This is the end. A company that I have loved and respected for so long has officially began their decline.
Much has been said about Google+ and its many virtues, most of which I agree with. It’s beautiful, fun, and quite intuitive. What I don’t align myself with is the thought that Google finally “gets” social. They don’t. They copied social and made it prettier.
The super early adopters and tech elite are loving it for one reason: they’re still the only ones on it. It’s a Facebook clone sans your Mom and high school friends. What’s not to love about that?
Google’s biggest problem is that they forgot what their company does: search. Look the top of the page. There’s something missing and it is called a search bar. Maybe they’re hoping you’re using Chrome and don’t need one (which may be true for most of the users now) but that’s a pretty big bet.
When a company begins to drift away from their core competencies it spells disaster. Sure, Google has a hand in just about everything these days but almost all of them can be traced back to search and ad revenue. This should be an easy line to draw with Plus but somehow it’s missing. Tacking it on later, a likely scenario, shows they’ve lost their focus.
One really cool feature I thought I would enjoy is Sparks. It’s basically Google Alerts but in a feed. Pretty handy. Unfortunately, they dropped the ball again on search. Sparks is supposed to help bring up stories about topics you’re interested in so I created one for running. For days now I have not seen a single link to anything about the sport of running. Clearly it doesn’t know how to search in context. Pretty sad for the leader in search.
If I had Google stock I’d sell it right about now. It’s all downhill from here.
Kyle- I totally & completely agree!! What’s worst is that I think they are forgetting about their giant search engine, probably thinking they’ve already conquered the market. Lately Google fails in search results for me! Exellent post.
Le sigh… I hope they get their shit together.