GOOGLE’S MICROSOFT MOMENT
We are not sure Google's new Chrome OS announcement is that big adeal, or that the eventual product that gets released will actually have thatmuch impact, but it's a useful milestone in marking Google's evoluon to-wards becoming an older company with a disnctly different culture thanthey used to have.
This is, for lack of a beer term, Google's "Microso Moment"
. This is thepoint when the difference between their internal concepon of the companystarts to diverge just a bit too far from the public percepon of the company,and even starts to diverge from reality. At this inflecon point, the
reasons
for doing new things at Google start to change.Let us be clear: we don't think Google is "turning evil". Hell, we've caught alot of flack for the fact that basically we don't think
Microso
was evil. Butthere are some notable trends going on across Google today that could causethe company to compromise its stated values and that will certainly causepeople to
think
Google is being evil, if not corrected. We’ll try to outline afew key cultural indicators from around Google.
Designing for corporate synergy, not for users
Google's recent development work on applicaons for mobile deviceshas oen been delivered exclusively as applicaons for their own Androidplaorm instead of as iPhone applicaons, despite the fact that iPhones areroughly forty mes more popular in the marketplace. iPhones are also muchmore popular outside of the United States than Android, further liming theactual audience served by these applicaons. Now, it's obviously good com-pany policy to make sure to support Google's own plaorms, and Googledoes an admirable job of using generic open web technologies where possi-ble to avoid having to choose between plaorms at all. But choosing to leavethe majority of users in a given market unaddressed because they are on aplaorm that is not part of your corporate goals is short-sighted and leaves alingering sense of mistrust.If you look at Microso ten years ago, or even as recently as five yearsago, they had a tendency to say "Well, we've got a version that works onWindows Mobile." or "This works on Internet Explorer" and feel that they'ddone their job for addressing mobile or the web. Or Windows Media Playerwould connect to XBox but not to any other systems for sharing media. Theywere pung their corporate agenda ahead of what the marketplace had cho-sen as its preferred plaorms. But aer all these years, Microso's internalteams have finally started to develop their web or mobile versions of prod-ucts to work on competor's browsers and competor's mobile plaorms,recognizing that they have to
go where the users are
, instead of favoring onlythe plaorms created by their corporate siblings. Google appears to be head-ed the other way.Forgeng what the real world uses, and favoring what's convenientfor your own business goals is a quick way to have customers think you don'tcare, and to indicate to partners or developers that pleasing Google is moreimportant than pleasing customers.
Changing methods of communicaon
Within Google, We are sure the percepon is that their public-facing commu-nicaons are sll very "Googley".Now, Google does an excellent job of maintaining and using an enor-mous number of official corporate blogsin dozens of languages for a rapidly-blossoming number of products andiniaves. But despite my admiraonfor that effort, and their commendablewillingness to forgo the usual boringpress releases, the way that the compa-ny communicates with the public
has
fundamentally changed, and not neces-sarily in a more human direcon.(because of recent chrome comic re-lease).This would be okay, except that Idoubt Google's internal self-image as anorganizaon has changed to reflect thisnew reality. "We're not like some giantcompany with flashy TV ads — we're just a bunch of geeks in MountainView!" And while that might be true forthe vast number of engineers who de-fine the company's internal culture, theexternal impression of Google being justanother tech tan like Microso willgain foong, making the audience forGoogle's messages less tolerant of am-biguity and less forgiving of mistakes.
Sll haven't developed Theory of Mind
Google sll hasn't developed theory of
Conclusion
Google has made commendablesteps towards communicang withthose outside of its sphere of influencein the tech world. But the messageswill be incomplete or insufficient aslong as Google doesn't truly internalizeand accept that its public percepon isabout to change radically. The era of Google as a trusted, "non-evil" startupwhose acons are automacally as-sumed to be benevolent is over.Years ago, GMail introducedcontext-sensive ads and was unfairlypilloried for being an-privacy or intru-sive. And while there have been a fewsimilar hand-slappings along the way,Google's never faced a widespreadbacklash against their influence ordominance from average consumersyet. Today, protestaons of "but it'sopen source!" are being used to paperover real concerns about data owner-ship, and the truth is that open codedoesn't necessarily imply that averageusers are in control.Google is entering the momentwhere it has to be
over
-careful not tooffend, and extremely aenve towhether they are treading lightly.Is Google evil? It doesn't maer.They've reached the point of corporateambion and changing corporate cul-ture that means they're going to beperceived as if they are. Whetherthey're able to truly internalize that les-son, accept it, and act accordingly willdetermine if they're able to extendtheir dominance in the years to come.
What exactly is theUnique ID project?
A project in which every Indiancizen would have one uniqueidenficaon number that willidenfy him/her. It would not justhelp the government track downindividuals as is highlighted bythe media, but would make lifefar easier for cizens as theywould not have to submit so many docu-ments each me they
want to avail anew service—
private or government The ap-pointment of Nandan Nilekani, the co-chairman of Infosys, as the chairperson of the UniqueIdenficaon Authority of India is signifi-cant, not only because it marks a depar-ture from the tradional government wayof working — of looking at bureaucratsand ex-bureaucrats to head projects of naonal importance, but also because itshows that the government has actuallyput out effort to hunt the right person for the job.
Leave a Comment