously optimistic here, but I’m thinking Google might not be entirely absorbed by a “business case.” They might be intrigued by the research possibilities. By the chance to experiment. I’m intrigued by what they might be able to learn and to do. At least, one can hope.
From a research point of view the tuning fork is tintinabulating.
Topography, say, to begin. Cf. the blogosphere with the web and the net. Map, spiders! Trace the different patterns. Watts/Columbia Project not right? And the person who suggested, to Powazek, some years ago, that the blog world might be a kind of Venn diagram, right? Maybe. We’ll see.
[Meets the Dunbar limitation.]
And “everyone is not connected to everyone”, D. Weinberger. There are impractical and impossible diameters. Rather a lot. As big studies have shown.
But to do some large and small, side by side, compare and contrasts? What fun!
Halavais and Lawley will be salivating. Me too.
Explain to this naive person, why would charging for blog accounts be a bad thing? (others do it for free, so I can see why it would not be successful) but why would charging for blogs be bad?
Charging for placement in Google search would destroy its value to users, and weighing searches to Google blog customers would destory its value. But why would simply charging for an blog account be a bad thing?
Two reasons. First, making it harder to get started with the easiest blog-starting site would be a Bad Thing, IMO. Second — and this is what I really had in mind, although you wouldn’t be able to tell that from what I wrote — starting to charge for accounts that are *currently free* would be a betrayal and disruptive.
I’ve got nothing against charging for services on the Net in general. It’s the specifics of this case that concern me.
Google + Blogger = Go_Ogle, the Mother of All Online Dating Sites
Here’s how I think it will happen:
First, Google will improve the searchability of the “blogosphere” by making it easy for bloggers to append a file containing information about themselves and their blogger friends. This information will be encoded in an RDF dialect called FOAF (Friend of a Friend).
Soon after, it will start to dawn on people that the FOAF file is effectively a static online profile, while the associated blog is akin to a living profile (in the ‘living document’ sense).
One tipping (i.e. inflection) point later, usage of Google by date seekers will grow to an such extent that our (grand)children will read about it in their history texts. Online dating is at 26M users and growing, after all.
Google will then acquire the best RDF query toolmakers and launch Go_Ogle, the mother of all online dating sites.
Once Go_Ogle is in place, the possibilities are absolutely mind-googling :^)
More on this, including a pointer to foundational code for GPLed Go_Ogle, at http://www.opportunityservices.com.
Thoughts?
Enjoy,
Frank Ruscica
Founder
The Opportunity Services Group :: Have Fun to Get Ready
http://www.opportunityservices.com
Are Blog Voices too Loud for Google?
On Monday, Google CEO Eric Scmidt announced ‘Soon the company will also offer a service for searching Web logs, known as blogs’. Today, in Google to fix blog noise problem, Andrew Orlowski of The Register speculates that a new “Blogs”…
The future of media publishing – personal or commerical
At Harvard Business School’s recent colloquium,
“The Bandwidth Explosion – Living and Working in a Broadband World”, Eric Schmidt of Google and Rob Glaser of RealNetworks debated the future of media publishing in a world of more and cheaper broadband.
Abschließendes zum Deal der letzten Woche?!
Google, Blogger, and the Stupidity Temptation. Now we see what Google is made of. Google got to be the #1 brand name world-wide, beating Coke and Osama not by out-spending them or by h…
Now, nine month later, nobody think about the google – blogger problem.
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I am reasonably intelligent. lets say 101% Why do I view with despair any probability of having to ‘sign in’ to a new offer of any sort – involving providing various kinds of details to whatever service is required. At first I thought the results were just my inexperience/stupidity. Then I found the fatal symptoms. I had already, by then, learnt from bitter experience that I must write down the exact finest, and complete details of whatever information I was asked to provide – on a separate card to which I could refer when in doubt. This was no help. My applications continued to be rejected,
Even on the odd occasions when a version had been accepted – the next day it was a 50/50 chance of fresh rejection. When told to ‘reapply’ I did so with usual care but it was still useless. THe first time I have seen a ‘Frequestly Asked Question’ which included the question – ‘none of the above’ I was deleriously happy – but I was soon back with the same old FAQ’s. After further search I found instructions (never on the page I was reading) to go elsewhere and perform a series of actions which would lead to the Holy Grail. It is not that easy. The place you are told to go to is out of sight on another page on my PC. When found the chances are that you are either a) back to the old FAQ or b) asked for new technical information which is not only a mystery like HTML
or URL – what does it mean, If I was clever enough to answer all the questions I wouldnot have fallen into the initially more sophisticated ‘signing-in’ traps in the first place. You are probably as tired from reading this as I am in writing it – but my problem is that I still can’t, after several struggling hours, sign in to a FREE service. What a cost to life and limb and its for the 200th time it’s happened. I am currently trying to free myself from the horrors of Hotmail@msncom where they are trying to corral me into a new even more complex system as I try, hopelessly to join Google Email – which maybe smooth and easy – but I’ll never find out at this rate. At least I’ve been able to let my hair down – but I doubt if it will do me any good – “just another crank” I hear someone say…… yes I wish I could just go back to my faithful old word-processor. Would it not be a good idea to ‘try things out on the dog’ I could guarantee to mess up your fancy systems in five minutews and then you’d find out why it did not work – cutting out one of your Frequently Answered Questions!!! Sincerely Paul Amphlett
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