John Battelle wrote a great post yesterday comparing the rise and fall of Microsoft in the late nineties to Google today. Dave Winer responds, saying the more appropriate comparison is to Netscape. He goes on to suggest that Google think harder about its long term role in the search world:
I think Google misunderstands that their platform is advertising, that’s a temporary transitional thing, the real platform is (doh) Search.
Dave is so dead on correct here. Google has to open up their search API or, in the long run, someone else will. The internet is the ultimate destroyer of the tragedy of the commons - and those who continue to remove friction are the only ones that can possibly win.
And I also note this: While Google seems to struggle finding its product direction, Yahoo (and increasingly Microsoft) continues to roll out success after success. Yahoo is now my default map and email service (and they weren’t last month). And there is a good chance Yahoo will also become my default RSS reader.
Discussion is evolving on Memeorandum.
I agree with you. Google is Microsoft just about 3 or 4 years ago. Everybody was concerned what Bill Gates was doing at Microsoft. I would not say that has totally changed, Microsoft is still are a huge player but attention has been shifted to Google who has been putting out new products every other week. So then you have to start looking at product quality. Are all these products of the same quality as the Google search we have all grown to love? I am not so sure they all are. I don’t use GMail as a primary email account; since I had my account hacked in June. I use Yahoo Mail and have for over 5 years. I use Pluck’s RSS Reader for RSS aggregation and sometimes use My Yahoo as well for that function. So it appears after the initial buzz of a new Google product dies down and the dust settles, other brands do stand a chance against the onslaught of new Google products. Dave Winer’s mention of Google opening their search API was interesting. So I wonder, will knowledge sharing in the form of open API’s be the key to a company becoming the next Google?
Well, one may argue with “Google has to open up their search API”. protocol (HTTP) + markup language (HTML) = API. Or are you referring to a different API?
Scoble was ranting about this a few weeks back, I sure
wished I lived in the land of who’s who amongst all the coffee shops… at least there is the internet. I can’t feel too bad about hearing things a few weeks late though, I bet 90% of the people out there never hear about 99% of the stuff that goes on in the tech world, unless they stayed glued to the TV or hold their breath for M$ updates lol. (of course, I have no idea what the next breakthrough medicine, etc. will be… priorities I guess) If I weren’t tied up in other stuff at the time and was able to get some GOOG that lovely opening day, I’d be selling 75% of it right NOW! DO NO EVIL MY ASS!
Billy, you always leave the most interesting comments.