Don’t Be Evil

It was with those words that Google defined its mission as a company. Don’t be evil in the way you treat your employees, don’t be evil in the way you treat your customers, don’t be evil in the way you treat your competitors. It was the motto they very publicly promised to live by. Coming on the heels of the antitrust case against Microsoft, who many in the tech community and the public at large viewed as evil incarnate, it was a motto that earned Google a lot of goodwill. Though there has been some discrepancy as to whether they always live up to this goal, they are still generally viewed as the “good guys”. Recent weeks have seen two large developments with the company, which will likely cause many to once again evaluate whether Google is still striving not to be evil.
Several weeks ago, Google launched the invite-only beta of their new social network, Google+. This arena is still firmly controlled by Facebook, but if anyone has a chance of unseating the current champ, it will have to be a company with built in recognition and it will have to offer very definite improvements over Facebook. It launched to much media buzz and invites were so sought after that they were shut down in less than a week. It was easy to find descriptions of all the Google+ offered, but without actually using the service, it’s difficult to understand just how all the elements fit together. That being said, I recently acquired an invitation to join (thanks Sherwin), so I’m going to try to explain my impressions anyway. To my mind, there are three elements which could give the service an edge: security, integration, and unification.
Security has long been one of the major complaints levelled against Facebook. It’s definitely possibly to control exactly who sees your information on Facebook, but the security settings are far from streamlined and may appear impenetrable to an inexperienced user. In addition, by default most things are left open on Facebook. That strategy has served the company well both in the fact that it greatly aided the speed of adoption, making it very easy to find friends on the network, and also by making the network a paradise for targeted advertising, which is how Facebook makes the bulk of its profits. Since it knows a huge amount of information about you, and since you’ve agreed to let that be shared with advertisers, you can get ads directly related to your interests, which means you are more likely to click them, which results in cash in Facebook’s coffers. Google+, in contrast, is very upfront with who can see your information and defaults to hiding most of it from public view. All of your “friends” on the service must be placed into a “circle”, which is basically a group which you can name – eg. Friends, Family, Coworkers, People I Hate, whatever you want. Whenever you post anything on the service, you can select which of those circles can see it. It’s a very elegant, easy to understand way to manage your privacy.

The second potential advantage Google has is integration. They are still the largest search provider by far,through Gmail are one of the largest email providers, and in YouTube are also the largest distributor of web video. Combine that with their calendar, documents, RSS reader, web browser, and desktop and mobile operating systems and Google is pretty much anywhere you want to be. Google+ is integrated into all of these. Once you sign up, it appears in the menu bar at the top of all their sites, meaning you don’t just visit Google+, you take it with you, and it uses all of the services you already use.

Those little “+1” buttons that have been showing up all over the web in recent months? They are Google+’s version of the “Like” button, but in addition to posting the item you “plus” to your feed, they also impact your search results on all Google pages, meaning that the more you use the service, the better your search results will match your own individual tastes. This is where Google makes its money. Rather than giving your information to advertisers to create targeted ads, Google uses your behaviour across the web to give you the most relevant adds. It’s a small but important difference. Whether you feel more comfortable with one or the other is up to you.

The third and potentially most important advantage of Google+ is unification. Most people use multiple social networks already, Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare, etc. There are enough people that want to be able to do everything in one place that there are a glut of third party programs that allow you to manage all of them within a single program but at best you’re still just controlling each individually within a single window. By coming late to the party Google has the advantage of being able to copy the best elements of each and allow you to do it all seamlessly within one interface. The most obvious one is Facebook, since Google+ allows you and your friends to follow each other, post updates, share links, pictures, and videos. But it also behaves like Twitter, since you can add anyone to any circle, you can create a “Following” circle where you put people who you are interested in seeing updates from and all of their public updates will show up in your feed. You won’t share anything with them unless they put you into one of their circles, in  which case they would get your public feed. This makes it easy to post something general that will go out to the web at large, like you would on Twitter, and something personal that only close friends can see, like you might on Facebook. Google+ also takes aim at Foursquare with its Google Places integration. Places has been built into the web and mobile version of maps for a long time, but will really take off if Google+ does.

My own impressions of the service are mostly positive. I really like the layout and integration, as well as the fact that it already has a strong mobile app, which I think is essential for a social network and something that Facebook largely ignores. I don’t think Facebook is going anywhere anything soon, but Google+ does a lot of things right and if it can hold out long enough, it might just come out on top.

The second major development in Google land is the announcement today that they will be buying Motorola for $12.5 billion. Google’s Android operating system is already the most widely used mobile OS in the world but, until now, they relied exclusively on other companies to build the hardware. Now Google will have control of the complete chain, from concept to putting the product in the customers hand. The flagship Google phones – Nexus 1, Nexus S, Nexus Prime – have always been the best of the Android phones, so the new Motorola phones will likely be the new cream of the Android crop. In addition to the phone division, this acquisition is important to Google in two other, even larger, ways. The first is Motorola’s extensive patent collection. Ownership of these will allow Google to expand further and fend off the patent infringement lawsuits that have begun to head their way. Finally, Motorola also has the largest market share of cable boxes. Having such a large install base will allow Google to put GoogleTV in a lot of homes and help smooth things over with the cable companies which are currently working to stop GoogleTV from receiving content.

So what does all this mean? In short, it means that soon Google will be everywhere. If it has a screen, and even if it doesn’t, Google seems to want to be your connection into that device. This sounds a little like the Microsoft of 15 years ago, only less hostile. Personally, I love Google’s apparent vision for the future. Let’s just hope they can stick to their old motto.

Sleep well,

DTE