• The New York Times, Monday, April 23, 2012 12:04 PM

Like countless industry leaders before them, are Google and Facebook growing fat, happy, and complacent? Citing their lack of mobile focus as evidence, so suggests Nick Bilton. “This month, when Google showcased a new design for Google Plus, the company’s social network, it was as if mobile phones and tablets were still a glimmer in some future inventor’s eye,” Bilton writes on The New York Times’ Bits blog. “The made-over Web site was beautifully designed, but the smartphone app and mobile site were completely ignored.”

Facebook’s willingness to drop $1 billion on the two-year-old Instagram is clear evidence that the social network has also struggling with its mobile strategy. “Its mobile app, which is sometimes painfully slow, was updated only after the Web site was redesigned for Timeline,” Bilton notes.

Bigger picture, Bilton has a theory on why both Google and Facebook have been slow to capitalize on the shift to mobile. “It’s that working at these companies is like going to work on an all-inclusive cruise ship,” he posits. “The analogy is apt in terms of the luxury -- and the isolation.”

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