-> *This is a personal (read: fscking subjective and unfair) assessment of Google and its potential vs. ability to execute.* ## Google is an advertising platform Google is first and foremost an advertising business with Google Ads, AdSense and YouTube ads. See: https://www.investopedia.com/articles/investing/020515/business-google.asp. The rest is an assortment of online and cloud computing businesses such as the Play Store, Chromecast, Chromebooks, Android, Google Apps, and the Google Cloud Platform. None of those come even close to the ad business. See: https://fourweekmba.com/how-does-google-make-money/. The engineers are intelligent and great, but it seems to me that their work doesn't lead to large-scale or radical innovation. ## Google and innovation I'd argue that Google as an organization is mostly incrementally innovative. If they do radical or disruptive innovation, they are not able to capitalize or follow through with it. (See [[Types of Innovation]]) Looking at some of their products & services created in-house: ### Work * [Google Docs](https://docs.google.com/) was released in March 2006 as an online version of Microsoft Office. The biggest innovation was that it was usable in a browser (not a local application) and that it featured multi-user editing (instead of local, instanced editing). While those were big improvements, I'd argue that they are "conceptually included" in online services. * [Google Wave](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apache_Wave) was the radical innovation on the Google Docs concept, combining it with email, instant messaging, wikis, and social networking. Here is the [Google Wave Developer Preview at Google I/O 2009](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v_UyVmITiYQ). * It was released for GA on May 2010, suspended development on August 2010, and announced the closure on November 2011. In other words: They either didn't believe in the concept on launch or there was no interest in going into this business in the first place. So they created something they needed (an office suite) in their company self-image (at that time embodying the web 2.0 spirit). I think one of the reasons it worked so well was that they internally transitioned from "the old people version" (Microsoft Office) to the new thing, thus a lot of dogfooding happened. Google Wave most likely was created by an internal team that saw the radical innovation potential, developed a v1, but didn't have the long-term support to fail for a while until they nailed the concept. I'd argue that they could have had the Slack / Teams market if they continued. Also, as [Craig Ritchie noted](https://www.craigritchie.com/what-happened-to-the-google-wave/) it was technically great, but lacked focus. Another indicator that they didn't transition into a proper product mode? ### Social * Social for Google started with Google Buzz (introduced 2010, retired in 2011), Google Friend Connect (introduced 2008, retired by March 2012), and Orkut (introduced in 2004, as of 2013 operated entirely by subsidiary Google Brazil – retired in September 2014) * Then came [Google+](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google%2B). It was an incremental innovation over Facebook, fixing some of Facebooks obvious issues (and misunderstandings about how people interact). Here is the [Introduction to the new Google Plus at Google I/O 2013](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YYvITNc1TLA). * However it then evolved into a bundle of services where users weren't really aware that they were using Google+ in the first place - for example Google Photos usage would be counted into Google+ engagement since they would use the same service. * In April 2014, Vic Gundotra, the executive in charge of Google+, departed the company with management responsibility going to David Besbris. By March 2015, Google executive Bradley Horowitz, who had co-founded Google+ with Gundotra, had replaced Besbris, becoming vice president of streams, photos, and sharing. So in effect the services within G+ were more important than the social platform itself. * G+ was launched in June 2011, the developer API was discontinued on March 2019 and shut down for business and personal use on April 2019. * Originally called "Google+ for G Suite", [Google Currents](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Currents) is the sole remnant of Google's defunct social network. Then again, this is just incremental innovation on Yammer. I think that Google already had a couple of solid, established services like Google Photos, messaging and so on that would have to be subsumed by Google+ to make it into a full platform. Like Facebook right now is pulling Instagram and WhatsApp into the "by Facebook" ecosystem by force. However that most likely doesn't work within the Google culture where those products / services were created and bootstrapped by individual teams. Most likely there isn't a mechanism inside Google to mandate these teams together? Maybe the solution to treat those services as microservices is too close to the way Google thinks that they can't imagine the teams needed to be mandated together in the first place? In any case, Google+ wasn't a coherent vision or thing, it was (treated as) a bundle of microservices and that confused customers and most likely didn't really encourage the team. I mean, if I wanted to revolutionize social, do I work for the hodge-podge bundle of things or the Facebook (where every little service they do is serving the master blue app)? ### Messaging At this point this is a running gag going on for years. The current state is described here: https://www.theverge.com/2020/5/27/21271186/google-rcs-t-mobile-encryption-ccmi-universal-profile and this is a pretty good timeline of what happened: https://www.theverge.com/2021/6/21/22538240/google-chat-allo-hangouts-talk-messaging-mess-timeline The most interesting point for me how many different competing messaging products Google created, made public, somewhat supported, integrated into main products and eventually dropped for other things. If I have to guess it does show that Google teams are encouraged to innovate and drive intrapreneurship, but then there are no company-scale mechanics to properly transition those projects into actual products with long-term visions and goals? ### Android Tom Warren thinks Google is not innovating on Android: https://twitter.com/tomwarren/status/1302197643330945024 and maybe a bit bored by it? It kind of looks that way as they are using Samsung (traditionally) and now Microsoft to actually innovate certain experience aspects of Android. The innovation in Android mainly happens inside individual apps, for example the camera app. Android 22 will bring some UI updates, but it overall feels like they drag a bit. This brings us to.. ## Google and product management Google does not know how to product. Number of things they killed: https://killedbygoogle.com/ Contrast: * Microsoft: from Windows to Azure, from SKU to subscription * Apple: From PC to mobile to ecosystem * Amazon: From books to cloud to Prime * Facebook: From yearbook to social feed to messaging to VR social space Also when they buy things they have no coherent drive behind it. See Motorola, see Nest, ..? ## The ethical AI situation https://www.wired.com/story/google-timnit-gebru-ai-what-really-happened/