Is Google getting stupid?
Dare Obasanjo thinks they might be, and I think he's on to something. In comparison terms, which outfit has been releasing services that might actually be useful?
- Google, with things like *cough* open social *cough*
- Amazon, with S3, EC2, and now SimpleDB
On the personal connectivity point, Facebook has it all over Google. On the "useful stuff for business" front, Amazon is hitting home-runs, and Google is off playing with things like Google Docs.
Over the next couple years, I think Amazon and Facebook are going to be a lot more interesting than Google.
Technorati Tags: web, web services, grid, cloud
Comments
[] December 20, 2007 1:45:29.272
As Amazon keeps going on, they become more and more interesting. Not in anything they do with their site, but what they have been doing with their platform. I would not be surprised to see their web services spun off in the future as a separate company. Google's star only shines in search. Any other significant ground they have gained has been through acquisitions and nothing they did on their own.
perpetual beta won't do it for me
[Troy Brumley] December 21, 2007 16:01:22.756
I just saw something recently about the Google phone platform (name escapes me) being panned by developers because it's too buggy. That's the norm with Google. They do the fun 80% of the work (which is 20% of the time) and never seem to devote enough attention to the less fun 20% of the work (which is 80% of the time). The 80-20 trade off is OK for some things, but if I'm going to use a product for something mission critical, a serious whack needs to be made at finishing that last 20%.
IMO, Google just doesn't do it.
For online collaboration, I have looked briefly at Google Apps, but I think 37signals has it all over that as well.
Could the rapid pace of the web world shorten the whole life cycle of a company? Is Google starting to slide into the same space that Microsoft has entered and IBM seems to finally be leaving after 15 years?