A while ago, I wrote a blog on my love and hate relationship with Google and my fear of its information power. I just came across this blog on Google no longer trusted by TRUSTe. I visited TRUSTe’s website and verified that Google is indeed not on TRUSTe’s list of trusted organizations any more. That makes you wonder…
Category: Reality Check
Microsoft’s Irrational Obsession with Google (Part I)
If one day Microsoft goes belly up, I suspect it will have a lot to do with the company’s irrational obsession with Google. It’s true that Microsoft had lost plenty of talent to Google. According to the Google Story book (Delacorte Press), Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer had once said: “I’m going to fucking kill Google”. But in this pursuit of deadly competition and revenge, Microsoft has lost sight of the market and its own strengths. Here is a synopsis of what I think Microsoft is doing wrong.
(1) The pursuit of Google is vastly different from a few years back when Microsoft beat Netscape with its dominance in the operating system market. At that time, the Internet was just starting to happen, and with the small number of users, Netscape had not taken a strong hold of the mass market. Today’s situation is very different. The Internet has become ubiquitous, and Google has much more muscle than Netscape did in the old days.
(2) Yes, the search market is important, and Google’s success has demonstrated the power of search marketing. But search engine is what has already happened. Even though Google has not been around for that long, by Internet age, it is getting old. With the fast pace of innovation in today’s environment, rather than pursuing something that has already reached a mature stage, it makes much more sense to create and invest in what’s to come.
(3) There is no dispute that online advertising has been growing very fast (see “Online Statistics” section in the right panel for recent ad revenue statistics). Microsoft Wanted to get a piece of the pie, hence its offer to buy Yahoo. Yahoo rejected the bid earlier this week. While this may be perceived by some as bad news for Microsoft, it is really good news, because the merger would not have made sense any ways. Microsoft has never been a strong content provider. Its fundamental business is not in the area of “eyeball” business but rather about affecting people’s way of computing. Going after the advertising market is not what Microsoft does best and will be more like a waste of its resources rather than help.So what should Microsoft do instead? Coming up in Part II, I will offer my analysis of the opportunities that lie ahead for Microsoft.
A Love and Hate Relationship with Google
In a classroom discussion of brand personalification, I asked students how they would describe Google if it were a person. The words my students came up with were all very positive, “helpful”, “efficient”, “reliable”, you name it. One student even said that if Google were a person, she would fall in love with him. Like my students, I am too in love with Google. Yet at the same time, I hate Google. Or more accurately, I hate the fact that I love Google so much. Most things I do daily — email, search, documents, news — all depend on Google. Even this blog is on Google. I cannot remember a day being online without using a Google feature at least once.
So what do I hate about Google? The fact that it knows too much about me as an individual. Imagine someone peeking into Google’s database (legally or illegally), he can find out a lot about me, what I do, and what is happening in my life. In this day and age, information is power. And having a lot of information means owning a lot of power, even if it is only potential power that has yet to be unleashed. That power makes me fearful.
Yes, I do have a choice. There is nothing coercive about Google’s services. I, as a consumer, chose to submit to it. Like many others, I started with its search engine. It produced far superior results and soon became the only search engine I would use. Then through a friend, I got into Gmail. I was instantly attracted to the way it allows you to organize information through tagging (or in its terms labeling). Every product I have tried from Google, it almost never failed to amaze me.
Yet as I added more and more Google usage into my online life, I became more and more concerned that I am becoming too reliant on the company as my online “everything” provider. Now comes the part why I hate myself for loving Google. Many a times, I wanted to disperse my activities across different websites instead. But eventually I would give up on the idea, because I could not find something else that can do what I need like Google does.
I am intrigued by the ethical implications of all this. Because there is no coercive component, theoretically it is ethical. But how do you deal with a situation like this, where a company’s product can be so superior that the company can potentially demand a lot out of consumers, and consumers will be OK with it? What if it is the choice between having crappy products/services vs. revealing your personal information and posing danger to your privacy? It is like a forbidden fruit that promises you immediate benefits but can cause potential dangers in the long term. It is only natural that most people value current gains more than future benefits. So although we can choose, in a way, we don’t have a choice.
I still want to do something about my love and hate relationship with Google. More and more, I want to stop my addiction to this potential danger. I am reading a book called “The Google Story”, which chronicles the history and development of Google. Although I have not gotten to it yet, the last chapter in the book was on how Google is experimenting with genetic science. Imagine Google also knowing my genetic codes. Now that is REALLY scary.