Are Google's Best Days In the Past? 322
rsmiller510 writes "For a time, everything Google touched turned to gold, but lately a slew of bad press is creating a negative perception about the search giant."
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Are Google's Best Days In the Past?
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"If I do not want others to quote me, I do not speak." -- Phil Wayne
Marketshare (Score:5, Interesting)
Not to rip on an article that's just a bunch of one-sentence summaries of other articles and a saucy eyebrow-raise, but the 1% drop cited in the article is in search marketshare. The total value of search ads went up by about 10% in the same period, meaning that Google's revenues almost certainly grew over that period. It's just that they grew slightly more slowly than the newcomers.
Re:oh rly. (Score:5, Interesting)
Actually, it look more like Classic ASP. I don't see much in the source that would indicate otherwise. (ASP.NET tends to be -- isn't required, but tends to be --- .ASPX, not .ASP).
So, not only is the guy running on the Microsoft stack, he isn't even that current in it. I'm not sure I'd put too much creedence in any topic he discusses.
Re:Fried Potatoes and gravy with garlic and spices (Score:2, Interesting)
I agree with a lot of what you said. Especially the part about Google not being as great as when it was a start up, but still being pretty good. At least for me, I still have positive thoughts when I think of Google as opposed to some other tech companies, like Microsoft. Maybe it's just carry over from older days or because they talk a lot about open source, but I still like Google.
Also I feel like this article was solely written to attract attention. The title and beginning of the article paint Google to look like it might be crumbling and at the very end he goes back on himself and says that they are still an amazing company. It felt like he was writing a sensationalist article to get page views and I didn't really appreciate it.
Re:"Bad Press" == MS sponsored smear campaign? (Score:4, Interesting)
Forgot to include this:
CNET Shows Anti-Google AstroTurf (‘Consumer’ ‘Watchdog’) is Connected to Edelman, “Microsoft Goes on the Offensive” Against Google [techrights.org]
Turned to gold, eh? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Just because the "best days" are in the past.. (Score:5, Interesting)
There is a subset of that thinking in usability (when studied as science). Textbook example is a sport wrist watch. On one hand, you can have one with a lot of features that can be accessed very quickly and a lot of info on the home screen, but requires a lot of buttons to control functions in a usable way.
Other is aimed at "we want something that just works" crowd (usually senior citizens), and has only one big red button and "just works" (and "illumination" button on the side for obvious reasons).
Reality - it "just works" for people who are willing to limit themselves to limited feature set given by the watch. It doesn't replace the one with many "confusing" buttons, and when it does it does it with a lot less efficiency.
Apple's advantage is that hype essentially steamrolls the "but the other features that are clunky/missing?" argument as hype claims that if iphone can't do it, you don't need it. Never mind that USB connectivity to a PC as an external drive, or ability to see email sender's name right from the home screen without having to go through "pretty" menus (to cite two of several obvious examples) have been a default feature in the smart phones for a long time. Apple is that "one button" watch that "just works" - so long as you're willing to accept that to even access and start timer will take you a lot longer that it would on a phone that does it the way "watch with many buttons" does.
And when hype will eventually run it's course and run out, you'll be left out with reality - that apple's version of "one button it just works" usability isn't all that good when you want to step outside those basic boundaries.
Re:Just because the "best days" are in the past.. (Score:5, Interesting)
You clearly don't understand the fundamental problem with "SEO trickery".
Allow me to enlighten you.
Google uses an algorithm to determine the relevance of pages. The problem is that SEO firms have reverse engineered that algorithm to the point where they can manufacture site rankings. As such Google's page ranking system can't tell the difference between a super relevant site, and a site that is lying about it's relevance but has the right answers to all the questions Google knows to ask.
It is similar to how a Rorschach test doesn't work on someone trained in evaluating the test (they know how their answers will be interpreted and can therefore give the answers that will lead the tester towards the conclusion they want to get). Another analogy would be a spy attempting to seduce a mark. Assuming they spy has done his/her reaserch they should know what the mark looks for in a partner and since they're lying they can appear to be the perfect date, while an honest person would likley have some flaw that compared with the fictional persona of the spy will seem less desirable.
There is no solution to that problem. At best Google can change their algorithm thus forcing the "SEO scumbags" to start over, but they will start over and they will again succeed. In truth the fact that it's taken this long for it to happen in the first place is rather commendable.
From 0 to Market Leader in the phone industry... (Score:4, Interesting)
in 2 years. Yeah, they're moribund.
Whatever.
No, blogging's best days are in the past (Score:4, Interesting)
The article is from some clueless blogger type, and reads like something from a content mill.
Google does have problems. The biggest one is that most of their "products" lose money. YouTube finally has become ad-heavy enough to make money, the first product other than search to go into the black. Google buys market share by giving stuff away, but revenue usually doesn't follow. Being #1 in giving away mail service isn't a business. Android, as a business, loses money. Google has never had a second killer profitable product, and not for lack of trying.
On the search front, Google's defenses against spam are weak. That's technically fixable, but fixing it would cut into the 30% of revenue that comes from AdSense sites, most of which are junk. Google's recent bad press stems from their addiction to revenue from junk sites.
As for "social", that looks like a bubble. Facebook is way overpriced as a company. Facebook already has so much obnoxious advertising that it's hard to see where they can generate more revenue without becoming even more annoying. Facebook tried a phone once; it was called Helio. Didn't work.
Google does have a "social" system, Orkut, It's #1 in Brazil but nowhere else, much to the annoyance of Google executives.
Re:Just because the "best days" are in the past.. (Score:5, Interesting)
Perhaps that's the problem. Engineers are designing the devices, and engineers have spent thousands of hours pouring over the features. So, there's a tendency towards feature-creep and complexity as the devices are increasingly aimed at technophiles willing to spend lots of hours learning the device. I worry that Apple will move that direction like every other computer company has a tendency to do, unless there is someone at the helm steering away from the engineer's predisposition. (And, no, I'm not an Apple user. But, I happen to respect what they do and understand why it's a useful approach for them to take. I also don't look down on my friends who have little time or desire to learn the details of their electronic devices.)