Similarly, Maps was fundamentally innovative. If you went to GMaps c. 2005 and then went to MapQuest, there was absolutely no comparison. I kept wanting to drag the map around to see what was just offscreen. And then Maps kept innovating with satellite imagery, and Street View, and local business labels on the satellite imagery, and double-click-to-find-the-best-vantage-point.
Then there are a bunch of me-too products that succeed only because its Google and everyone already uses them.
Unfortunately this includes everything I've done at Google, but I'm hoping they've set things up for future innovation. Real innovation takes time, usually 3-4 years. Google's strength has been that they're willing to devote that time, but you can't have every single product out the door be a hit.
Regarding Maps, the fundamental operations had been in place since at least 2002 at e.g. http://www.nl.map24.com/. Actually I haven't been there for quite some time, and I think in 2002 their interface was actually better than now.
Google gives away a ton of free services that work. Microsoft sells people something that they have (almost) no option not to buy, and causes a near infinite stream of headaches to just about everyone (even if you don't use it yourself - how many times have you had to help out friends or relatives whose Windows installations got screwed up?).
Sure, giving stuff away may be a cheap ploy to earn goodwill, but I can truly say that Google's services have provided me with a lot of value. In the old days of Microsoft that was true for them, too, but over the past decade Microsoft products have done little more than cost me time and money.
Is it really that bizarre that I feel differently about the two companies?
Actually never... but anyway.
Sure, giving stuff away may be a cheap ploy to earn goodwill
But it's not a cheap ploy. It's a destroyer of value. Once Google moves into a market it's impossible to compete against them (same used to be true of Microsoft and still is in markets they're dominant in..)
My point is that as a community of people interested in startups/founders one would think Hacker News would be upset by this but everyone seems to celebrate when Google moves into a market and destroys it with free.
Is it really that bizarre that I feel differently about the two companies?
I think it's bizarre you think they're different.
it's not like we're gonna run out of problems to solve, because google is solving all of them for us.
If you say yes then I think you need to take a step back and consider the possibility that you've been brain washed.
If Google really starts cloning everything, the way Microsoft is trying, they'll start losing the focus on their core values. As a result, their products will be inferior ... their resources are limited after-all.
Don't believe me? They have a social network for quite some time ... see http://www.orkut.com ... do you see it competing against Facebook? They also have a Wikipedia competitor ... knol.google.com ... do you see it overtaking Wikipedia?
But I do remember what my online-life was like before Google Search / GMail / Google Maps ... I used AltaVista and the first page of results was always full of junk. I used Yahoo Mail that had a slow interface, and only something like ~ 50 MB of storage ... I still have that account (using it for YIM) and it's practically unusable (their spam filters are crap ... in contrast with 2 GMail accounts + 2 Google Apps accounts that are doing just fine).
Google Apps is also really valuable ... I can have my email setup for my domain in a couple of hours, for free, having all the goodies of GMail.
I'm also using Google Translate ... which is really kick-ass sometimes (I'm not a native English speaker, and my native language isn't really popular, but Google Translate knows about it ;))
I'm also using Google Docs and Google Calendar ... Docs because it's there (came with Google Apps) and Calendar because it is intuitive and it is sending me SMS messages for free, plus my wife can see my schedule without me having to give her my password :)
Android and Chrome are 2 products launched to increase competition. I'm a Firefox user, but Chrome is so fast and so stable that it leaves Firefox in the dust ... I'd use it, but some Firefox-specific features are missing. And Android is the open-source mobile-OS we needed ... polished, backed by a strong brand, with a good SDK, and online-store.
I don't really think it's debatable whether Google provides value or not ... they clearly do. And what's "innovation" anyway?
Of course you're not going to see revolutionary ideas. That's why patents are so absurd.
But if you're fear-mongering about freebies, it means you're not providing enough value to justify your sales.
Well, it takes more than simply dumping a free product on the market. It has to be comparably usable.
>do you see it competing against Facebook?
Facebook is also free.
>They also have a Wikipedia competitor ... knol.google.com ... do you see it overtaking Wikipedia?
Again. Two free products competing with each other.
>But I do remember what my online-life was like before Google Search / GMail / Google Maps
People and companies are not static. Yes, google did a lot of good things for us (as did MS and various other places before them). No, they wont continue to do so forever.
><snip a bunch of stuff about using google for most everything>
This seems to back up my point. You're using all these free things instead of buying something from an aspiring new start up.
>I don't really think it's debatable whether Google provides value or not ... they clearly do.
Perhaps, but it's not a zero sum game. Them providing valuable services for free means that I will have a much harder time making a start up to provide those things for even a small cost.
>But if you're fear-mongering about freebies, it means you're not providing enough value to justify your sales.
With google the threat is two fold: a huge company with vastly more resources than any start up will have who gives away most of their stuff for free.
It's taking the best of the Twitter ecosystem, Twitter, Friendfeed and putting it into Google's social graph. It's innovative with the combination of features they've chosen to employ, but it's not original, though. Search was never new when Google started either, remember.
-- edit: I am going to use Buzz to start blogging again. Instant viewer base, who I can identify.
I wouldn't call the 140 char limit an anti-feature either. Its become a key differentiation point, and is in many ways what makes Twitter Twitter.
It would be interesting to have a 140, 700, 5000, unlimited character filters in Buzz. If its display algorithm was used well, it could work out if long posts from a particular person were usually not worth reading to most people.
If that were enough to be "evil" then everything would be evil.
I don't care if Google is evil. They're a large corporation trying to make money like any other. They don't care about us.
* Nobody is claiming that Google is innovative in this example.*
My point was that the vast majority of Google's products are clones and yet they're still considered innovative where the same is true of Microsoft and they are not thought of that way.
What are you talking about?
I'm pretty sure Google didn't invent web based maps, e-mail and the web browser. Wave and AppEngine were good but useless...
Perhaps you attach some other meaning to "clone" than an exact genetic duplicate, indistinguishable from the original except for gestational differences?
What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun.
See for yourself:
There was also the fact that they blackmailed PC vendors into not installing Netscape.
Just out of curiosity, does anyone know of an example of a successful startup whose products are based on source code from Google?
But point taken; that it worked (or not) doesn't negate the fact it was done. Thanks!
The difference is everyone still loves them. Microsoft was seen as ruthlessly destroying their competition. Google is seen as innovative. Bizarre.