Monday, July 11, 2011

Google Syndrome - or Lack of Money Incentive Kills Innovation

I think one day, it will be called like that.

Let's face it, there are not many thing that in this world that were less inventive than Google search, and I would say that in IT there are no such things for sure. What would you say if someone offered you that bulky functionless mobile phone with black and white screen that were produced 10 years ago? And that is more or less what Google did... Just a few changes of side features in 10 years, nothing more.

It comes to my mind that some options that were previously in Advanced search came into Sidebar, and are more easily accessible. Yes they have also added Google Instant Search recently. Well they have added and removed some search results related features, but none of them proved to be useful. Currently you have +1 and site preview, previously there were tools to do something like wiki with search results, but they proved no value and were removed, and I don't see that +1 will have better value either. C'mon guys, even Coke had more changes in those years!

Now Microsoft holds for not so innovative company... And probably there is and reason for that, it has held monopoly on operating systems for more than 2 decades. But let's track even that Microsoft. At the beginning of 80s, it released MS-DOS. In the beginning of 90s it released MS Windows 3.0, its first usable graphical user interfaces operating system. In the beginning of 00s it released Windows XP, which was its first really stable system, and interface drastically evolved in previous decade from application oriented to document oriented with many new features. And now, at the beginning of 10s, Microsoft is to release Windows 8, that will totally break with most previous concepts.

That might lead you to think - is there are reason for that? And the answer is simple - no money incentive. Microsoft may not innovate and it would get a whole lot money in that case too, as people would still buy Windows, but there is a catch in that - they won't buy as fast... everyone will wait for new computer (and probably even postpone such shoppings). To Google innovation doesn't lead to more revenues. It can expect the same people to come in same volume.

But yes, there is a problem with that, as Google search will become obsolete one day. Probably Steve Ballmer thought that he can offer souped up Google search as Bing and present it as revolutionary technology, but users are not that stupid and it didn't pass. Even if Bing seems to become a bit better than Google, it is just not enough for ordinary people to think and risk to switch. But if Microsoft is to offer a really revolutionary search, then things might just change, and Google might be just wiped out. And while I am sure that Microsoft has something in test phase when Ballmer talks about this, something is more sure, and that is  Watson. It won Jeopardy, and it is shooting for some verticals like sales and healthcare where Google would shoot if he had technology. Probably it can't scale to so many topics and so many searches that web has now, but it is a matter of time. And Google is spending time thinking about Google +?

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