Dear Google,
What have you done lately to “organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful?” Seriously, all I hear about lately is how you’re spending and making lots of money. Where does the information fit in?
So, is DoubleClick going to help you make things useful to me? I doubt it. It looks like it’ll help you eliminate competition. Perhaps then you’ll have the time to focus on organizing information?
Will Clear-Channel suddenly make things accessible for me? I don’t understand how a larger advertising inventory is going to help with that. I’ve never met a sales agent that claims to have knowledge, let alone make it useful for me.
So what are you doing? Have you really built anything lately? I see you’re testing out a voice search. That’s pretty neat. It’s certainly not front-page, world earth-shattering change. I also see you’ve thrown up some hiking trails and more map-related stuff. I suppose that’s useful. But, are you still primarily doing what you set out to accomplish?
To me it seems you’re too deep in the money-making business and everything else has taken a back seat. Or, maybe you’ve been diligently working on something special. Maybe this is something you’re actually going to build yourself, too (Hmm, Writely, Spreadsheets, YouTube). Does it really take a lot of employees to buy and assimilate others’ products?
I don’t know, maybe I’m being silly. If there’s something I missed here maybe I’m being ignorant. Or maybe you’re not communicating it to me. Google, you used to excite me about something worth-while, not just advertising. What gives?
Yours truly,
Devin Reams
PS: I think I get it now. Sergey said: “It has been our vision to make Internet advertising better - less intrusive, more effective, and more useful ….” Aha! Advertising is what you guys call “the world’s information.”
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13 Responses
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Interesting points, but a bit harsh, don’t you think? You mention a new voice search and hiking maps — both are most definitely new ways to organize information
Heh I call it tough love. Maps and voice are neat, I admit that. But I don’t see the same ‘change-the-world’ attitude with anything lately.
That’s some serious tough love.. What about traffic conditions on google maps?
That’s both recent, and awesome.. up to the minute information that is organized! Though, it will be much more useful when its implemented everywhere!
Hasn’t Yahoo had that for over two years?
but lets face it, when google does something like this, google does it right.. yahoo does it “with lots of ads” and “not effeciently”!
They’re too busy getting the legal documents to change their motto from “Don’t be evil.” to “Be evil, God damn it!”
Wel, to be honest if you owned Google, wouldn’t you also try and make as much money as possible? I would. This is business.
GooG is the emperor without clothes. they dont care about anything more than adwords revenue.
Sure they do Jack, but doesn’t Microsoft play the same game and we hate them for it? Microsoft never innovates but ends up catching up pretty quickly (MSN Search is a prime example).
Stefano, I’m all about making money! But when you disappoint me, the person that Google relies on to look at an click on ads, then they won’t make money.
Jon, yeah, I sometimes wonder about that. Stockholders will do that to ya…
I love Microsoft. People only hate them because it’s trendy to hate them, and as much as everyone does hates them, most of what they do is awesome, and very consumer-friendly.. if it wasn’t, they wouldn’t be so huge.
This is the same way I feel about google. When google does something, they do it right.. thats whats so great! As long as I can search on google.com, find directions on google maps, talk to someone on google chat, and manage ALL of my email addresses from one gmail account, all for free, I have no beef with what google was doing, is doing, or will do!
Yup, I agree, it’s all great stuff and I use it probably as much as you do. I just figure there’s so much more to “do right” than simply grab for more advertising. I know theres much more for them to do.
Apparently Fred Wilson talked a bit about this. Interesting comments follow his entry.
Continuing the Discussion