11 ms·

Is Google becoming the new Microsoft? Not in the evil sense, but in the lame me-too products that rely on brute force (their huge install base) and no innovatio

Is Google becoming the new Microsoft? Not in the evil sense, but in the lame me-too products that rely on brute force (their huge install base) and no innovation to hopelessly try to compete sense.

hexis 17y ago
I think they also are probably releasing products in order to confuse competitors and developers. Joel on Software calls this "Fire and Motion" when Microsoft used to do it. http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000339.html http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000339.html
- intellectronica 17y ago
  That's an interesting perspective. That would sort of put them in the 'evil' bucket, and I really don't think they are (or maybe I'm being naive?)
  - rgrove 17y ago
    They're certainly doing their best to hijack the "Buzz" product name away from Yahoo!.
    - thwarted 17y ago
      Or the buzz.com domain from AT&T. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1079765 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1079765 AT&T To Launch Yelp Competitor - The telco's buzz.com site lets users' "favorite" local vendors and services.
    - dunk010 17y ago
      They already have a namespace clash http://buzz.blogger.com http://buzz.blogger.com
cantastoria 17y ago
Google has always been this way as far as I can tell. They're basically using Microsoft's old strategy of "clone it and give it away so we can sell more of Windows" only with Google it's ads. The difference is everyone still loves them. Microsoft was seen as ruthlessly destroying their competition. Google is seen as innovative. Bizarre.
- michaelcampbell 17y ago
  What did Microsoft ever give away to sell more Windows? (Serious question.)
  - smallblacksun 17y ago
    IE, Silverlight, Express editions of Visual Studio off the top of my head
    - michaelcampbell 17y ago
      I'm curious if Silverlight or VS actually caused any Windows sales. IE too, really; would someone who's not already running Windows actually switch to it for IE? Seriously? But point taken; that it worked (or not) doesn't negate the fact it was done. Thanks!
  - Teulon 17y ago
    They used to give away free copies of MS Office at Military conventions to senior personnel. The idea was that those people would start using the new default formats and others would be required to buy upgrades. It worked quite frequently that I know of.
- wvenable 17y ago
  Open source software is frequently a clone of commercial software and free. If that were enough to be "evil" then everything would be evil. Nobody is claiming that Google is innovative in this example.
  - 17y ago
yungchin 17y ago
I really liked Chris Dixon's post "What's strategic for Google?" from a while back: http://cdixon.org/2009/12/30/whats-strategic-for-google/ http://cdixon.org/2009/12/30/whats-strategic-for-google/ ... following his line of thinking, this may be a lame me-too product, but they _have_ to run it anyway: if they allow Facebook to move a lot of user-hours away from the internet to what is really a big intranet, that would kill Google's revenue.
- intellectronica 17y ago
  Right, so the interesting twist in Google's story is that because of their dominance in the open web it is in their interest to protect the open nature of the web, rather than lock users into another walled garden. That's pretty cool, and I think they've been very smart to position themselves that way. It's still surprising how they completely fail to innovate in some areas, though.
  - lftl 17y ago
    And how much I personally use this will hinge fully on how well they do on making this as open as possible. If this has a solid API, and it's easy for an ecosystem of associated tools to grow around this, then I'll probably end up using it a good bit.
    - txxxxd 17y ago
      API is here: http://code.google.com/apis/buzz/ http://code.google.com/apis/buzz/
  - yungchin 17y ago
    Yes, that's exactly how I think we should look at this. The open web is full of AdSense-junkies, while on Facebook they won't have it. I'm not sure I agree that there's lack of innovation at Google; I'm trying to think of a big company that does any better in that regard and can't think of any.
- eagleal 17y ago
  So, just my thought, Google's primary mission is not search and advertsing, but has changed to be a wheel in a pool full of small fishes.
mawhidby 17y ago
From the looks of it, Google has integrated Buzz into their existing products (gmail, maps, places) that makes it more than just a me-too product. Specifically, a big advantage is in the way Buzz integrates with Gmail - it's brilliant. Compare how you would reply to an email notification from Facebook or Twitter: you'd have to login to the site and post your reply (or even see the actual reply) there. With Buzz, it's inline.
- waterlesscloud 17y ago
  Which assumes people don't move to Facebook email. Migration of my friends to FB email seems far more likely to me than migration of all my social graph to Google Buzz. It would also be trivial for FB to allow response to notifications via external email if they decide to do it. I think people are seriously underestimating the value of Facebook's existing graphs. They've been shaped over a couple of years now to what most people want them to be. The vast majority are not going to leave that behind for a me-too service.
  - mawhidby 17y ago
    You make a good point. I personally don't use FB too much, and don't see myself migrating, but I can see a lot of my friends who use FB possibly making the move. For me, I use several of Google's products daily, and always have my Gmail open. That's why I like Buzz, because it seems like it fits me well. What do you see happening to twitter then, if people move to FB mail, in addition to the introduction of Buzz?
  - sry_not4sale 17y ago
    >> It would also be trivial for FB to allow response to notifications via external email if they decide to do it. You can actually already do this by replying to the notification email!
- kesun421 17y ago
  Totally agree... rather than shipping a stand alone product and dragging along users to use them, they simply integrated a new product into a very successful one. Plus, the new product fits perfectly.
adrianwaj 17y ago
Actually, Google more resemble Sun Microsystems to me: 1 revenue generating product (search with ads as, as opposed to servers) and then building an eco-system around it to support it (by using open standards.)) I think Sun's revenues also came from Software and Services, but mostly servers. We all know what happen to Sun. I don't know where Google can find its next cash cow.
philwelch 17y ago
I had a similar insight when Google announced a tablet concept: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1094476 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1094476 Microsoft's business strategy has always been a kind of unfocused. They didn't ever sit down and say DOS or BASIC or Word was going to be the cornerstone of their business, they just did what they thought would be useful at the time until they managed to hit on something. You can tell because, though I can't say anything for their old BASIC's, DOS wasn't even very good! As Microsoft got big enough to parallelize this strategy, it turned into a kind of shotgun strategy where they simultaneously tried to build web browsers and gaming consoles and mobile phone operating systems and MP3 players and webmail and everything else. If you read The Road Ahead, Bill Gates writes about Wang, which was enormously successful but missed the PC wave just long enough to go out of business. After Microsoft's own close call with the internet (ironically around the time The Road Ahead was written and first published), I'm sure these fears intensified to the point where Microsoft started jumping after every hot new thing, be it multitouch, MP3 players, search engines, or whatnot. The contrast to this is Apple in the respective Jobs eras, which focused intensely on building a few great products. It's a far riskier strategy--if Apple invents the Macintosh and no one wants one, what then? Google's had a shotgun approach as well--I don't know why, but it seems like a good use of the talent they seem so intent on recruiting. Part of the shotgun approach is that some products are better than others, but a likely bad part of the approach is that you are prone to go chasing after every new trend.
- cantastoria 17y ago
  I wish we could see more evidence of this talent in their products. It seems like their "shot-gun" approach is to release a lot a half-baked crap just to generate some headlines and then hope people forget about it (e.g. Wave). I think this used to work when they were competing with Microsoft (which also released half-baked crap but for got called on it.. constantly). But now I think a lot of companies are releasing good products right out of the gate (e.g. Apple, Facebook) and this strategy is going to be less successful in the future.
ashu 17y ago
Argh what is the point of comments like these? It is totally drowning out any useful discussion about the actual merits or demerits of the product. The iPod was a lame "me-too" product, eh?
- intellectronica 17y ago
  Actually the same can be said of your answer :-/ That the iPod was a me-too product is an interesting comment, because it reminds us to look at what was special about it (beautiful design, tight integration with the desktop and media store). What's special about Buzz?
  - kingsley_20 17y ago
    tight integration with email?
  - ashu 17y ago
    That last sentence is the right question. If you think about _that_ for a few minutes instead, you will certainly come up with some arguments (positive or negative); but just saying "is G the next M?" is negative-content, really.
  - jonknee 17y ago
    When the iPod debuted it only worked on a small percentage of the world's computers and had no media store. It grew into a winner, but the first gen wasn't particularly special.
    - Lazlo_Nibble 17y ago
      The first-gen iPod had Firewire (instead of pre-2.0 USB), the scroll wheel (vs. button-only interfaces), and it actually fit in a shirt pocket (vs. the Jukebox which was the size of a portable CD player).
  - fab13n 17y ago
    - tight email / reader integration, of course. For non-geeks, one communication center is enough, and GMail is the right place: most won't setup a combined IM + Mail + Twitter + FB + RSS desktop tool. - lower barrier to entry: many people don't consider they have enough interesting things to say to make it worth creating a twitter account. They would more easily buzz it, since it's there in their mail account.
DannoHung 17y ago
It's not enough to copy a product to get the anger. You have to achieve dominance and then stagnate. Take Google Reader for example. When it started out, Bloglines was the superior web reader. Over time and through innumerable upgrades, GR developed a fundamentally superior product. Also, Google's thing has literally always been to launch half baked ideas, get reaction, and then iterate. All the while never charging anyone except for the eyeballs.
- Tawheed 17y ago
  GR didn't incrementally get better, Paul B. joined the team and re-started it from scratch applying lessons learned and principles from GMail.
lanstein 17y ago
How exactly is Wave not innovative? Not to mention the obvious GMail, Earth, Maps, Adwords/Adsense, ...
- vegashacker 17y ago
  The difference is that I still don't really get what Wave's about, and I think a lot of folks agree. I still remember the first time I saw Google Maps--I got it instantly, and I was blown away. And the intial value proposition of Gmail (a gig of storage) was obvious too.
  - bad_user 17y ago
    That happens with products introducing revolutionary ideas ... people don't quite get it ;) Wave is probably ahead of its time, and also suffers from a poor user interface.
artagnon 17y ago
The difference is quite simple. Microsoft started off with an unpopular operating system, and forced it down users' throats by tying up with the hardware manufacturers. Users don't have much of a choice in the matter. I think they lost contact with their end users at some point. Today, they're stuck with the NIH syndrome, and keep running around in circles, without making an effort to understand the way the market/ competition has changed. Google started off making good useful (and I'd say innovative) products like Google Search and GMail. They got their users to like them and focused heavily on keeping up with their customers' wants. They post pictures of their office, and talk about their "cool" work culture, and manage to get the public drooling all over. Microsoft didn't think any of this was important. At some point, Google will probably start becoming a sloppy uninteresting company that forces new products down their existing customers' throats. Still, a smarter successor.
- ytinas 17y ago
  Google is a better MS in the same way that MS was a better IBM. And for me personally Google is synonomous with NIH. I mean, a search/ads company making their own Phone? Operating system??? Router?!

Is Google becoming the new Microsoft? Not in the evil sense, but in the lame me-too products that rely on brute force (their huge install base) and no innovation to hopelessly try to compete sense.

hexis 17y ago

I think they also are probably releasing products in order to confuse competitors and developers. Joel on Software calls this "Fire and Motion" when Microsoft used to do it. http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000339.html http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000339.html

intellectronica 17y ago
That's an interesting perspective. That would sort of put them in the 'evil' bucket, and I really don't think they are (or maybe I'm being naive?)
- rgrove 17y ago
  They're certainly doing their best to hijack the "Buzz" product name away from Yahoo!.
  - thwarted 17y ago
    Or the buzz.com domain from AT&T. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1079765 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1079765 AT&T To Launch Yelp Competitor - The telco's buzz.com site lets users' "favorite" local vendors and services.
  - dunk010 17y ago
    They already have a namespace clash http://buzz.blogger.com http://buzz.blogger.com

cantastoria 17y ago

Google has always been this way as far as I can tell. They're basically using Microsoft's old strategy of "clone it and give it away so we can sell more of Windows" only with Google it's ads. The difference is everyone still loves them. Microsoft was seen as ruthlessly destroying their competition. Google is seen as innovative. Bizarre.

michaelcampbell 17y ago
What did Microsoft ever give away to sell more Windows? (Serious question.)
- smallblacksun 17y ago
  IE, Silverlight, Express editions of Visual Studio off the top of my head
  - michaelcampbell 17y ago
    I'm curious if Silverlight or VS actually caused any Windows sales. IE too, really; would someone who's not already running Windows actually switch to it for IE? Seriously? But point taken; that it worked (or not) doesn't negate the fact it was done. Thanks!
- Teulon 17y ago
  They used to give away free copies of MS Office at Military conventions to senior personnel. The idea was that those people would start using the new default formats and others would be required to buy upgrades. It worked quite frequently that I know of.
wvenable 17y ago
Open source software is frequently a clone of commercial software and free. If that were enough to be "evil" then everything would be evil. Nobody is claiming that Google is innovative in this example.
- 17y ago

yungchin 17y ago

I really liked Chris Dixon's post "What's strategic for Google?" from a while back: http://cdixon.org/2009/12/30/whats-strategic-for-google/ http://cdixon.org/2009/12/30/whats-strategic-for-google/ ... following his line of thinking, this may be a lame me-too product, but they _have_ to run it anyway: if they allow Facebook to move a lot of user-hours away from the internet to what is really a big intranet, that would kill Google's revenue.

intellectronica 17y ago
Right, so the interesting twist in Google's story is that because of their dominance in the open web it is in their interest to protect the open nature of the web, rather than lock users into another walled garden. That's pretty cool, and I think they've been very smart to position themselves that way. It's still surprising how they completely fail to innovate in some areas, though.
- lftl 17y ago
  And how much I personally use this will hinge fully on how well they do on making this as open as possible. If this has a solid API, and it's easy for an ecosystem of associated tools to grow around this, then I'll probably end up using it a good bit.
  - txxxxd 17y ago
    API is here: http://code.google.com/apis/buzz/ http://code.google.com/apis/buzz/
- yungchin 17y ago
  Yes, that's exactly how I think we should look at this. The open web is full of AdSense-junkies, while on Facebook they won't have it. I'm not sure I agree that there's lack of innovation at Google; I'm trying to think of a big company that does any better in that regard and can't think of any.
eagleal 17y ago
So, just my thought, Google's primary mission is not search and advertsing, but has changed to be a wheel in a pool full of small fishes.

mawhidby 17y ago

From the looks of it, Google has integrated Buzz into their existing products (gmail, maps, places) that makes it more than just a me-too product. Specifically, a big advantage is in the way Buzz integrates with Gmail - it's brilliant. Compare how you would reply to an email notification from Facebook or Twitter: you'd have to login to the site and post your reply (or even see the actual reply) there. With Buzz, it's inline.

waterlesscloud 17y ago
Which assumes people don't move to Facebook email. Migration of my friends to FB email seems far more likely to me than migration of all my social graph to Google Buzz. It would also be trivial for FB to allow response to notifications via external email if they decide to do it. I think people are seriously underestimating the value of Facebook's existing graphs. They've been shaped over a couple of years now to what most people want them to be. The vast majority are not going to leave that behind for a me-too service.
- mawhidby 17y ago
  You make a good point. I personally don't use FB too much, and don't see myself migrating, but I can see a lot of my friends who use FB possibly making the move. For me, I use several of Google's products daily, and always have my Gmail open. That's why I like Buzz, because it seems like it fits me well. What do you see happening to twitter then, if people move to FB mail, in addition to the introduction of Buzz?
- sry_not4sale 17y ago
  >> It would also be trivial for FB to allow response to notifications via external email if they decide to do it. You can actually already do this by replying to the notification email!
kesun421 17y ago
Totally agree... rather than shipping a stand alone product and dragging along users to use them, they simply integrated a new product into a very successful one. Plus, the new product fits perfectly.

adrianwaj 17y ago

Actually, Google more resemble Sun Microsystems to me: 1 revenue generating product (search with ads as, as opposed to servers) and then building an eco-system around it to support it (by using open standards.)) I think Sun's revenues also came from Software and Services, but mostly servers. We all know what happen to Sun. I don't know where Google can find its next cash cow.

philwelch 17y ago

I had a similar insight when Google announced a tablet concept: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1094476 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1094476 Microsoft's business strategy has always been a kind of unfocused. They didn't ever sit down and say DOS or BASIC or Word was going to be the cornerstone of their business, they just did what they thought would be useful at the time until they managed to hit on something. You can tell because, though I can't say anything for their old BASIC's, DOS wasn't even very good! As Microsoft got big enough to parallelize this strategy, it turned into a kind of shotgun strategy where they simultaneously tried to build web browsers and gaming consoles and mobile phone operating systems and MP3 players and webmail and everything else. If you read The Road Ahead, Bill Gates writes about Wang, which was enormously successful but missed the PC wave just long enough to go out of business. After Microsoft's own close call with the internet (ironically around the time The Road Ahead was written and first published), I'm sure these fears intensified to the point where Microsoft started jumping after every hot new thing, be it multitouch, MP3 players, search engines, or whatnot. The contrast to this is Apple in the respective Jobs eras, which focused intensely on building a few great products. It's a far riskier strategy--if Apple invents the Macintosh and no one wants one, what then? Google's had a shotgun approach as well--I don't know why, but it seems like a good use of the talent they seem so intent on recruiting. Part of the shotgun approach is that some products are better than others, but a likely bad part of the approach is that you are prone to go chasing after every new trend.

cantastoria 17y ago
I wish we could see more evidence of this talent in their products. It seems like their "shot-gun" approach is to release a lot a half-baked crap just to generate some headlines and then hope people forget about it (e.g. Wave). I think this used to work when they were competing with Microsoft (which also released half-baked crap but for got called on it.. constantly). But now I think a lot of companies are releasing good products right out of the gate (e.g. Apple, Facebook) and this strategy is going to be less successful in the future.

ashu 17y ago

Argh what is the point of comments like these? It is totally drowning out any useful discussion about the actual merits or demerits of the product. The iPod was a lame "me-too" product, eh?

intellectronica 17y ago
Actually the same can be said of your answer :-/ That the iPod was a me-too product is an interesting comment, because it reminds us to look at what was special about it (beautiful design, tight integration with the desktop and media store). What's special about Buzz?
- kingsley_20 17y ago
  tight integration with email?
- ashu 17y ago
  That last sentence is the right question. If you think about _that_ for a few minutes instead, you will certainly come up with some arguments (positive or negative); but just saying "is G the next M?" is negative-content, really.
- jonknee 17y ago
  When the iPod debuted it only worked on a small percentage of the world's computers and had no media store. It grew into a winner, but the first gen wasn't particularly special.
  - Lazlo_Nibble 17y ago
    The first-gen iPod had Firewire (instead of pre-2.0 USB), the scroll wheel (vs. button-only interfaces), and it actually fit in a shirt pocket (vs. the Jukebox which was the size of a portable CD player).
- fab13n 17y ago
  - tight email / reader integration, of course. For non-geeks, one communication center is enough, and GMail is the right place: most won't setup a combined IM + Mail + Twitter + FB + RSS desktop tool. - lower barrier to entry: many people don't consider they have enough interesting things to say to make it worth creating a twitter account. They would more easily buzz it, since it's there in their mail account.

DannoHung 17y ago

It's not enough to copy a product to get the anger. You have to achieve dominance and then stagnate. Take Google Reader for example. When it started out, Bloglines was the superior web reader. Over time and through innumerable upgrades, GR developed a fundamentally superior product. Also, Google's thing has literally always been to launch half baked ideas, get reaction, and then iterate. All the while never charging anyone except for the eyeballs.

Tawheed 17y ago
GR didn't incrementally get better, Paul B. joined the team and re-started it from scratch applying lessons learned and principles from GMail.

lanstein 17y ago

How exactly is Wave not innovative? Not to mention the obvious GMail, Earth, Maps, Adwords/Adsense, ...

vegashacker 17y ago
The difference is that I still don't really get what Wave's about, and I think a lot of folks agree. I still remember the first time I saw Google Maps--I got it instantly, and I was blown away. And the intial value proposition of Gmail (a gig of storage) was obvious too.
- bad_user 17y ago
  That happens with products introducing revolutionary ideas ... people don't quite get it ;) Wave is probably ahead of its time, and also suffers from a poor user interface.

artagnon 17y ago

The difference is quite simple. Microsoft started off with an unpopular operating system, and forced it down users' throats by tying up with the hardware manufacturers. Users don't have much of a choice in the matter. I think they lost contact with their end users at some point. Today, they're stuck with the NIH syndrome, and keep running around in circles, without making an effort to understand the way the market/ competition has changed. Google started off making good useful (and I'd say innovative) products like Google Search and GMail. They got their users to like them and focused heavily on keeping up with their customers' wants. They post pictures of their office, and talk about their "cool" work culture, and manage to get the public drooling all over. Microsoft didn't think any of this was important. At some point, Google will probably start becoming a sloppy uninteresting company that forces new products down their existing customers' throats. Still, a smarter successor.

ytinas 17y ago
Google is a better MS in the same way that MS was a better IBM. And for me personally Google is synonomous with NIH. I mean, a search/ads company making their own Phone? Operating system??? Router?!