4 ms·

I'm not particularly happy with Page's focus on "social." Google Plus shouldn't exist.

• Spoom 15y ago
  Google is, of course, free to do whatever they feel is best for the company, but I've always thought that social is very tangential from their mission, which is to organize the world's information. You can spin social all sorts of ways to cram it into the mission statement, but I think it's telling that they've never really obtained critical mass in the social sphere despite several attempts. Now they're leveraging their most successful product to attempt to boost something at which they've historically failed. There's a huge risk in doing this; many tech people have moved to a new search engine to avoid the social focus and tracking, and while these people may not be the majority, I think they're ultimately the trendsetters on the internet.
• hm8 15y ago
  Well, do be really honest, I don't think there is much choice in the matter. With search engines and people focusing so much on personalization google would be left far behind if it doesn't have the friends' data to recommend you some place. It is, I agree, in its nascent stage at the moment and you would never know when it might get big. But whenever it does happen, google doesn't want to find itself lost and hence the focus on "social". Without social, google is just a search engine from early 21st century; with it, one of the leaders in the dot-com world. The facebook's valuation and ad model speaks for the importance of social. Additionally, social is the thing where a customer would keep coming back to you just like e-mail.