Don’t Be Evil
The famous motto attributed to Paul Buchheit for a company that seems to no longer have any choice in the matter. Once you go public, you serve new masters, no matter what you write in the prospectus. Google is not above the market. Nobody is.
Over this past week or so, we’ve seen plenty of evil. Enough to really start to scare me. Here are some examples:
1) Wolfram|Alpha
Sergey Brin interned for Wolfram Research and as a friend of Stephen, was able to see the “computational knowledge engine” months before it was released. Soon after Alpha’s launch, we see Google Squared. This looks a little “cobbled-together-over-two-months” to me, no?
2) Microsoft Bing
Bing has a neato feature that allows you to explore your search in more depth with a dynamic left-hand sidebar. This mostly works with the four verticals they are attacking out the gate – Travel, Shopping, Health, Local. Google preempted this with their own left-hand sidebar allowing you to narrow down by media, time, etc. Again, a bit of a hack-job if you ask me – these features pretty much already existed. Microsoft slams this Google feature in their Bing promo video (along with some other zingers).
Strike two against Bing is Google Wave. Announced almost simultaneously. Who got more press?
3) Google Wave
This is a slam against FriendFeed which was created by none other than Paul Buchheit. Actually, it’s a slam against Twitter, Tumblr, Facebook, and a host of others, but I see it most resembling Friendfeed. Why is this evil? Well, it isn’t really…. competition is good and all… but CHROME IS OPTIMIZED FOR WAVE. That is evil.
4) Yahoo Announcements
These were a bit abstract and lame so I don’t blame the press for ignoring them, but let’s see about Google. Google’s “Searchology” happened the day after Yahoo with similar announcements: user intent, microformats, and mobile search. Check out coverage of Google’s event and Yahoo’s event for the fine details.
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Google is trying too hard.. They do need to create a better in-depth search ability but it needs to be researched and built carefully, throwing it together to try and battle a competitor and thinking it will win because it has the word "Google" in it is sure sign of destruction.
Didn't I read somewhere that Internet Explorer 6 was having a problem though where Bing was being set to their default search engine without the ability to change it? Has this been resolved?