A few decades from now, when someone writes up an HBS case study on Google, how will it read?<p>My suspicion is that Google is going to treat us to a very painful object lesson: what happens to your business when you compromise the values of a beloved core product.<p>Here's the thing: having the most complete, most accurate, most relevant search results means never having to say you're sorry. You can add ads, you can do additional products, you can add a kind of clunky single-signon, whatever. Because at the end of the day, the user <i>needs</i> the thing you have that no one else does.<p>Now, Google had this. But one day, maybe around 2009, something happened. Where once I was delighted with Google's search, it started getting annoying. Things like automatically showing you a SERP for a different spelling of your query, because Google thought you were looking for that. Then they started matching to synonyms (tear and rip, say). And so this tool that used to do exactly what it was asked became too clever by half.<p>Meanwhile, SERP quality began to deteriorate as well. We suffered for something like 18 months under the regime of those Stack Overflow scrapers and their ilk, with plenty of equivalent nonsense in other verticals (hello, ebooks!).<p>So, already, Google took its eye off the ball for the one thing that previously had been inviolable. And now there's the comically titled SPYW.<p>Google's not stupid: they get that the rise of mobile and specialty apps/services that go with it are going to whittle away at the searches they'll be asked to do.<p>They've bet the company on Android and Google+ giving them an out. Android was a good call, as it puts them in the driver's seat for a lot of this mobile action. But they need the web, too. Can they get away with compromising their search with this nouveau portal strategy?<p>My hunch is that they're going to pay dearly in the process of finding out the answer is no. They're too big and too smart not to make the transition to whatever the next big thing is after search.<p>But boy – screwing with the golden goose that earns both reputation and cash?<p>Well, give 'em this: they're willing to take risks.
It is quite the jump from “This is the path we’re headed down – a single unified, ‘beautiful’ product across everything. If you don’t get that, then you should probably work somewhere else" to "Agree with SPYW or GTFO". One is an admirable goal for a whale of a company and the other is a stubborn denial of contrary opinions. I thought Pando Daily was suppose to be a "different" tech news site.
I would be <i>much</i> more interested at working at the new Page dominated Google than the old Schmidt one. At least he's trying to do what Steve Jobs did so well: make big leaps forward.<p>Apple found it necessary to own more and more pieces of the stack to innovate. Google is finding itself in the same position. Almost all of the best products are restricted/closed/proprietary systems. Macs, OSX, iPhone/iPad, Facebook, Twitter, Gmail, etc.<p>It certainly would be nice if there was a real competitor to Google like Android competes with iOS.
I think the most important part of this HN thread is that people have gone from giving Google the benefit of the doubt to assuming that everything they do is a part of trying to fuck over the users in any way imaginable in a depiction that is beginning to exceed a vilification greater than Mark Zuckerberg. Google are having the biggest crisis of trust in their entire history. A Gmail alternative seems more welcome than ever before, <i>because who knows what they will do next</i>.<p>I don't really see <i>anything</i> newsworthy nor controversial in the article, but people are just fed up with everything Google are doing now.<p>It actually reminds me of the binary ways people tend to hate politicians: either, they find them evil, or they find them incompetent. Microsoft went from being evil to bumbling idiots (to wit, try to remember the Seinfeld ads) - to being sort of neutral in the game.<p>Now, Google have gone from being regarded as bumbling idiots to evil profit-maximizing clueless assholes who've eroded their brand and goodwill and danced on the line of antitrust suits.<p>Facebook seems to be viewed as consistently evil, although some developers just seem to hate them for their API and "move fast and break things" philosophy, so YMMV.<p>It's probably not doing them any favours that they of all the giants have the most invisible CEOs and owners of all, which makes the Google seem like an amorphous corporate blob of evil whose tendrils reach into our data and private lives. Even Ballmer adds some humanity to Microsoft, especially in the recent interview with him: <a href="http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/steve-ballmer-reboots-01122012_page_1.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/steve-ballmer-reboots-0...</a>.
I'm seeing a whole lot of hyperbole around here for what still seems to be pretty much a non-issue. Don't like SPYW? Don't use it. It's <i>one button</i>. Click it, and move on. Between the Don't Be Evil script stunt from facebook/twitter and the content-free blogspam from Sarah Lacy/pandodaily, it seems like there are a few people out there who really, really want this to be an issue.<p>It isn't. Get over it.
Guys, unless you're actually a player, save yourself the headache and don't get caught up in this little valley tiff.<p>I think SPYW is dumb, but google is trying something to improve search results, it happens to use data that they have on the user. I don't think they need permission from everyone in the valley with a sign-in service they can't crawl before they're allowed to make changes that are meant to improve search. So all the bitching about it really smells like the big guys trying to SEO through telling google that they can't change their algorithm in a way that they lose rank.
Leaders should lead with a unique style. Their way.<p>Larry's playing catchup with Facebook while thinking he can be Steve Jobs, and that, together with guarding the cents by removing the little things that made life @Google awesome (bagels anyone?) has led to low morale among the workforce.<p>Geeks with low morale don't get shit done.<p>They don't innovate. They don't create.<p>Google staff aren't code monkeys, they're not going to stick around to keep the seats warm.<p>The good ones will spend every hour of the day doing the bare minimum required to still get a paycheck while finding a new job.<p>It's money not passion that's preventing them leaving. And that's a pretty depressing atmosphere to work in.
I misread the title and clicked expecting an argument about why Google thinks SPDY (<a href="http://www.chromium.org/spdy" rel="nofollow">http://www.chromium.org/spdy</a> ) is vital to internets or something :(<p>This is much less cool/interesting.
I can't help but feel like this is the equivalent event of Ballmer throwing the chair.<p>It's good to have decent among a company so long as it is promoted in a healthy manner, having employees grumble about it at the water cooler only serves to infect the ranks but promoting an open forum where any person can decent and others can rebut allows people to at least understand why the decision where made. In some manner the conflict may be resolved for all parties through a unforeseen solution and by having a forum you promote solutioning. If I worked at Google I would be looking for the door, not because of the issue at hand but because when someone else is told to GTFO, I take it as a signal that it's probably time for me to go to because the open forum has died. It's sad really they where the Bell Labs of this time, a dream and people need dreams.
Ah yes... and everybody thought Google was immune to the tech company lifecycle. My guess is this is where the downslide begins (which will probably be decades for a company of Google's size).<p>I've seen this play out in small and large companies alike ... once the business model gets solidified and turns into a cash cow all the execs go into defense mode which manifest itself in a number of ways but my way or the highway is usually a big one.
I really like how the article speculates that talented Google employees who value "don't be evil" enough to consider quitting over SPYW would take jobs at... <i>Facebook</i>.
Am I the only one that thinks SPYW is the right direction? We have seen that rankings were increasingly being gamed. Algorithmic search is a never ending arms race. SPYW aligns with what google has been trying to do for a while, provide results that are relevant and worthwhile to the user. If my mom searches for digital cameras , she would rather have a link to something written on G+ by someone in her circle than a blurb on a content farm.Algorithmic search is a no win situation, there is no way to judge the value of the link, they need to do that through +1 and other social features. It is just wisdom of crowds.
> There’s a full-on war for developer talent that the company has already been struggling with– along with every single startup and sexier large companies like Facebook, Twitter and Zynga.<p>What makes Zynga, Twitter and Facebook "sexier"?<p>> Then again, a lot of what we’re hearing is from X-Googlers. Google has been competing for employees for a while by simply shelling out more cash. Perhaps newer hires are just there for the paycheck, more than the much-vaunted mission.<p>What percentage of Zynga hires are there for the paycheck as opposed to the "mission"?
I'm not going to discuss the article itself as others have already said what I wanted to say,,
rather let's take a look at the author of the article: Sarah Lacy.<p>To give you an idea of who Sarah Lacy is, let's check out a video titled:
"Mark Zuckerberg Interview with Sarah Lacy at SXSWi"<p>After you've checked out that, read the article again and you'll see what I'm pointing at; Sarah Lacy is not an unbiased source, rather she's an FB mouthpiece.
How did it go from<p><i>This is the path we’re headed down – a single unified, ‘beautiful’ product across everything. If you don’t get that, then you should probably work somewhere else.</i><p>to<p><i>If you don't get SPYW, work somewhere else.</i><p>I understood the first as "if you don't understand our goals, you should probably not be working here" and the second as "our way or the highway".
I don't care much about google+ infiltrating search.<p>What I care most about is that searches are now more fuzzy.<p>If I want to search for terms : A B C D<p>The results will consist of things with any combination of those items, and sometimes things that are similar to those items.<p>There used to be a + operator to force things, but that has been removed in the last half year.<p>They supposedly added back something similar when you wrap things in quotes, but that doesn't work either.<p>Now when I go to bing and search for +A +B +C +D, it really does just return only the results I am looking for.<p>This is critical for searching for tech stuff.<p>Not convinced? Try:
+trueskill +javascript
In google, bing, and duckduckgo.
Meta: Throwing the new terms as SPYW around as if they have been around for at least for decade I believe is wrong. At first I thought its some kind of certificate, or even some kind of vaccination.
While I agree with the premises that<p>(a) doctoring the search results is killing the golden goose<p>and<p>(b) Google is essentially just a big advertising company<p>The reality is that even with watered down results they are still better than their competitors.<p>If I want to search MSDN then Google gives better results than Bing.<p>Think about that for a moment. How can Bing be a serious competitor to Google when they can't even search their own site properly???<p>So I think that there is some wriggle room for Google here. They can water the beer down... but it is still better than the cow piss the pub down the road is serving.
Spent over 20 minutes to disable all of Google's bullshit personalization of search. I swear to Bob, if they shove one more god damn "feature" into Search i'm gonna make my default engine Yahoo.
First, I honestly do not understand the notion that Google is being “Evil” with Search Plus Your World. How is changing your product, whether it ends up being good or bad, evil?<p>Second, my friends and family have no idea what SPYW is and don’t notice a difference. Heck, the majority of the searches I do are not drastically change to any large degree.
This has nothing to do with "if you don't get SPYW"<p>Search Plus Your World itself can change and evolve.<p>All of this negative media is being perpetuated by Twitter and Facebook who are losing massive amounts of free traffic they used to get.<p>If Twitter and Facebook want to be guaranteed to be in Google's results, then they should guarantee that Google/Google+, etc. show up in Twitter and Facebook's search, though that's probably not a very good deal for Google - and Facebook wouldn't do that because of their closed/controlled ecosystem, and Twitter wouldn't want that traffic leak either.<p>I would point this to being hypocritical and just trying to stir up negative public opinion about the whole thing - because it's all Twitter/Facebook are able to do.<p>Don't you think Google is tracking the effects of their changes?<p>And they likely did small tests first too. They can still measure the user's experience and maybe it actually is providing results people care and benefit from just as much.
Let's hope that the quote isn't true. There's nothing that signals "jumping the shark" better than arrogance and the sense of untouchability. It's almost cliche how people at their peak think they can say and do whatever they want without consequences.
This all makes no never-mind to me, as I'm going to turn that right off (you can do that, right?). I prefer to evaluate on my own what information is relevant and what isn't. Happy accidents, you know.<p>Did Google ever announce what the rationale for this is, from a revenue perspective? Is a link with content that a person is likely to recognize also likely to generate extra revenue?
I think this is just mistaken. How is mixing your social circle into your search NOT relevant? Given that people routinely move in tight cliques, whether or not they know it. If all your buddies are into kink, a search for "horse" or "crops" is likely to turn up something rather different from if they are into agriculture, and this is not uncool.
I'm dubious just how much relevance social signals add.
And for me this is the crux of the matter.<p>It <i>looks</i> like google is just chasing after facebook,
with the sole intention of monetizing those lovely social graphs.<p>That might not be evil, but it loses you a lot of goodwill. Telling the cows they are monetisabke beef units will hurt Daisy's feelings.<p>If the google search page came with some means of showing the raw search and the adjusted ones, we might be willing to give them the benefit of the doubt (I.e. Your results, plus the raw duckduckgo equivalent, plus the ones based on your past search history but ignoring your google+ account etc)<p>google <i>is</i> search, and the other posts are right - they forget that at their peril. But they can be forgiven the other dalliances if they can show us how those products made search better
So, what are people using as alternatives these days? I use gmail, google talk and google.com exclusively for email, chat and search. If (for arguments sake) I wanted to switch what is there of similar quality that still be around and relevant in 3 or 4 years?
SPYW -> Search Plus Your World.<p><i>This is the path we’re headed down – a single unified, ‘beautiful’ product across everything. If you don’t get that, then you should probably work somewhere else.”</i> -larry page memo
Eventually Google's algorithms will be so smart that they will index your sentiments to give you the experience most likely to retain you as a user. Maybe your Google will look like 2008.
I didn't know what SPYW was, and swear my first thought was it must be an abbreviation for SPYWare. Which is more than a little ironic now I know what it actually stands for.
what I haven't seen in the previous comments is that people naively don't learn from past experiences or other failures. Now let me explain :<p>- CURRENTLY, we can safely say Google core product is search and at least CURRENTLY people still needs "google search".<p>- will it be the same in the FUTURE ? well, you don't have to know the answer, but I'm sure some crazy numbers crunching happen every day at Google and those would signal some trends about "google search" in favor or not.<p>- Now let's learn from "some failures"...Microsoft didn't want to reinvent itself, they thought their cash cows (windows & office) will always give them a foot ahead, so never wants to let them go and try something totally new without "windows" in them...well u know their history.<p>- Apple once was "Apple Computer", changed to "Apple Inc", entered new industries, created new ones, planning to enter new ones, never cared about "ideals, fair treatment, transparent", never care about what their users think they want, they controlled all their products like never seen before, they basically do what they want and their customers just take it or leave it...basically in short, 13 billions of profits in a quarter!!!<p>Now with all above, assume you're smart, can learn quickly, , you're Larry Page and you don't want to become something of the past, what will you do ?
So instead of commending the CEO on articulating a vision and being determined about it the author somehow spins the words to fit the Google bashing theme of her previous posts.<p>To be clear: "This is the path we’re headed down – a single unified, ‘beautiful’ product across everything. If you don’t get that, then you should probably work somewhere else" != “Fuck off”.<p>There is plenty that could be said about the sad state of tech blogging but some of the blame falls on Google because they are losing the PR battle. It’s obvious that PR staff from Twitter/Facebook and others are doing a much better job at selling their rhetoric to these tech blogs, specially to the newly formed blogs looking for audience and traffic.
Well, sounds like the man has a vision, and is being unambiguous about what it is. I can appreciate that, at least. Count me among the folks that don't "get it", though.
<fantasy> Google will have a mutiny where someone will kick out Larry and spin off Android, Google+, Youtube and Chrome OS and shift the focus back to basic Web search </fantasy>