Do we all work for Google now?
Thursday I blogged that I'd like to see Google (or someone...Apple, Mozilla, someone else?) aggregate social Web applications so that I don't have to trip all over the Web checking what so-and-so is doing on Facebook, then sprinting back to LinkedIn to help someone else on a job search.
Judging from the comments, quite a few people disagree, to a great extent due to mistrust of Google with their data. I can appreciate that, though Google has expressed a desire to open up social-networking applications with open-data policies.
Regardless of promises, many mistrust Google because it's so darned big. This, as James Stewart reminds us in The Wall Street Journal, is not a problem in itself: there is nothing illegal and much to love in a natural monopoly.
Me? I don't have a problem with how big Google is. I just wonder if any of us work for anyone else anymore.
I find myself tweaking headlines and my initial paragraphs to accommodate Google News. As important as Digg, Slashdot, and other content aggregators can be, I find they drive less traffic than top placement on Google.
I'm not alone in this. The newspaper industry is up in arms about Google's power, yet is incapable of cutting Google off because so much of its traffic comes from Google, as CNET reports. Google's Marissa Mayer recently advised the newspaper industry on how to optimize its content for Google, which strikes some as galling given that Google may not be all that efficient at monetizing content.
And yet we cater to Google. We write news and blogs (and tweets and wiki updates and...) for Google. Even dead writers apparently write for Google. We write open-source software that Google consumes. We craft our Web sites to ensure they show well on Google.
Google started by offering a way to search the Web. It now effectively owns the Web because it's such an efficient way to make sense of the Web's noise. Lest we become riled up, Google is trying to make us feel better about its heft with a new charm offensive, as CNET reports.
But we don't really need Google to change. We need competitors to compete. We need Microsoft to start competing in earnest (Yikes! Did I say that??). Microsoft talks about being disruptive in search, but I've yet to see it. Let's hope it's not another tired retread of Google search as both Yahoo and Microsoft have tried before.
Or how about this for disruptive? Perhaps we need Mozilla to step into a role as the Web's primary platform, and really change the rules of the game for Google. For those interested in bludgeoning Google, perhaps there's a way to do that by contributing to Mozilla's Firefox project, and helping to steer it in a way that is beneficial for a non-Google patrolled and controlled Web?
Regardless, we don't need a crippled Google. Instead, we need serious competition. We also need to stop trying to look back to the past of content monetization and instead learn from Google, without necessarily capitulating to Google. Content creators need to change, even as Google's competitors need to change.
Google? It should just keep doing what it's doing.
Follow me on Twitter @mjasay.
Matt Asay brings a decade of in-the-trenches open-source business and legal experience to The Open Road, with an emphasis on emerging open-source business strategies and opportunities. Matt is vice president of business development at Alfresco, a company that develops open-source software for content management. He is a member of the CNET Blog Network and is not an employee of CNET. Disclosure. You can follow Matt on Twitter @mjasay. 
Aggregation services... what a love hate relationship.
Google News is great for this. It often leads me to concise articles from respected sources about current news. Sometimes it leads me to mindless sedation like this article.
It's downright lazy to link to other websites, blogs, and random quips in your so inconsequential commentary. You end up forming no complete thoughts, and send the user down an endless bunny trail of linked documents full of... more of the same banter. I count 11 links where you pawn off
How about providing us with a complete thought written as it came from your mind today? Do us all a favor - STOP aggregating and write a real editorial or news story.
bleh. I think I'll go buy a real, physical, newspaper
Ha ha, ok, I'll say a bit more.
I agree that some of the thoughts in this guy's blogs are not pursued in depth, but they serve their purpose. I like these blogs primarily because they give a brief explanation of the situation, and offer an opinion or two. What are you expecting, a detailed analysis of the future of the Internet? That is ridiculous.
But why is he advertising the page as news to google? If I'm the only one who has a problem with this then I guess my forum name is quite appropriate. I think we all can agree that News != Blog. Here we see a blogger misusing a news aggregation service to gain hits for his soapbox editorials.
For the same reason you like blogs - I hate em. Mostly fluff, no substance.
Back to my boss Google to find some real news hopefully...
Look at what they did to Yahoo. They tricked Yahoo that they would do a search deal just to give them a false hope so that they would not sell to Microsoft, their only competitor now. And then they broke the deal when Microsoft pulled their offer (those anti-trust claims are just a cover, as if they did not now they would face those in day 1). Result? Yahoo is now in a much worse condition, fired thousands of people. Did Google think about those people when they played with Yahoo? No, they only cared about their market share.
And besides, there is nothing from Google that actually works, except Search.
The reason that Yahoo and M$ failed is because they failed to compete, as this article cites. It has nothing to do with Google.
"If they did anything wrong to you, you could just leave. You can't "leave" Google because they started controlling the web. "
If im not mistaken Google's datacenters are located inside the US if Google were to do anything wrong the US Government could shut them down quite quickly.
Great Google services. Gmail, Google Talk, Google Finance, Google Calendar, Picasa, You Tube, Google Reader, Google Search, IGoogle, Chrome, Android, Goog 411, and soon Google Voice.
The really great thing about all these services is that they are integrated and work together.
The awesome thing about Google services, their open source and free. Are you kidding me JasonCe
I run my own mail server, thank you very much.
Gmail, docs, desktop, picasa, etc, etc, are all third rate apps and only exist to collect information from you(ie it is spyware).
Wake up people!
If Google were a smaller rival, it would be easy for Microsoft to buy it up, or make its products cheaper until the competition has to close shop due to a lack of funding. But since Google gives away much of its products for free, and most of its revenue is derived from ads, that tactic will not work for Microsoft.
What Microsoft really needs to do is to focus, innovate, and then seriously compete. Could they do it? They certainly have the brain power and money. Will they? That's the billion dollar question.
But considering Microsoft has the most money out of any other tech corporation right now they really have no excuse.
Yahoo is not in debt. Go visit any finance site (including finance.yahoo.com) and see for yourself. Yahoo is still profitable -- by a fingernail. (As much as shareholders would like? Certainly not). They have $3.45B in cash, total debt is $70.91M.
And what do you mean by "Microsoft has the most money out of any other tech corporation"? Oracle has about the same amount of cash ($23.9B). Apple has a billion more ($25B). And Cisco's $33.55B total cash blows doors on Microsoft.
You should probably do a few minutes of research before you make such statements.
Microsoft is one of the top 10 cited as most "financially sound". The only other tech company there is Intel:
http://money.cnn.com/galleries/2009/fortune/0902/gallery.financial_soundness.fortune/index.html
Haven't you been paying attention to current events?
Unchecked greed is killing us.
It wants to do things it thinks is a good idea, and more often than in a perfect world they are good idea.
I have not seen anything google done legally wrong anywhere in the world, well apart from running there immoral tax evading job in the UK but then what cooperation does not.
I also think that they are the best company to own this monopoly. If it had of been Microsoft, the web would be much worse for it. Google as successful as they are, are not afraid to make others successful to spur their own success. Some companies just don't understand this as Google does. So I ma glad that they are where they are. I just hope that they don't become evil in the future.
- by Altotus May 11, 2009 12:03 AM PDT
- Trust after all these years someone talks about trust where do you get it how do you buy it and what do you use it for. God I should be so lucky as to work for Google but just what do you think you are trusting. Hay monkeyfun 14 If Google did anything wrong it would be the government that put them up to it in the first place lol rof.
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