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As I commented on Techcrunch I see it quite different. The only place Google is attacked is search. That’s going on for years and so far neither Bing nor anyone

by BvS 15y ago

As I commented on Techcrunch I see it quite different. The only place Google is attacked is search. That’s going on for years and so far neither Bing nor anyone else has made any real progress. Also the whole idea that „people moving slowly from search to discovery” is so far only speculation and I don’t buy it. Besides being quite cumbersome to ask my friends there are many areas where I just don’t “trust” them. For example IMDB is much better in predicting if I will like a certain movie than anyone of my friends is (or even all of them combined). On all other fronts Google is not attacked but is attacking. They started from zero in pretty much all the fields you are mentioning a couple of years ago and have recently made some impressive gains (especially Android and Chrome). So it’s not Google who is facing challenging test but Microsoft (Office, Windows, IE, WP7… ), Apple (Iphone, OSX), Facebook/Tumblr/Quora and Yelp/Groupon. Google could afford to lose all these battles but search, some of the other players can’t…

jonkelly 15y ago
Very, very well said. I'll add a view I heard from an analyst a few years ago. Even accounting for Google's non-search duds, collectively these projects _are_ Google's marketing/branding efforts. What's better for (arguably) the world's leading tech company, a Superbowl ad or self-driving cars, Wave, and +? Certainly a lot more effective than It's You.
rimantas 15y ago
> They started from zero in pretty much all the fields you > are mentioning a couple of years ago They did not start from zero neither with Android (bought Android Inc. in 2005, the company itself was started in 2003) nor with Chrome (they did not write WebKit from scratch).
- tatsuke95 15y ago
  I think what the poster means by "started from zero" is that Google wasn't in the space. Then it was. The means by which they entered the space (building on open source, acquisition, wish from genie) doesn't matter.
  - BvS 15y ago
    Right, I was referring to zero market share.
    - rimantas 15y ago
      Well, then Apple is not worth mentioning in this context: they also started from zero with iPhone, and I'd say even more so.
      - rimantas 15y ago
        It would be interesting to know what those disagreeing think. Google had zero market share, but they did not start Android, they bought it and finally released. Apple had zero market share and developed the OS and the hardware themselves. What do I miss?
        bergie 15y ago
        To your original point, Apple's WebKit didn't come from nowhere either. It was a fork of KHTML from the KDE project.
        rimantas 15y ago
        Where do you see the that point? Did I claim Apple started with Safari from zero? I did not.
        rmrm 15y ago
        Apple released before Android, and obliterated the market. Apple attacked the incumbents in the phone market at that time, Nokia, rim, palm, Windows. Android then entered the market, and "attacked" all of the incumbents again, which at this time includes Apple. Thus, as the last major entrant, it can be said that Android is fundamentally an offensive against all of the other preexisting platforms. Similarly with the browser, Chrome is the "latest entrant", the latest challenge to the incumbents of ff, ie, safari, opera. In each case, being the latest entrant, Google is not in the position of protecting market share from new entrants, they are in position of taking market share from incumbents. This will change over time, as Google market share matures, and new entrants and or older incumbents make moves, but for now, as the latest major platform introduced, it can be said Google is acting in an offensive manner from each markets point of view. I think rather than "starting from zero" alone, the real context meant was "most recent to start from zero".
wslh 15y ago
Regarding Search, it's impressive how far Google is. Blekko, Bing, Yahoo fails with good results in queries including few keywords. I don't know why we don't have good Web Search Engine Benchmarks.
- tommi 15y ago
  Think about the benchmark for a while. What kind of benchmark would it be? How would you score? How could you tell if someone was cheating?
  - wslh 15y ago
    It's a guidance, not an absolute measure. For example I find that queries with more than 5 keywords are fat better in Google than in other search engines. In this case you can take some web sites with high web ranking and try searches with many keywords against them.
    - tommi 15y ago
      How do you define high web ranking? And why to limit your 5 keyword benchmark queries on such sites? One of the key features for me in a search engine is that it searches data from as many sources as possible.
  - guard-of-terra 15y ago
    There is a benchmark of search engines over Russian internet, and its results seem to actually mean something. http://analyzethis.ru/?&lang=en http://analyzethis.ru/?&lang=en
fraserharris 15y ago
Agreed. The more interesting question is: how will the others respond? I see Google's attacks (especially +) as a big win for Microsoft. Only determined competition could cause the other players to look for partnerships with them. Ie: Nokia in mobile, Facebook in social (Skype just the beginning). Google is making Microsoft relevent again.
- recoiledsnake 15y ago
  Good point.Can add Yahoo to the list too.
- Daniel14 15y ago
  I think that's going to play an ever greater role in Google's expanding plans. They're pissing a lot of established companies off by competing with free, and mostly, quite simply better products. This is great for consumers because it kicks competition up a notch - but it could lead to the other companies, now having a common enemy, to partner up against Google. We recently saw this in the Nortel case.. FB comments include Yahoo, Bing includes Facebook, Nokia includes WP7, the list goes on and on. Lots of turkeys do make an eagle - Even if Google alone is better than all the other players in the market, as long as they're alone they'll quickly face pretty serious resistance.

by BvS 15y ago

jonkelly 15y ago

Very, very well said. I'll add a view I heard from an analyst a few years ago. Even accounting for Google's non-search duds, collectively these projects _are_ Google's marketing/branding efforts. What's better for (arguably) the world's leading tech company, a Superbowl ad or self-driving cars, Wave, and +? Certainly a lot more effective than It's You.

rimantas 15y ago

> They started from zero in pretty much all the fields you > are mentioning a couple of years ago They did not start from zero neither with Android (bought Android Inc. in 2005, the company itself was started in 2003) nor with Chrome (they did not write WebKit from scratch).

tatsuke95 15y ago
I think what the poster means by "started from zero" is that Google wasn't in the space. Then it was. The means by which they entered the space (building on open source, acquisition, wish from genie) doesn't matter.
- BvS 15y ago
  Right, I was referring to zero market share.
  - rimantas 15y ago
    Well, then Apple is not worth mentioning in this context: they also started from zero with iPhone, and I'd say even more so.
    - rimantas 15y ago
      It would be interesting to know what those disagreeing think. Google had zero market share, but they did not start Android, they bought it and finally released. Apple had zero market share and developed the OS and the hardware themselves. What do I miss?
      - bergie 15y ago
        To your original point, Apple's WebKit didn't come from nowhere either. It was a fork of KHTML from the KDE project.
        rimantas 15y ago
        Where do you see the that point? Did I claim Apple started with Safari from zero? I did not.
      - rmrm 15y ago
        Apple released before Android, and obliterated the market. Apple attacked the incumbents in the phone market at that time, Nokia, rim, palm, Windows. Android then entered the market, and "attacked" all of the incumbents again, which at this time includes Apple. Thus, as the last major entrant, it can be said that Android is fundamentally an offensive against all of the other preexisting platforms. Similarly with the browser, Chrome is the "latest entrant", the latest challenge to the incumbents of ff, ie, safari, opera. In each case, being the latest entrant, Google is not in the position of protecting market share from new entrants, they are in position of taking market share from incumbents. This will change over time, as Google market share matures, and new entrants and or older incumbents make moves, but for now, as the latest major platform introduced, it can be said Google is acting in an offensive manner from each markets point of view. I think rather than "starting from zero" alone, the real context meant was "most recent to start from zero".

wslh 15y ago

Regarding Search, it's impressive how far Google is. Blekko, Bing, Yahoo fails with good results in queries including few keywords. I don't know why we don't have good Web Search Engine Benchmarks.

tommi 15y ago
Think about the benchmark for a while. What kind of benchmark would it be? How would you score? How could you tell if someone was cheating?
- wslh 15y ago
  It's a guidance, not an absolute measure. For example I find that queries with more than 5 keywords are fat better in Google than in other search engines. In this case you can take some web sites with high web ranking and try searches with many keywords against them.
  - tommi 15y ago
    How do you define high web ranking? And why to limit your 5 keyword benchmark queries on such sites? One of the key features for me in a search engine is that it searches data from as many sources as possible.
- guard-of-terra 15y ago
  There is a benchmark of search engines over Russian internet, and its results seem to actually mean something. http://analyzethis.ru/?&lang=en http://analyzethis.ru/?&lang=en

fraserharris 15y ago

Agreed. The more interesting question is: how will the others respond? I see Google's attacks (especially +) as a big win for Microsoft. Only determined competition could cause the other players to look for partnerships with them. Ie: Nokia in mobile, Facebook in social (Skype just the beginning). Google is making Microsoft relevent again.

recoiledsnake 15y ago
Good point.Can add Yahoo to the list too.
Daniel14 15y ago
I think that's going to play an ever greater role in Google's expanding plans. They're pissing a lot of established companies off by competing with free, and mostly, quite simply better products. This is great for consumers because it kicks competition up a notch - but it could lead to the other companies, now having a common enemy, to partner up against Google. We recently saw this in the Nortel case.. FB comments include Yahoo, Bing includes Facebook, Nokia includes WP7, the list goes on and on. Lots of turkeys do make an eagle - Even if Google alone is better than all the other players in the market, as long as they're alone they'll quickly face pretty serious resistance.