aTypical Joe: a gay New Yorker living in the rural South
Sunday, October 23, 2005
Who will be the next Google?
At the peak of its power and dread, I liked Microsoft. I liked Office even as I understood it’s bloated dirty code. And I like Windows even with its flaws.
I agreed with those who wanted the government to break them up into OS and software companies. I was wrong. Microsoft was benchmarked against some ideal that was just that. An ideal. A worthy target. Unachievable.
Today Google sits squarely in that position. And I like Google. Great company. They have done this and that that I don’t agree with or think is stupid but clearly I’m a fan.
Later this week Google will have their invite-only Zeitgeist conference. It’s as closed as a conference can be. And this is the company we lifted on our shoulders and held up as a shining example of the web at its best. We were wrong to do that, but forgive us for having hope. At some core level Google did understand the web, but there was also a lot about Google that was against the web, and now that’s most of what they are.
This is the struggle we are constantly dealing with in the tech business. For a while we send up a beacon, a shining star, and it’s exciting! Then they forget their values, where they came from, what made it work for them, and we follow them down into bad years. You’d think we could learn, but apparently we can’t. Now can we survive their downfall? That’s a good question, and one I don’t know the answer to.
The excitement today has an element of panic to it. In our gut we can see that the growth is likely to end almost before it gets started. We see Google doing what we knew in our hearts they would do, pick fights with powerful industries that we have nothing against. The publishing industry has done more to support my vision that Google ever has, in fact Google has fought me, at a petty, immature level, based on being incompatible, if you can imagine that, where the publishing industry adopted RSS as-is, without trying to change it or break it. They say the publishers are clueless, I think it’s Google’s management that desperately needs to find its place in the world. I criticize the NY Times, god knows they deserve it, but when I call Martin Nisenholtz, he takes the call, and we work together, in productive ways. This is the east coast way of doing things. It’s something Silicon Valley, which is run by immature men, needs to learn. We don’t have to agree on everything to work together. In fact we must work together, and honor our differences with respect.
There is cause for hope. Google isn’t the only act in town. Yahoo could challenge their dominance. I hope they do, and I hope they don’t do it by being like Google. Embrace the world instead of picking fights with it. Work together because it’s the right thing to do and because it’s good for business. Point off-site, share the flow, come to BBQs and BloggerCons, know that the bright eyes of happy independent developers are the source of the ideas that drive this place, and make sure there’s always a sense that this place is come as you are, no invite required and totally 1.0
I don’t know much but I know that even if Yahoo! is a successful challenger, it’s not the next Google—and I love what Yahoo!’s doing. I think this time it’s possible that the new Google will come from nowhere. Anywhere. And stay there not needing to come to Silicon Valley or New York or LA or London or Tokyo or Hong Kong.
To address more directly Dave’s disenchantment, my experience is that our individual idealized hopes invested in the establishment and ethic of a development makes it hard to let go and accept what happens as it succeeds.
Maybe Dave’s way would be better and it would be good if it had been Larry and Sergey and Dave. But I think giant is necessary and Google’s about as gentle a giant as we can achieve. Today. Better than Pfizer or Wal-Mart or GM or BP or Exxon or GE or AXA or Citigroup.
Maybe the next Google will be a company that discovers the next iteration of the “franchise.” A company that “shares the flow” and recognizes bright-eyed happy independent developers’ ideas and collectivizes those individual small companies. We all know that small companies are better able to innovate and integrate and deploy new ideas.
But spare me the nostalgia for the publisher’s empire. That empire makes the few rich and allows the many to remain unread and would keep the micro-audiences of the masses forever unfathomable.
I hope the next Google will have a conference that is not invitation only. I hope so because Dave’s ideals are good and right and should be. But the perfect is the enemy of the good. Google’s good. Fine to criticize; not to demonize.
Via Dan Gillmor.
