I have always been wondering on how Google gets out successful products or products that are eventually successful. There is a subtle difference between the two. The former are acquisitions and the latter in-house developed ones. Let’s look at few of the recently launched products and news from the search powerhouse.
Google wave
Though I was amazed looking at the Google wave launch and thought its yet another great product, I have now realized that the value from wave is not so great. There are thousands of people requesting invites and thousands do not know what to do after getting an invite. I have my own doubts on the success of Wave. I can compare my childhood sticker collection. I collected stickers just to show off…I was never allowed to stick it on the walls, books, doors etc. Whats the point, in shouting "I have Google wave invites" when you cant use it? There are better products in the same space. But they do not have the brand value that Google has. Hopefully it wont turn out to be a chatting tool.
Chrome
The browser Chrome has been doing good with great adoption rates. Recent reports indicate that Chrome is 3rd in terms of browser market share (just a few % points ahead of Safari). But they are still a long way off from the top two - IE & firefox. The top two are significantly investing into their browsers too.
Then there are some other products which are the so called "Labs" brainchild. Google scholar is a separate product. To me its plain and straight forward "Advanced search". Calling it another application is rather amusing. If you have free time, you can also explore the primitive Google tables.
Recent downtime of gmail did not go well with the users. Orkut is loosing its sheen to other social networking sites. No good news on this front yet!
Now comes NexusOne
Google has ventured into a territory which it has not earlier been in. Hardware. It’s a different ball game here and the competitors are too strong. The brand name "Google" has evoked interest into this phone. Otherwise it is yet another Android based mobile phone. The features are not extraordinary. Google voice could be the game changer.
On the other hand, there are fewer applications on Android than on the iPhone platform (though probably android is better). iPhone has established as a business phone and the casual users could use other vendors like Samsung, Nokia. Motorola etc etc. With NexusOne new challenges would be thrown in for Google. One of the key issue is the customer service and support for Nexus One (incidentally if NexusOne is abreviated its NO :-) ). One needs to wait and watch here. Google, with its tremendrous talent can pull it off.
If Google fails with nexusone, it would be a good eye opener for the giant and probably hopefully stay away from making a Google PC\tablet.
Google should continue to create what they are best at. Software. Their new Transliteration service is one of the best. Waiting for work on Chrome OS. Google talk rocks.
Like the earlier days, Google should focus on excellence and let success follow it (I love this philosophical statement of Rancho idiot).
2 comments:
I quite disagree with you...Google knows that they are good at developing software on the other side they also need to venture into other area's to compete in this world. It's like asking a batsman to play only offside shots if he is good at. He will loose the run scoring opportunity in other area's :-)
That's a fair comment. As long as their survival is not based on the big new venture, no harm in trying. Agreed!
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