6 ms·

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 Wind

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.
- adrianwaj 17y ago
  It's better than Twitter and FF because the messages can be larger. Images and videos look better. You can see a conversation inline. etc. It's taking the best of the Twitter ecosystem, Twitter, Friendfeed and putting it into Google's social graph. It's innovative with the combination of features they've chosen to employ, but it's not original, though. Search was never new when Google started either, remember. -- edit: I am going to use Buzz to start blogging again. Instant viewer base, who I can identify.
  - holman 17y ago
    Just as a nitpick: "the messages can be larger" is an anti-feature for me, and for many others that use Twitter. Inline images and videos is one thing, of course, but if longer messages was a feature then blogging would have defeated Twitter before it launched.
    - moultano 17y ago
      Most people can't figure out RSS readers, and twitter lets you read and write in the same interface. Everything else about twitter is an anti-feature, including the post length limit.
      - qeorge 17y ago
        The main reason for the 140 char limit is SMS. When it launched, Twitter was mostly a way to do a sort of SMS listserv. I wouldn't call the 140 char limit an anti-feature either. Its become a key differentiation point, and is in many ways what makes Twitter Twitter.
        adrianwaj 17y ago
        You can say a lot on 140 chars, also if something's junk you know quickly to not read it. It also doesn't take a lot of screen room, thus there's a lot of data available without a scroll down. It would be interesting to have a 140, 700, 5000, unlimited character filters in Buzz. If its display algorithm was used well, it could work out if long posts from a particular person were usually not worth reading to most people.
kesun421 17y ago
Not bizarre if you consider Google actually gives away source code of some of their best products for free. Microsoft just couldn't do this.
- cantastoria 17y ago
  And what I'm supposed to do with the source code? Relaunch it as another product and try and compete with Google? Free source code is the oldest trick in Google's book, it amazes me people still fall for it. Just out of curiosity, does anyone know of an example of a successful startup whose products are based on source code from Google?
  - kesun421 17y ago
    Would you rather just have documentation of APIs? Having the source code is better than not, at least it gives people the option to expand/correct/port anything if they wish to.
  - litewulf 17y ago
    Would you consider Linux a successful open source project? I imagine the greatest impact has not been people relaunching "Linux Pro", but people who have built off of it.
ewjordan 17y ago
Microsoft was seen as ruthlessly destroying their competition. Google is seen as innovative. Bizarre. Google gives away a ton of free services that work. Microsoft sells people something that they have (almost) no option not to buy, and causes a near infinite stream of headaches to just about everyone (even if you don't use it yourself - how many times have you had to help out friends or relatives whose Windows installations got screwed up?). Sure, giving stuff away may be a cheap ploy to earn goodwill, but I can truly say that Google's services have provided me with a lot of value. In the old days of Microsoft that was true for them, too, but over the past decade Microsoft products have done little more than cost me time and money. Is it really that bizarre that I feel differently about the two companies?
- cantastoria 17y ago
  even if you don't use it yourself - how many times have you had to help out friends or relatives whose Windows installations got screwed up? Actually never... but anyway. Sure, giving stuff away may be a cheap ploy to earn goodwill But it's not a cheap ploy. It's a destroyer of value. Once Google moves into a market it's impossible to compete against them (same used to be true of Microsoft and still is in markets they're dominant in..) My point is that as a community of people interested in startups/founders one would think Hacker News would be upset by this but everyone seems to celebrate when Google moves into a market and destroys it with free. Is it really that bizarre that I feel differently about the two companies? I think it's bizarre you think they're different.
  - enki 17y ago
    i don't really see how you can complain about someone doing a good job at providing a valuable service to users. if they do a bad job, i can compete - if they don't, i can't add value. it's not like we're gonna run out of problems to solve, because google is solving all of them for us.
    - ytinas 17y ago
      You don't? You're on this site so I imagine you dream of having your own start up some day, no? How would you like it if every single idea you have ends up with you working it to 80% completion only to have Google release a free version of it. Every time. Not freemium, not pay-as-you-go. Totally free. Would you like that? If you say yes then I think you need to take a step back and consider the possibility that you've been brain washed.
nostrademons 17y ago
Depends. GMail was fundamentally innovative - do you remember what webmail was like before it launched? GMail gave us a gig of storage and Google search over your inbox and threaded conversation view and keyboard shortcuts and a UI that didn't require page refreshes between each message. Similarly, Maps was fundamentally innovative. If you went to GMaps c. 2005 and then went to MapQuest, there was absolutely no comparison. I kept wanting to drag the map around to see what was just offscreen. And then Maps kept innovating with satellite imagery, and Street View, and local business labels on the satellite imagery, and double-click-to-find-the-best-vantage-point. Then there are a bunch of me-too products that succeed only because its Google and everyone already uses them. Unfortunately this includes everything I've done at Google, but I'm hoping they've set things up for future innovation. Real innovation takes time, usually 3-4 years. Google's strength has been that they're willing to devote that time, but you can't have every single product out the door be a hit.
- sfk 17y ago
  I'm afraid I don't agree with your use of the term "innovative". Regarding Gmail, I'd rather say they managed to clone mutt+procmail for the web in a reasonable manner. Regarding Maps, the fundamental operations had been in place since at least 2002 at e.g. http://www.nl.map24.com/ http://www.nl.map24.com/. Actually I haven't been there for quite some time, and I think in 2002 their interface was actually better than now.
  - nostrademons 17y ago
    We'll just have to agree to disagree then, because I don't see how anyone could look at mutt+procmail vs. GMail and say GMail wasn't innovative, or at nl.map24.com and say GMaps wasn't innovative. Both of those seem ridiculously hard to use by today's standards.
  - deleted 17y ago
    [deleted]
- cousin_it 17y ago
  Google Maps wasn't the first tiled draggable online map. That honor belongs to Bernhard Seefeld and map.search.ch, launched in October 2004: http://www.bernhardseefeld.ch/archives/000099.html http://www.bernhardseefeld.ch/archives/000099.html
jimbokun 17y ago
"Microsoft was seen as ruthlessly destroying their competition." There was also the fact that they blackmailed PC vendors into not installing Netscape.

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.

adrianwaj 17y ago
It's better than Twitter and FF because the messages can be larger. Images and videos look better. You can see a conversation inline. etc. It's taking the best of the Twitter ecosystem, Twitter, Friendfeed and putting it into Google's social graph. It's innovative with the combination of features they've chosen to employ, but it's not original, though. Search was never new when Google started either, remember. -- edit: I am going to use Buzz to start blogging again. Instant viewer base, who I can identify.
- holman 17y ago
  Just as a nitpick: "the messages can be larger" is an anti-feature for me, and for many others that use Twitter. Inline images and videos is one thing, of course, but if longer messages was a feature then blogging would have defeated Twitter before it launched.
  - moultano 17y ago
    Most people can't figure out RSS readers, and twitter lets you read and write in the same interface. Everything else about twitter is an anti-feature, including the post length limit.
    - qeorge 17y ago
      The main reason for the 140 char limit is SMS. When it launched, Twitter was mostly a way to do a sort of SMS listserv. I wouldn't call the 140 char limit an anti-feature either. Its become a key differentiation point, and is in many ways what makes Twitter Twitter.
      - adrianwaj 17y ago
        You can say a lot on 140 chars, also if something's junk you know quickly to not read it. It also doesn't take a lot of screen room, thus there's a lot of data available without a scroll down. It would be interesting to have a 140, 700, 5000, unlimited character filters in Buzz. If its display algorithm was used well, it could work out if long posts from a particular person were usually not worth reading to most people.

kesun421 17y ago

Not bizarre if you consider Google actually gives away source code of some of their best products for free. Microsoft just couldn't do this.

cantastoria 17y ago
And what I'm supposed to do with the source code? Relaunch it as another product and try and compete with Google? Free source code is the oldest trick in Google's book, it amazes me people still fall for it. Just out of curiosity, does anyone know of an example of a successful startup whose products are based on source code from Google?
- kesun421 17y ago
  Would you rather just have documentation of APIs? Having the source code is better than not, at least it gives people the option to expand/correct/port anything if they wish to.
- litewulf 17y ago
  Would you consider Linux a successful open source project? I imagine the greatest impact has not been people relaunching "Linux Pro", but people who have built off of it.

ewjordan 17y ago

Microsoft was seen as ruthlessly destroying their competition. Google is seen as innovative. Bizarre. Google gives away a ton of free services that work. Microsoft sells people something that they have (almost) no option not to buy, and causes a near infinite stream of headaches to just about everyone (even if you don't use it yourself - how many times have you had to help out friends or relatives whose Windows installations got screwed up?). Sure, giving stuff away may be a cheap ploy to earn goodwill, but I can truly say that Google's services have provided me with a lot of value. In the old days of Microsoft that was true for them, too, but over the past decade Microsoft products have done little more than cost me time and money. Is it really that bizarre that I feel differently about the two companies?

cantastoria 17y ago
even if you don't use it yourself - how many times have you had to help out friends or relatives whose Windows installations got screwed up? Actually never... but anyway. Sure, giving stuff away may be a cheap ploy to earn goodwill But it's not a cheap ploy. It's a destroyer of value. Once Google moves into a market it's impossible to compete against them (same used to be true of Microsoft and still is in markets they're dominant in..) My point is that as a community of people interested in startups/founders one would think Hacker News would be upset by this but everyone seems to celebrate when Google moves into a market and destroys it with free. Is it really that bizarre that I feel differently about the two companies? I think it's bizarre you think they're different.
- enki 17y ago
  i don't really see how you can complain about someone doing a good job at providing a valuable service to users. if they do a bad job, i can compete - if they don't, i can't add value. it's not like we're gonna run out of problems to solve, because google is solving all of them for us.
  - ytinas 17y ago
    You don't? You're on this site so I imagine you dream of having your own start up some day, no? How would you like it if every single idea you have ends up with you working it to 80% completion only to have Google release a free version of it. Every time. Not freemium, not pay-as-you-go. Totally free. Would you like that? If you say yes then I think you need to take a step back and consider the possibility that you've been brain washed.

nostrademons 17y ago

Depends. GMail was fundamentally innovative - do you remember what webmail was like before it launched? GMail gave us a gig of storage and Google search over your inbox and threaded conversation view and keyboard shortcuts and a UI that didn't require page refreshes between each message. Similarly, Maps was fundamentally innovative. If you went to GMaps c. 2005 and then went to MapQuest, there was absolutely no comparison. I kept wanting to drag the map around to see what was just offscreen. And then Maps kept innovating with satellite imagery, and Street View, and local business labels on the satellite imagery, and double-click-to-find-the-best-vantage-point. Then there are a bunch of me-too products that succeed only because its Google and everyone already uses them. Unfortunately this includes everything I've done at Google, but I'm hoping they've set things up for future innovation. Real innovation takes time, usually 3-4 years. Google's strength has been that they're willing to devote that time, but you can't have every single product out the door be a hit.

sfk 17y ago
I'm afraid I don't agree with your use of the term "innovative". Regarding Gmail, I'd rather say they managed to clone mutt+procmail for the web in a reasonable manner. Regarding Maps, the fundamental operations had been in place since at least 2002 at e.g. http://www.nl.map24.com/ http://www.nl.map24.com/. Actually I haven't been there for quite some time, and I think in 2002 their interface was actually better than now.
- nostrademons 17y ago
  We'll just have to agree to disagree then, because I don't see how anyone could look at mutt+procmail vs. GMail and say GMail wasn't innovative, or at nl.map24.com and say GMaps wasn't innovative. Both of those seem ridiculously hard to use by today's standards.
- deleted 17y ago
  [deleted]
cousin_it 17y ago
Google Maps wasn't the first tiled draggable online map. That honor belongs to Bernhard Seefeld and map.search.ch, launched in October 2004: http://www.bernhardseefeld.ch/archives/000099.html http://www.bernhardseefeld.ch/archives/000099.html

jimbokun 17y ago

"Microsoft was seen as ruthlessly destroying their competition." There was also the fact that they blackmailed PC vendors into not installing Netscape.