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Google Slammed For Corporate Vs. Innovative Focus
- by Gavin O'Malley , Staff Writer @mp_gavin, March 14, 2012
Pundits have been predicting Google’s downfall for years, but recent developments are adding substance to such prophecies.
In a derisive blog post this week, former Google engineer James Whittaker says his once-innovative former employer is now playing catch-up in the areas of advertising and social. "The Google I was passionate about was a technology company that empowered its employees to innovate," writes Whittaker. "The Google I left was an advertising company with a single corporate-mandated focus."
Essentially, [Whittaker] spins a tale of a once idealist company getting drunk on ad dollars and selling their soul to push monetization above all else,” writes MG Siegler.
Yes, Whittaker now works for rival Microsoft, CNet notes -- but that doesn’t discount his tough analysis. “Google's empire is under direct assault from Facebook,” CNet writes. “Its big weapons -- Search, AdWords, and AdSense -- are not as potent as they once were, thanks to the rise of social media.”
Sure, “this could be sour grapes from somebody who didn't get what he wants,” Business Insider writes. “But we've spoken to other Google employees who have left in the last year, and a lot of them cited similar problems: a more top-down approach and a manic focus on beating Facebook.”
In his rant, Whittaker admits that, "technically," Google has always been an ad company. Yet, as The Register notes, he compares the company’s “huge revenue slurp from the commercial world with that of a TV show, which carries popular material to lure advertisers.”
Despite his Microsoft affiliation, “Whittaker raises some good points,” writes Time's Techland blog. “Even from the outside looking in, Google seems less fancy-free than it used to. Whittaker’s post suggests that the new attitude is affecting Google’s internal culture as well. Google+ may be important to the company, but keeping employees passionate is critical.”
"The problem is, I think Google has failed to understand that along the way, it has become just another big company," Marketing Land’s Danny Sullivan recently said. "It's a big company that makes mistakes, like any big company will do. But unlike most big companies, the entire 'Don't Be Evil' mantra it created for itself years ago has given it farther to fall."
Gavin O'Malley edits MediaPost's Mobile Marketing Daily and MoBlog column. Follow him: @mp_gavin. You can reach Gavin at gavin@mediapost.com.
This is a wonderfully woeful example of a person who works (worked) for a company and has no idea what the company is about or what its strengths were, regardless of how many keynote speeches he may have made on the company’s behalf. In a sense, it's like the reverse of a new CEO brought in to replace the founding team of an innovative company, who also delivers keynote speeches and attends all types of meetings but never really understands what the company does or why.
Firstly, for anyone to leave Google to work for Microsoft, and then be critical of Google is preposterous. Anything that could be said bad about Google is doubly or triply true about MS. Microsoft is only about revenue. Painting MS as some good guy, altruistic endeavor is ridiculous.
Secondly, MS would like to be in the same advertising position that Google has been in, and has been working rather feverishly with Yahoo to try and duplicate the whole Adsense program: So all that Whittaker has done is to leave a company that's successful in advertising for one that would like to be successful in advertising.
Ironically, in the past year since the infamous Panda updates with Google's attempt to be less focused on advertising revenue (ask the folks at Adsense about this) that things have gotten bad and legitimate content providers have been hurt.
Third, the whole Facebook thing and social media is a joke. The Internet does not need an 'internet' to make it work. Let me give you this analogy: The significance of the push button telephone (landline or mobile) was not that you can create musical tunes by pressing the buttons. That might have been a fascinating detail to adolescents who didn’t know what else they could talk about with their friends, but it was not the reason to abandon rotary dial phones.
Even if Facebook makes it easier for anyone to post photographs, it doesn't deserve the hype and importance that it gets for this feature. And if anyone seriously thinks that there's value to the "social" aspect of letting unemployed (or under-employed) numbskulls make innocuous, semi-illiterate comments about issues they know nothing about, then they are insane. They might as well be investing in, and trading, tulip bulbs. If you don’t understand this reference just think “pet rocks.”
I would have to agree with what you say Marc, but I do think Google doesn't get it, not sure if it is because they have their digital brains up their digital *** or they have a really horrible marketing team. But the lack any type of customer support, on almost any level, though Google Maps/Local does seem to be improving. On the mobile phone front they are going to screw the pooch if they don't start listening to their community of Android users, in fact the steam is starting to rise on Fanboy sites about Google's complete lack of attention/comment to that very community that supports them.
Excellent Editorial at Android and Me http://goo.gl/ezr4w