Recent Answer to a Quora Question -
What should Google do to completely overhaul its social strategy?
Google's biggest problem isn't social, it is sex! - Great sex starts of course with trust, but also that simple attraction factor and I highlight the word simple.
So much of what Google does frustrates me, because in many ways they are at least aesthetically becoming the lesser of many evils, especially in terms of their inherent two way financial relationship with users and the presumption of ownership of one's digital identity. (Demand Media gets heavily criticized, but again has a genuinely two way mechanism and is also in its infancy imho.)
The problem is, they can't seem to turn me on. I use iGoogle to create my snapshot stream of news and it's great functionally, but totally mundane in look and feel. I simply wouldn't use any of Google's hosted products for any personal or business activity because as far as I'm aware there isn't any strong enough protection I can buy over the counter to make me feel safe enough and to be honest in the absence of that lustful, churning desire in my tummy to progress the relationship, I see little point.
Thousands of genius minds at the Plex is great, but they are so clearly not representative of the other 99.9% of the rest of us and how we like things and in my opinion they ought to be hiring more stupid people to help convert the back end awesome breadth of technology into front windows that we don't have to work so hard to buy into, can totally trust and benefit from and that have us begging for more. If I were Google, I would also have a whole department focused on how to make Jonathan Ive an offer he couldn't refuse to join them or to find an alternative person. (I would do it for slightly less if you are interested ;-)
I think Joe Greenstein's answer sums up things pretty well otherwise, but I'm skeptical that any are achievable, unless the leadership stops treating their slide as a technical or product failing, rather a blindness to the fact that whilst they may have everything else in abundance, they've never actually had 'it'. The latter being the one thing that would reverse current trends and realize their long held ambitions.
Microsoft has a little bit of it, Apple definitely has it, Facebook used to have it but to the consumer none of them have the whole package and they certainly don't trust any of them, especially the current incumbent. Some are starting to look the part, but there's always this nagging worry that you could decide to get intimate and then have your heart broken when you realize you were just another notch on the digital bedpost or worse!
For more updates please follow me @famebook
If you like my answer, then voting me up is always appreciated which you can do HERE!
Afterthoughts... (Please go wild with your comments ;-)
Extending the analogy:-
If Apple is a love affair, Google is asexual and Microsoft is a teenage crush, then what do you call Facebook and others who keep on cheating on you and who, if any, would the 'digital you' actually marry?
Recent Comments