Why Google won't create the next Twitter or Facebook or Posterous | Hacker News Reader

Why Google won't create the next Twitter or Facebook or Posterous

scobleizer.posterous.com

31 pointsrams14 comments

Maybe they won't create it, but they'll buy it.

Most large companies correctly believe that the capital required to create a new phenomenon from the ground up would be too expensive than to simply buy it once one looks promising. The number of startups and capital expended just to create such a phenomenon (a big phenomneon, not mediocre in the grand scheme of things) is huge, so acquisitions are a good deal.

Why is Posterous grouped with Twitter and Facebook in the title?

sorry Snopes should have been in there too.

Why should Snapes be in the same sentence as Facebook or Twitter? Boy, the ego!

> Why should Snapes be in the same sentence as Facebook or Twitter?

You are here to learn the subtle science and exact art of programming. I don't expect you will really understand the beauty of the softly simmering data model with its shimmering algorithms, the delicate power of liquids that creep through data streams, bewitching the mind, ensnaring the senses ... I can teach you how to bottle fame, brew glory, even stopper death -- if you aren't as big a bunch of dunderheads as I usually have to teach.

If you make Google Maps and Gmail, it's OK that you don't do fail whale/pillow throwing.

Why the implicit assumption that Google should be creating such things?

His point is that Google won't be able to achieve their own goal of solving the next Big Problem if they only focus on looking for Big Problems to solve.

To a certain degree he does have something. Big companies CAN work on problems startups can't. Lots of people can come up with ideas, but certain concepts aren't going to get huge VC funding easily if they are complex and require infrastructure. More complicated = More likely to fail. Having to establish that infrastructure is just one more potential failure point.

Google acquires startups that they think are interesting. Maybe they can have it both ways to a certain degree.

Focusing on problems that impact lots of people does not make Google Microsoft. Google is still innovating quickly -- see pubsubhub, chrome, wave, android, maps, gmail, etc.

You can argue that Google's products lack the personality of startups, or that Google hasn't excelled in social applications, but taking a quote, bringing up successful startups, and then saying -- i heard that at microsoft therefore google is microsoft -- is absurd.

Google's Orkut is popular among BRIC nationals.

I think he doesn't take into account the little side projects that people do at Google. plus Wave looks a lot better than facebook to me and people will move in droves soon because people are not so wedded or happy with facebook

Or because few of those sites have a clear method for making money or any profound use beyond pure leisure.

Why is GOOG always compared with MSFT ? They are way more innovative than MSFT IMHO. Atleast I love most of their products. Also they are into many other things like Google got the APPtitude competition, Google summer of code, Google CodeJam etc. As a B.tech Computer Science student most of us dream of google and not M$. Sorry if my opinion is rude and crude !!

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