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There's another thing Google hasn't quite figured out, nor have any of the other big players in this space (Maybe Microsoft will, under a new CEO). They have to

There's another thing Google hasn't quite figured out, nor have any of the other big players in this space (Maybe Microsoft will, under a new CEO). They have to commit to being conglomerates, not platforms (not at a user visible layer at least). They need to run a multi-brand strategy or these troubles will only get bigger as user communities get more diverse. Interconnecting all offerings of such a huge diversified enterprise is bound to create conflicts of interest. It doesn't work. IBM almost went bankrupt over it. It leads to idiotic decisions like killing Google Reader instead committing to serving a long tail of diverse communities.

dredmorbius 13y ago
It's not without some irony that I note Vic Gundotra's name has been circulated as a candidate for the Microsoft CEO position. In some ways I feel he'd be the perfect successor to the legacies of Gates and Ballmer.
- scholia 13y ago
  Gundotra spent 15 years at Microsoft before joining Google. Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vic_Gundotra https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vic_Gundotra "Before joining Google, he was a general manager at Microsoft.[3] He joined Microsoft in 1991 and eventually became General Manager of Platform Evangelism. His duties included promoting Microsoft's APIs and platforms to independent developers and helping to develop a strategy for Windows Live online services to compete with Google's web-based software applications.[4] Gundotra joined Google in June 2007, after taking a one-year delay working on charitable endeavors[which?] due to a Microsoft employee non-compete agreement."
  - yapcguy 13y ago
    Maybe he never left Microsoft? Maybe his true mission is to keep tabs on Google and given the opportunity, create long-term strategic blunders?
    - scholia 13y ago
      No, but Google has quite a few ex-Microsoft staff. I wonder if they are able to get away with things at Google that they couldn't at Microsoft? ;-)
gbog 13y ago
That's a bit short. Consumers of coffee, biscuits, etc do not need to know their trademarks are owned by the same legal entity or their subsidies, nor would they benefit from this knowledge. Completely the opposite with Google or Microsoft. You need to know that YouTube is Google because it has an impact on privacy things, and you arguably benefit from their link with single sign on, reduced complexity, unified notification center, etcetera.
- fauigerzigerk 13y ago
  You're repeating the justification for the status quo, but at some point these undeniable benefits of an integrated platform start to be dominated by growing complexities, weird interdependencies and conflicts of interest. I think we're over the tipping point now.
hengheng 13y ago
In terms of politics, the same could probably be said about the US, the EU or China.
acdha 13y ago
> It leads to idiotic decisions like killing Google Reader instead committing to serving a long tail of diverse communities. Reader was even more significant than that: had they actually been trying to make Google+ a desirable service, first-class integration with Reader would have brought a large, very active core of G+ users to launch the new service. Instead, they shipped something which had obviously had almost no effort attempted — I'd say they had an intern do it except that most interns take more pride in their work — with things like mobile support being completely broken for at least a year, flaky desktop support and forcing a disruptive unidirectional model where you could share to Google+ but not see what other people were sharing, comments, etc. which had been the core of the Reader experience. Forget fancy things like clustering shares of the same URL, simply appending a "#googlereader" hashtag would have made the experience far better. Toss in all of the strategic mistakes like waiting a year or two before taking spam seriously or offering better control over push notifications than uninstalling the app and they basically trained all of their early adopters to see Google+ as an unrewarding, un-QAed mess of bugs and noise with very little signal. This would have been bad in its own right but an almost comical stumble when you really how many journalists, bloggers and other influential people used Reader heavily, ensuring that future Google stories for years were going to have a heavy note of “How will Google will let you down or exploit you” instead of the “Here's why you want to use this” tone which was pervasive during the era when Google was focused on making products you'd voluntarily use.
- Kequc 13y ago
  I've had nothing buy a joyous experience there. Spam? Don't add spam to your activity feed. Just remove it from your circles, gone. An intern built it? It's one of the most finely crafted, expensive looking pieces of social software that has ever been built. Excuse me but what the hell is this fantasy about Google plus? I'm not convinced that Reader was shut down and that Google plus was meant to be its replacement, the products are just far too different. I don't know where or why that rumour started other than to suggest maybe it was born of this same ridiculous hate fantasy. Maybe I'm Google's target demographic but every complaint I've seen stems from absolutely refusing to allow Google to change anything. And a flamboyant hate for a product they refuse to use no matter what, which is a very carefully designed and free social product.

dredmorbius 13y ago

It's not without some irony that I note Vic Gundotra's name has been circulated as a candidate for the Microsoft CEO position. In some ways I feel he'd be the perfect successor to the legacies of Gates and Ballmer.

scholia 13y ago
Gundotra spent 15 years at Microsoft before joining Google. Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vic_Gundotra https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vic_Gundotra "Before joining Google, he was a general manager at Microsoft.[3] He joined Microsoft in 1991 and eventually became General Manager of Platform Evangelism. His duties included promoting Microsoft's APIs and platforms to independent developers and helping to develop a strategy for Windows Live online services to compete with Google's web-based software applications.[4] Gundotra joined Google in June 2007, after taking a one-year delay working on charitable endeavors[which?] due to a Microsoft employee non-compete agreement."
- yapcguy 13y ago
  Maybe he never left Microsoft? Maybe his true mission is to keep tabs on Google and given the opportunity, create long-term strategic blunders?
  - scholia 13y ago
    No, but Google has quite a few ex-Microsoft staff. I wonder if they are able to get away with things at Google that they couldn't at Microsoft? ;-)

gbog 13y ago

That's a bit short. Consumers of coffee, biscuits, etc do not need to know their trademarks are owned by the same legal entity or their subsidies, nor would they benefit from this knowledge. Completely the opposite with Google or Microsoft. You need to know that YouTube is Google because it has an impact on privacy things, and you arguably benefit from their link with single sign on, reduced complexity, unified notification center, etcetera.

fauigerzigerk 13y ago
You're repeating the justification for the status quo, but at some point these undeniable benefits of an integrated platform start to be dominated by growing complexities, weird interdependencies and conflicts of interest. I think we're over the tipping point now.

hengheng 13y ago

In terms of politics, the same could probably be said about the US, the EU or China.

acdha 13y ago

> It leads to idiotic decisions like killing Google Reader instead committing to serving a long tail of diverse communities. Reader was even more significant than that: had they actually been trying to make Google+ a desirable service, first-class integration with Reader would have brought a large, very active core of G+ users to launch the new service. Instead, they shipped something which had obviously had almost no effort attempted — I'd say they had an intern do it except that most interns take more pride in their work — with things like mobile support being completely broken for at least a year, flaky desktop support and forcing a disruptive unidirectional model where you could share to Google+ but not see what other people were sharing, comments, etc. which had been the core of the Reader experience. Forget fancy things like clustering shares of the same URL, simply appending a "#googlereader" hashtag would have made the experience far better. Toss in all of the strategic mistakes like waiting a year or two before taking spam seriously or offering better control over push notifications than uninstalling the app and they basically trained all of their early adopters to see Google+ as an unrewarding, un-QAed mess of bugs and noise with very little signal. This would have been bad in its own right but an almost comical stumble when you really how many journalists, bloggers and other influential people used Reader heavily, ensuring that future Google stories for years were going to have a heavy note of “How will Google will let you down or exploit you” instead of the “Here's why you want to use this” tone which was pervasive during the era when Google was focused on making products you'd voluntarily use.

Kequc 13y ago
I've had nothing buy a joyous experience there. Spam? Don't add spam to your activity feed. Just remove it from your circles, gone. An intern built it? It's one of the most finely crafted, expensive looking pieces of social software that has ever been built. Excuse me but what the hell is this fantasy about Google plus? I'm not convinced that Reader was shut down and that Google plus was meant to be its replacement, the products are just far too different. I don't know where or why that rumour started other than to suggest maybe it was born of this same ridiculous hate fantasy. Maybe I'm Google's target demographic but every complaint I've seen stems from absolutely refusing to allow Google to change anything. And a flamboyant hate for a product they refuse to use no matter what, which is a very carefully designed and free social product.