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The main problem with Google at the moment is the centralization of many popular services into one corporate entity. Video, search, email etc. are all now in th

The main problem with Google at the moment is the centralization of many popular services into one corporate entity. Video, search, email etc. are all now in the hands of, mostly, Google. With so few viable competitors, you get a de-factory monopoly as well as insane growth. The centralization itself is the problem. Success like this does not breed innovation. Aside from some novel extra-Internet projects like Glass and autonomous cars, Google does not innovate much, and many of these services have stagnated, and Google does not seem to care much about Internet standards or about being ethical.

numbchuckskills 14y ago
"Google does not innovate much, and many of these services have stagnated " - you're joking right?
ok_craig 14y ago
I can get behind your first paragraph, which is basically just saying that as a consumer you like to support variety and a dynamic market by using services from multiple providers. If that's you're goal, that's a reasonable enough justification for me. However, that's not a reaction that would come as a direct result of one product cancellation (because it is a proactive, not reactive perspective), and my comment is in response to the post, which explicitly claims the reason for expunging Google is due to Google's supposed new opposition to open standards. I really don't understand your angle with the second paragraph though. It's just the kind of stuff that's going to make this all devolve into a battle of words about who the best/worst/most evil/most creative/most underdog/most overvalued/undervalued/deserving/undeserving companies are. Frankly a generalization like that without any specifics or context is a fanboy thing to say. If you're trying to tell me that Google is a stagnating company doing more net harm than good, all I think it's worth to say is that I think you're terribly wrong, and I disagree.
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
- vidarh 14y ago
  He is not claiming an opposition to open standards, but that open standards are secondary, and will get thrown under bus if it conflicts with the primary goal of making money, and that it seems Google believes social in general and Google+ is the way to make more money, and that this puts open standards at risk. Reducing your dependency on Google's support for open standards then becomes prudent. Personally I'm sticking with a number of Google services, but I'm also taking precautions (backing up my data; my primary address is on my own domain so I can move away from Gmail easily if I want to (don't think they'd close it down, but they certainly can - and have - made changes that I find detrimental; I only stick with Gmail now because of a number of tweaks using Minimalist, for example) It's not so much that Google has become horrible, but that they've taken a number of steps to be "less good" than what a lot of people have come to expect and depend on. They're on their way to being "just another company" instead of anything special.
  - dalks 14y ago
    No he is arguing that because Google closed down Reader, using any other service offered by Google is poor judgement while also stating that they don't innovate in many if not all product areas.
    - sergiosgc 14y ago
      I can't read that from the original comment. In fact, he didn't even mention Google Reader specifically. If you are referring to the original article, the article makes it fairly obvious that the GReader event was the proverbial last straw, not the main motivator.
      - Slimbo 14y ago
        Still odd that reader's the 'last straw', but not on the lists of services to expunge!
- lobster_johnson 14y ago
  Yes, as a consumer I would like variety and a dynamic market. But regarding the second point (proactive/reactive), I would also like an ecosystem of businesses that are engaged in some level of technological cooperation towards common goals. This over-reliance on Reader, for example, is an example of a bad ecosystem. It's not entirely Google's fault; it's also our fault as users for not seeing the single-provider trap until too late, and it's the entire ecosystem's fault for marginalizing feed technology in favour of intrusive ad-infested web sites. As for the second paragraph: My point is that once you have a certain amount of dominance, and a certain amount of traction in the market (of the kind that it's hard to switch from, such as Gmail or Reader or Docs/Drive), it's no longer important prioritize openness or sharing or standards compliance. Those things don't matter in the short run to your user base, many of whom are loyal by necessity (switching is hard) or inertia (don't really care, it's the default choice), or who just don't know or care. It doesn't really matter to your bottom line if you piss of a minor percentage (eg., Reader, or the recent post about Google not providing any kind of support), and the competition is so small that they don't matter much either.
dalks 14y ago
> de-factory monopoly Not really: - Video: Till Oct '12, youtube's market share peaked at ~52%. [1] - Email: Gmail surpassed Outlook in market share only in Oct '12. [2] - Search: Google Search 67.5% as of March 15, 2013. [3] > many of these services have stagnated And when they attempt to get out of markets so that other new companies can perform better, we get Reader like response. > Google does not seem to care much about Internet standards And how are you sure that FastMail and Vimeo (Alternatives suggested in the OP) are any better? [1] http://videonuze.com/article/youtube-s-market-share-nudges-up-in-october-but-engagement-at-one-year-low http://videonuze.com/article/youtube-s-market-share-nudges-u... [2] http://gigaom.com/2012/10/31/gmail-finally-beats-hotmail-according-to-third-party-data-chart/ http://gigaom.com/2012/10/31/gmail-finally-beats-hotmail-acc... [3] http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2255183/Google-Grabs-More-Search-Market-Share-Now-at-67.5 http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2255183/Google-Grabs-Mo...
- lobster_johnson 14y ago
  Would love to see some market-share breakdowns. Still, that's pretty huge. I expected them to bigger at video, but I guess there is a pretty long tail of smaller providers such as Vimeo and Liveleak and what not? > And when they attempt to get out of markets so that other new companies can perform better I really doubt that they canceled Reader for such altruistic reasons. > And how are you sure that FastMail and Vimeo (Alternatives suggested in the OP) are any better? I don't know what their market share is, but I bet it's very small compared to Google's. In other words, they have to care about standards because they are nowhere near in control.
  - dalks 14y ago
    > Still, that's pretty huge. They are not monopolistic, like you said. > they canceled Reader for such altruistic reasons There is no evidence that it was done to bring more users to Reader (like the article suggested) either. They did allow you to takeout your reader content. So yes I do evidence that they hope that users find services that fit their needs.
  - evilduck 14y ago
RestlessMind 14y ago
> Aside from ..., Google does not innovate much, and many of these services have stagnated Can you please give a few examples of innovative companies these days? (And I am totally serious, no snark/sarcasm intended)
- lobster_johnson 14y ago
  Good question. There aren't many. Most of the ones I can think of (Kickstarter, Github, Heroku) launched years ago and have since built on their success without really innovating much beyond the initial idea. The YC portfolio has a lot of interesting, innovative startups. No products that I use myself at this point, though. Right now, personally, the new idea I find the most exciting is crowd-funding computer games. Last year I spent a ton of money on Kickstarter to fund small indie developers such as Double Fine.
  - taopao 14y ago
    Why? Double Fine isn't innovating. You've played Maniac Mansion, right? Everything else is just incremental variations.
    - lobster_johnson 14y ago
      The innovation is the crowd-funding model used to seed non-mainstream (in the sense that these games are all fairly "nerdy" compared to the average Facebook user) stuff with real budgets.
rattray 14y ago
I'd have to disagree on the innovation point. Google continues to make dramatic improvements (imo) to many of their apps and services. As a developer building on Docs/Drive, I've seen that service continuously grow and expand, though much of the work remains below the waterline. Similarly, Maps, Now, Voice Search, Chrome, App Engine continue to be improved at a rate that outstrips what I'm used to at most other companies Google's size. It's true that the visible feature changes have slowed significantly, but I'd attribute that more to the size and completeness of the existing products than anything else. It's also true that they aren't entering many new product lines, though for one thing I'm not sure that's something you'd lament and for another, I hear they've declared they won't be entering any new business that they expect to be below $1bn.
- lobster_johnson 14y ago
  Google does iterate their products, but I don't see much innovation. Granted, I haven't tried Now, as I don't have an Android phone, but it does sound like real innovation. I just don't see much happening with other products. Chrome? Just getting slower and more bloated. App Engine? Does nothing for me that Heroku doesn't. Docs, while impressive, came out years ago, and Drive is basically a Dropbox/iCloud clone. Google actually made a huge reverse-innovation with Google+, which is essentially just Facebook rewritten for the Google ecosystem. It's pretty much as invasive as Facebook in how it attempts to smear the contents of your private life across an impersonal surface, and it seems to belong to another era of walled-garden services that don't integrate with anything other than itself (posts doesn't even support formatting other than bold and italic, how's that for retrograde?).
  - dalks 14y ago
    So as you suggested, lets simply want to ignore Now, Android, Maps, Glasses and Self Driving cars: Chrome: A hell lot of features that are pushing web forward, arguably the best development tools, significant contribution to Webkit (now to Blink), becoming platform for Chrome OS, v8 engine that serves as basis for NodeJs. App Engine/Drive: So when Heroku/Dropbox does it, it can be called innovation but when GAE/Drive does it, it is just iteration? That's an insane standard to work against. > doesn't even support formatting other than bold and italic, how's that for retrograde. There is no way you could argue that supporting lists and headings will suddenly make Google+ an innovative product out of nowhere. What I find awesome are Hangouts and circles. They work very nicely for me, YMMV. You can set the entire profile to be hidden and no one will be smearing contents of your private life anywhere. I am not sure exactly is this complaint coming from.
dannyr 14y ago
So are you saying that if we don't count the innovation that Google has been doing, Google is not innovative at all. Btw, here are some Google products that it continues to iterate: Google Maps YouTube Android Wallet Google+ Go AngularJS Shopping However, if you don't want to count these ones, I guess you're right that most of Google's services have stagnated. #sarcasm
- lobster_johnson 14y ago
  No, I'm saying that Google is innovating very little. Indeed, it's primarily innovating in areas not related to the web (which the article is about). Search, Maps,YouTube have not evolved much the last few years; the last true innovation was Street View, and the last truly useful addition to Search was the fact database integration. Android is basically just following in Apple's footsteps. Wallet I don't know anything about, so I can't comment, Shopping looks to me like it's still the terrible old shopping search that isn't useful for anything. Google+ is basically a reimplementation of Facebook. Go may have been created at Google, but it's really the work of Pike and Thompson; according to insiders, the internal language at Google is still mainly Java and C++; and I wouldn't call it innovation, exactly, since there is nothing innovative about neither the parts or the whole; rather, it's a very incremental evolution of the general-purpose computer language tradition of C plus Oberon/Modula. In other words, your sarcasm is wildly misplaced, sir.
  - gnur 14y ago
    Too bad you are so hard trying to make your point you lose connection with reality. Android, in its core, is so entirely different then iOS that saying "following in Apple's footsteps" is just wrong. What has changed in recent major (!!) iOS updates? Twitter & Facebook integration.. Seriously? While Android 4 revamped the entire user interface, streamlined ui & ux and allowed for buttonless phones (apart from power). Also, Google Maps recently added vector based maps, a great addition to the previous bitmap based maps. Search has added countless quick results like instant currency conversion, quick answers to questions and instant results. Gmail has litteraly changed web based mail and still continues to do so. I do agree on youtube & go. Go isn't a revolution, it is one of the most boring languages ever. Which is one of it major plusses over "exciting" languages like ruby & python. Also, it isn't an offcial Google product, so stomping Go to the ground really shows how you are just bashing away. Please don't say innovation has stopped when it clearly hasn't.
lobster_johnson 14y ago
> de-factory One of the more amusing typos I have written while sleep-deprived. Sorry.

numbchuckskills 14y ago

"Google does not innovate much, and many of these services have stagnated " - you're joking right?

ok_craig 14y ago

I can get behind your first paragraph, which is basically just saying that as a consumer you like to support variety and a dynamic market by using services from multiple providers. If that's you're goal, that's a reasonable enough justification for me. However, that's not a reaction that would come as a direct result of one product cancellation (because it is a proactive, not reactive perspective), and my comment is in response to the post, which explicitly claims the reason for expunging Google is due to Google's supposed new opposition to open standards. I really don't understand your angle with the second paragraph though. It's just the kind of stuff that's going to make this all devolve into a battle of words about who the best/worst/most evil/most creative/most underdog/most overvalued/undervalued/deserving/undeserving companies are. Frankly a generalization like that without any specifics or context is a fanboy thing to say. If you're trying to tell me that Google is a stagnating company doing more net harm than good, all I think it's worth to say is that I think you're terribly wrong, and I disagree.

deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
vidarh 14y ago
He is not claiming an opposition to open standards, but that open standards are secondary, and will get thrown under bus if it conflicts with the primary goal of making money, and that it seems Google believes social in general and Google+ is the way to make more money, and that this puts open standards at risk. Reducing your dependency on Google's support for open standards then becomes prudent. Personally I'm sticking with a number of Google services, but I'm also taking precautions (backing up my data; my primary address is on my own domain so I can move away from Gmail easily if I want to (don't think they'd close it down, but they certainly can - and have - made changes that I find detrimental; I only stick with Gmail now because of a number of tweaks using Minimalist, for example) It's not so much that Google has become horrible, but that they've taken a number of steps to be "less good" than what a lot of people have come to expect and depend on. They're on their way to being "just another company" instead of anything special.
- dalks 14y ago
  No he is arguing that because Google closed down Reader, using any other service offered by Google is poor judgement while also stating that they don't innovate in many if not all product areas.
  - sergiosgc 14y ago
    I can't read that from the original comment. In fact, he didn't even mention Google Reader specifically. If you are referring to the original article, the article makes it fairly obvious that the GReader event was the proverbial last straw, not the main motivator.
    - Slimbo 14y ago
      Still odd that reader's the 'last straw', but not on the lists of services to expunge!
lobster_johnson 14y ago
Yes, as a consumer I would like variety and a dynamic market. But regarding the second point (proactive/reactive), I would also like an ecosystem of businesses that are engaged in some level of technological cooperation towards common goals. This over-reliance on Reader, for example, is an example of a bad ecosystem. It's not entirely Google's fault; it's also our fault as users for not seeing the single-provider trap until too late, and it's the entire ecosystem's fault for marginalizing feed technology in favour of intrusive ad-infested web sites. As for the second paragraph: My point is that once you have a certain amount of dominance, and a certain amount of traction in the market (of the kind that it's hard to switch from, such as Gmail or Reader or Docs/Drive), it's no longer important prioritize openness or sharing or standards compliance. Those things don't matter in the short run to your user base, many of whom are loyal by necessity (switching is hard) or inertia (don't really care, it's the default choice), or who just don't know or care. It doesn't really matter to your bottom line if you piss of a minor percentage (eg., Reader, or the recent post about Google not providing any kind of support), and the competition is so small that they don't matter much either.

dalks 14y ago

> de-factory monopoly Not really: - Video: Till Oct '12, youtube's market share peaked at ~52%. [1] - Email: Gmail surpassed Outlook in market share only in Oct '12. [2] - Search: Google Search 67.5% as of March 15, 2013. [3] > many of these services have stagnated And when they attempt to get out of markets so that other new companies can perform better, we get Reader like response. > Google does not seem to care much about Internet standards And how are you sure that FastMail and Vimeo (Alternatives suggested in the OP) are any better? [1] http://videonuze.com/article/youtube-s-market-share-nudges-up-in-october-but-engagement-at-one-year-low http://videonuze.com/article/youtube-s-market-share-nudges-u... [2] http://gigaom.com/2012/10/31/gmail-finally-beats-hotmail-according-to-third-party-data-chart/ http://gigaom.com/2012/10/31/gmail-finally-beats-hotmail-acc... [3] http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2255183/Google-Grabs-More-Search-Market-Share-Now-at-67.5 http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2255183/Google-Grabs-Mo...

lobster_johnson 14y ago
Would love to see some market-share breakdowns. Still, that's pretty huge. I expected them to bigger at video, but I guess there is a pretty long tail of smaller providers such as Vimeo and Liveleak and what not? > And when they attempt to get out of markets so that other new companies can perform better I really doubt that they canceled Reader for such altruistic reasons. > And how are you sure that FastMail and Vimeo (Alternatives suggested in the OP) are any better? I don't know what their market share is, but I bet it's very small compared to Google's. In other words, they have to care about standards because they are nowhere near in control.
- dalks 14y ago
  > Still, that's pretty huge. They are not monopolistic, like you said. > they canceled Reader for such altruistic reasons There is no evidence that it was done to bring more users to Reader (like the article suggested) either. They did allow you to takeout your reader content. So yes I do evidence that they hope that users find services that fit their needs.
- evilduck 14y ago

RestlessMind 14y ago

> Aside from ..., Google does not innovate much, and many of these services have stagnated Can you please give a few examples of innovative companies these days? (And I am totally serious, no snark/sarcasm intended)

lobster_johnson 14y ago
Good question. There aren't many. Most of the ones I can think of (Kickstarter, Github, Heroku) launched years ago and have since built on their success without really innovating much beyond the initial idea. The YC portfolio has a lot of interesting, innovative startups. No products that I use myself at this point, though. Right now, personally, the new idea I find the most exciting is crowd-funding computer games. Last year I spent a ton of money on Kickstarter to fund small indie developers such as Double Fine.
- taopao 14y ago
  Why? Double Fine isn't innovating. You've played Maniac Mansion, right? Everything else is just incremental variations.
  - lobster_johnson 14y ago
    The innovation is the crowd-funding model used to seed non-mainstream (in the sense that these games are all fairly "nerdy" compared to the average Facebook user) stuff with real budgets.

rattray 14y ago

I'd have to disagree on the innovation point. Google continues to make dramatic improvements (imo) to many of their apps and services. As a developer building on Docs/Drive, I've seen that service continuously grow and expand, though much of the work remains below the waterline. Similarly, Maps, Now, Voice Search, Chrome, App Engine continue to be improved at a rate that outstrips what I'm used to at most other companies Google's size. It's true that the visible feature changes have slowed significantly, but I'd attribute that more to the size and completeness of the existing products than anything else. It's also true that they aren't entering many new product lines, though for one thing I'm not sure that's something you'd lament and for another, I hear they've declared they won't be entering any new business that they expect to be below $1bn.

lobster_johnson 14y ago
Google does iterate their products, but I don't see much innovation. Granted, I haven't tried Now, as I don't have an Android phone, but it does sound like real innovation. I just don't see much happening with other products. Chrome? Just getting slower and more bloated. App Engine? Does nothing for me that Heroku doesn't. Docs, while impressive, came out years ago, and Drive is basically a Dropbox/iCloud clone. Google actually made a huge reverse-innovation with Google+, which is essentially just Facebook rewritten for the Google ecosystem. It's pretty much as invasive as Facebook in how it attempts to smear the contents of your private life across an impersonal surface, and it seems to belong to another era of walled-garden services that don't integrate with anything other than itself (posts doesn't even support formatting other than bold and italic, how's that for retrograde?).
- dalks 14y ago
  So as you suggested, lets simply want to ignore Now, Android, Maps, Glasses and Self Driving cars: Chrome: A hell lot of features that are pushing web forward, arguably the best development tools, significant contribution to Webkit (now to Blink), becoming platform for Chrome OS, v8 engine that serves as basis for NodeJs. App Engine/Drive: So when Heroku/Dropbox does it, it can be called innovation but when GAE/Drive does it, it is just iteration? That's an insane standard to work against. > doesn't even support formatting other than bold and italic, how's that for retrograde. There is no way you could argue that supporting lists and headings will suddenly make Google+ an innovative product out of nowhere. What I find awesome are Hangouts and circles. They work very nicely for me, YMMV. You can set the entire profile to be hidden and no one will be smearing contents of your private life anywhere. I am not sure exactly is this complaint coming from.

dannyr 14y ago

So are you saying that if we don't count the innovation that Google has been doing, Google is not innovative at all. Btw, here are some Google products that it continues to iterate: Google Maps YouTube Android Wallet Google+ Go AngularJS Shopping However, if you don't want to count these ones, I guess you're right that most of Google's services have stagnated. #sarcasm

lobster_johnson 14y ago
No, I'm saying that Google is innovating very little. Indeed, it's primarily innovating in areas not related to the web (which the article is about). Search, Maps,YouTube have not evolved much the last few years; the last true innovation was Street View, and the last truly useful addition to Search was the fact database integration. Android is basically just following in Apple's footsteps. Wallet I don't know anything about, so I can't comment, Shopping looks to me like it's still the terrible old shopping search that isn't useful for anything. Google+ is basically a reimplementation of Facebook. Go may have been created at Google, but it's really the work of Pike and Thompson; according to insiders, the internal language at Google is still mainly Java and C++; and I wouldn't call it innovation, exactly, since there is nothing innovative about neither the parts or the whole; rather, it's a very incremental evolution of the general-purpose computer language tradition of C plus Oberon/Modula. In other words, your sarcasm is wildly misplaced, sir.
- gnur 14y ago
  Too bad you are so hard trying to make your point you lose connection with reality. Android, in its core, is so entirely different then iOS that saying "following in Apple's footsteps" is just wrong. What has changed in recent major (!!) iOS updates? Twitter & Facebook integration.. Seriously? While Android 4 revamped the entire user interface, streamlined ui & ux and allowed for buttonless phones (apart from power). Also, Google Maps recently added vector based maps, a great addition to the previous bitmap based maps. Search has added countless quick results like instant currency conversion, quick answers to questions and instant results. Gmail has litteraly changed web based mail and still continues to do so. I do agree on youtube & go. Go isn't a revolution, it is one of the most boring languages ever. Which is one of it major plusses over "exciting" languages like ruby & python. Also, it isn't an offcial Google product, so stomping Go to the ground really shows how you are just bashing away. Please don't say innovation has stopped when it clearly hasn't.

lobster_johnson 14y ago

> de-factory One of the more amusing typos I have written while sleep-deprived. Sorry.