Giving Google a Break
Silent Rob re-read the blog post we made yesterday and felt that it may have been a little harsh. Poor, poor Big Brother II, er, Google, and I guess what turns out to be MY disappointment with several of their latest products. First, I guess we should mention that Google’s release of SketchUp a few weeks ago was actually a great program, but it also makes amazing business sense.
The recent trend for user generated content is so widespread that even advertising companies have jumped into the arena. One example isÂ? Mastercard,Â? letting users create their own version ofÂ? one of theirÂ? “Priceless” commercials. SketchUp and the downloadable plugin for Google EarthÂ? createsÂ? one of the most powerful and unique user generated content sites on the Internet. In the Google Press day presentation,Â? we believe it was Eric Schmidt that made a comment about satellite imaging and, to paraphrase, “who hasn’t gone and looked at their house using Google Maps.”Â? There will obviously be fewer inclined to create their house and upload it to Google Earth, butÂ? we have a feeling there will be a number of individuals motivated to go far beyond their own house. The first day we downloaded the program we recreated most of the block surrounding our office. We showed Google though, we deleted that bad boy so they couldn’t capitalize on our hard work, but it’s only a matter of time before Google Earth has a thorough recreation of several of the most popular areas in the world. It could almost become like a MySpaceÂ? profile, with companies using it as another form of marketing. Google could add some sort of mouseover withÂ? more informationÂ? or link theÂ? “SketchUp”Â? to aÂ? company’s webpage.
The other point Silent Rob wanted me to touch on related to Google Press Day. In the presenation, Google talked about their 70-20-10 (see slide 70) outlook for the company. The core of Google Inc. is represented by the 70 - 70% of the company’s focus is: Search Quality, crawl/indexing, AdWords, AdSense, and the Toolbar. The 20, or 20% of the companies focus, is: Blogger, Google Mini, Picasa, News, and Pack. The final 10% of the company’s focus is: Offline Ads, Google Code, Google WiFi, andÂ? Google Talk.
It’s not difficult to understand why a company would put a 70% focus of their energy into the core of their business. And it’s definitely understandable that the remaining 30% would have to be divided up between several other aspects of the company that, to the overall success, are less important. But we still have toÂ? be almost concernedÂ? with the some of the last few releases. Does Google really have that much power? They release these products/applications long before the public should be using them, and several of them get great reviews. A half-finished product is suddenly good enough for Google? How many people have complained about Windows and some of the flaws associated with the OS? When I first looked at Google Calendar I couldn’t even add an event!?
Again, going back to the Steve Ballmer interview, if Microsoft released an Xbox that worked properly one day, but the next day didn’t, people would be a little upset. If they released a Beta version of Windows into the general population that had several major threats for attack, there might be a bit of negative feedback. But, for some reason, Google has almost no problem with their Goose laying Gold-plated eggs.