Google's original mission was to help the world find information. So why, in recent developments (yes including the Google/YouTube buyout) are they so intent on hosting all that information as well.
"They need to diversify to stay competitive"
Diversity is one thing. Straying so far from your original business and philosophy so that the brand is diluted and your partners are alienated is another.
Search is not the end of line for information discovery and management. The fact that Touchstone, Attensa, Digg, BuzzLogic and Techmeme exist is testament to that. They are all products and services that aim to help organize the world's information so that users can find the signal from the noise. With so much diversity in approaches and usage models, it is obvious that there is plenty of room to innovate and monetize products inside the original problem domain.
What's more, these forays into various other product categories are alienating the partners who use their ad network. Instead of keeping their ‘do no evil’ image and remaining the benign partner of choice they are becoming just as 'evil' as Microsoft trying to own and run everything (note: I don’t actually think Microsoft is bad, but it is a common perception).
They are making mistake after mistake by going after 'wow look at me' projects instead of focusing on what they do best.
So why isn't Google doing its job? They have lost focus, lost good will and are now finding themselves competing against Microsoft in areas they have no expertise.
Microsoft still can’t compete with search.
It is obvious they can’t do smart information management systems. Products, hosted apps and distribution they can do. But they can’t do maths. Google should be taking advantage of that fact by building better algorithms and visualizations that make information accessible. Not hosting video. They could have achieved the same revenue result simply by cutting a deal to run YouTube’s ads. They don’t need the headache of running the whole company.
"They need to diversify to stay competitive"
Diversity is one thing. Straying so far from your original business and philosophy so that the brand is diluted and your partners are alienated is another.
Search is not the end of line for information discovery and management. The fact that Touchstone, Attensa, Digg, BuzzLogic and Techmeme exist is testament to that. They are all products and services that aim to help organize the world's information so that users can find the signal from the noise. With so much diversity in approaches and usage models, it is obvious that there is plenty of room to innovate and monetize products inside the original problem domain.
What's more, these forays into various other product categories are alienating the partners who use their ad network. Instead of keeping their ‘do no evil’ image and remaining the benign partner of choice they are becoming just as 'evil' as Microsoft trying to own and run everything (note: I don’t actually think Microsoft is bad, but it is a common perception).
They are making mistake after mistake by going after 'wow look at me' projects instead of focusing on what they do best.
So why isn't Google doing its job? They have lost focus, lost good will and are now finding themselves competing against Microsoft in areas they have no expertise.
Microsoft still can’t compete with search.
It is obvious they can’t do smart information management systems. Products, hosted apps and distribution they can do. But they can’t do maths. Google should be taking advantage of that fact by building better algorithms and visualizations that make information accessible. Not hosting video. They could have achieved the same revenue result simply by cutting a deal to run YouTube’s ads. They don’t need the headache of running the whole company.