Can Google Get Its Mojo Back? | Hacker News Reader

Can Google Get Its Mojo Back?

techcrunch.com

59 pointsssclafani49 comments

Wow, what a one sided piece. the flops from google: "Buzz, Wave, Google TV, and the Nexus One". As Paul Buchheit points out,

"They take big risks. People often point to projects such as Wave as evidence that Google has "lost its magic" or something. To me, it's evidence that they are still willing to take risks on new ideas and new ways of doing things (Wave was run as a completely autonomous project in Australia). If everything you do works, then you're not taking many risks and probably aren't innovating either. Obviously, if everything you do fails, that's not good either, but there's a sweet-spot somewhere in the middle. Google has enough big successes, such as Chrome and Android, to show that they are somewhere near that sweet-spot"

It's not that google doesn't have problems, but with every possible negative issue piled on in such a one sided manner, it seems more FUD than any sort of earnest critique.

I agree with you, some of those projects are way to new to be considered failures (Buzz, Google TV). They might be but I find it premature to call them that. As for the Nexus One, it wasn't selling like the iPhone but I know of a few who did get one, but in the end how many iPhones were purchased online? The best part is that other Android phones tried to match it's spec once it came out, no need to call that a failure.

The only argument I can agree with in the post was about the relation Google has with devs and users. Sometimes they do release stuff and then it seems they forget about them. But I think most of the time that's just lack of time by the people working on those projects, they try to add features and move forward and that's always a tradeoff with maintaining whats there and developing relations with devs/users.

Writing off Google TV is probably like writing off the T-Mobile G1. For god's sake they haven't even brought the Android Market and SDK to it yet (originally scheduled for sometime in H1,2011).

I think you're being too hard on the piece. You picked one sentence out of the article and are dismissing the point completely on that basis. But he wasn't offering those 4 products as his only justification. He quoted several articles that supported his point from high profile people in the technology industry who are thinking the same thing.

The author has sensed what many have sensed lately which is that Google is struggling to conquer new markets while having difficulties with its powerhouse products (namely the Search Engine and AdSense). His thought process than went from there and his points weren't invalid ones.

I think people are putting too much into TechCrunch being owned by AOL (hence the FUD claim). This guy isn't a regular TechCrunch contributor nor is he an AOL employee (see profile here: http://ca.linkedin.com/in/rezendi).

Google is in serious decline.

I didn't bother reading past that. Just scanned down a bit. Total, utter dreck. Does anyone here take these fluff pieces by TechCrunch seriously?

A more appropriate question on HN would be, "Can TechCrunch Get Its Mojo Back?" The quality of stories has decreased dramatically, and I've dropped them from my RSS feed. I don't think this has much to do with AOL-- the rot had already set in well before that-- but I don't think it will help the quality come back.

> Does anyone here take these fluff pieces by TechCrunch seriously?

Does anyone here take any pieces by TechCrunch seriously? I'd really appreciate it if someone made a userscript to hide submissions from domains of my choosing.

Edit: http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/27105

Supports Reddit as well.

I doubt TechCrunch really cares that these stories are worthless, after all this is just linkbait deployed to increase their weekend ad impressions.

Which is why we should stop clicking on & upvoting them.

How quickly the media turns.

Looking at how much effort Google is putting in mobile, and how much success they're having, I'm not sure their mojo has gone anywhere. [1][2] It's easy to concentrate on the failures, and overlook the successes.

Sure, they've had a few flops lately, but that's an inevitable result of a company that is trying hard to innovate.

[1] http://techcrunch.com/2010/12/13/google-mobile-searches-grew...

[2] http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2375411,00.asp

from the article...

   the data is compelling

...

   Even their money fount, AdWords, is problematic. An
   illustrative anecdote: I ...did this and that...

...

   While I can’t quantify this, I’m confident that most engineers will agree:

the article claims to argue from data, but presents no actual data: simply anecdotes. c.f., http://www.stat.columbia.edu/~cook/movabletype/archives/2011...

I honestly would like to understand what possible motive(s) the "media" could have to write this kind of one sided, nearly 100% wrong, senseless article that claims something really big.

You've got to wonder - is it paid for by a rival? Is it that in the world of anyone-can-write-for-a-blog, we are seeing utterly stupid people getting chance to write anything they can dream? Is it just an opinion vs. fact? Is the writer pissed off by the corporation he/she is writing off in some way?

Sometimes with FUD articles like this when you check the background of the author they're either working for, or closely allied with, a rival company (like Microsoft), but as far as I can tell this is merely a case of cluelessness rather than partisanship.

Sensationalism and controversy will drive eyeballs to the site, which at least in the short term will mean the site makes more money. For all we know the author of this piece was under his quota and needed to scrounge up some hits.

I find it quite amusing that they chose Microsoft as a company who has its mojo back, despite the total failure of the Kin and low sales of Windows Phone 7. I don't see how Bing, a search service with low market share that is losing money is a success and google, a search service with high market share that is making money hand over fist, is a failure.

We must thank Google for its contribution and effort to fight off computing monopolies. Enterprise with Google Apps vs Microsoft, Android vs Apple, coming soon xxxMe vs FaceBook, AppEngine/Boutique vs Amazon. But this is kind of spreading too thin and fighting the whole world alone. Looks like its their destiny rather than their vision.

ps. Arrington should put forward the question to the CEO and post the video, like he did to others.

ps. Its too early to write off Google TV. Chrome browser and Android are great success.

This article handily leaves out that the products most crucial to Google's core business - selling ads against search - are on an absolute tear:

- YouTube is now the world's second biggest search engine.

- AdMob grew by 4x in the last year and is growing FASTEST in China which is hugely important.

- Android is well on its way to becoming the ubiqutious consumer phone platform.

- Gmail is growing like a weed and rolling out really useful and innovative features reguarly.

I agree that Google has lost some of the spit shine and I would never want to work there, but I don't think he's properly framed the "failures".

but the fear is gone. Remember back in the day when everyone feared going into a market that Microsoft might get into? There was a similar fear with Google, but it's not there anymore. That's a problem for Google.

Microsoft still tried to compete in search, Apple are competing despite Google's smartphone entry, there are other mobile advertising networks being founded and people are still attempting to found alternative video networks. Did the fear actually stop competitors? I think not.

the fact that some competitors exist does not mean that others were not scared away. Hell, most could have been scared away.

Your argument is a non sequitur.

Is there a company that instills similar fear today? I suppose Facebook inspires a similar fear for any company doing something social, but the thing about MS and Google at their peak was they saw their domain as "software" and "the internet" respectively, so anyone doing literally anything profitable in software or the web had a target on their back back then. Facebook's focus seems a lot narrower.

are coupons social?

> There was a similar fear with Google, but it's not there anymore.

There never was such fear, what are you talking about??

Yes there was. In 2005, when you founded a startup, you had to explain why Google couldn't smoosh you by cloning you and integrating with Gmail. And, moreover, they did exactly that to Kiko. Now that's not really the foremost question in people's minds.

I was there in 2005, never felt any google fear. The web is so huge and expanding at such a great rate (even more so in 2005) that anybody thinking google or any other site could control it or get all the market is really shortsighted.

Nobody thought Google could control the web. That wasn't the claim. The claim was, Google was sufficiently badass in 2005 that for any given idea, you got asked if this is so great, why can't Google notice it and do it faster better stronger. There were reasons that it couldn't for some ideas, obviously. But for others, like Kiko, it could and did.

The core of his point was the degradation of search results. How does that translate to him leaving "selling ads against search" out? I'm starting to think half the people commenting here didn't read past the 4th sentence

There is no proof of "degradation of search results" whatsoever. You could always find a bunch of search queries which don't work quite right and write a sensationalist article about it.

Has anyone done a scientific study, involving careful observation of quality of thousands representative queries on Google over a prolonged period of time? No.

If anything, the recent hysteria only shows how good Google has been at increasing people's expectation of search quality over the years.

I consider "Google in Decline" articles to just be linkbait.

It seems to me that the industry is ripe for disruption right now, with the massive focus on mobile everything, major companies have forgotten about 'normal' users on a desktop (or laptop) with a beefy Internet connection, huge processor and big monitor.

Can Techcrunch only publish articles by Arrington and Wadhwa?

It sucks that I don't know whether to expect a hot story, an in-depth column, or some guy's delusional subjective opinion.

The most surprising stat in the article is the claim that Google actually lost 1.2% of search share from Oct-Nov 2010. To who? Bing? Really?

The one thing Bing does have going for it is that its video search is significantly better than Google's. And that drives an important category [ahem] of web searches. I suppose Googlers could see whether that particular category was impacted, to the extent these numbers are real.

I can't think of a big company more ambitious than Google or one that gets involved in such a variety of new projects. As a result they are bound to fail a lot but the money is still rolling from their main products, and young engineers are still attracted by that ambition. No mojo lost.

Does anyone know what percentage of Google's products that originated from companies they purchased?

I know Wave and Android were purchases, but it is always good to keep in mind the difference between Google built products and Google purchased/hyped products.

Android was not in a shape where it could compete with the iPhone when Google bought them. They bought it sure - but they also made most of what makes it successful in today's market.

Wave was developed inside Google.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Wave

Wave was actually internal. The team leads were acquired for what eventually became Google Maps, Wave was their next project.

A few anecdotes and blog posts by angry sites owners who don't get to appear on top of google results are no arguments. Google is doing more than fine.

This article is so spot on.

If you discount its success on Android, Search, etc and high-performing stock, Google has pretty much been a failure.

The amount of google bashing is ridiculous these days. When will Facebook reach that ugly part of the hype-cycle? 2 years maybe?

I'll just leave it at that: http://www.google.com/finance?chdnp=1&chdd=1&chds=1&...

I don't think Google is loosing mojo. But I do see one problem: Google revenue is all connected to search, and the next disruptive innovation seems to be in area of search (I personally, I'm not satisfied with quality of google search).

Or maybe ad $$ will move from search advertising to something similar to GroupOn.

What kind of weak bullshit is that?!

Dismissing products that didn't have immediate traction as failures instead of recognising them as innovative attempts and experiments.

Characterising a few wildly over-echoed departures as brain-drain (too many outlets are trying to push that narrative) and ignoring the fact that they have their largest payroll yet, they bought like 30 startups last year I bet there is some talent there.

Also characterising chatter in code pages as a problem instead of community engagement. The App Engine team just released a major update merely a few weeks ago.

This distortion field these ‘reporters’ seem to encounter whenever they write about Google is astonishing, and I fear there are some alterior motives behind all this.

Edit: Also to contrast the nonsense (I am quite annoyed by it) with data:

Google Mobile Strategy Playing Out Almost Flawlessly: Ads Growing, Android Beating iPhone http://searchengineland.com/google-mobile-strategy-playing-o...

"Can Google Get It's Mojo Back?"

Loaded question, whether you answer yes or no, you admit that Google lost its Mojo. When did you stop beating your wife by the way?

No. Companies don't get their mojo back.

Edit: with the exception of when certain original members of the company come back.

IBM got their mojo back several times, yet the founders are rotting in the ground and would probably cause a panic if they came back.

Could you explain just what IBM did that demonstrates a return? They're certainly still profitable, but people don't fear them as a competitor.

Do you fear Amazon?

I'd like to hear you examples and continue the conversation but I think email is more appropriate. jdennis at google's mail service

Article is fud/shit.

Having said that, maybe I'm stupid - but I'd really like to see Google taking a bit of holistic approach to its management/product management.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com