The uber geeks

No Alex, Google is not going anywhere

I’ve seen several claims that due to Google’s recent lack-luster announcements, namely Google Video and Google Pack (among others), that Google’s ability to put out quality products is waning. And while I agree that some of these announcements are definitely “bleh”, I do not think that Google is going anywhere anytime soon.

Why Google’s announcements actually have some value

Google has their hands into everything. They’ve created a feed reader, an email application, a globe trotting tool, an IM-client, and countless other projects. They are constantly churning out new efforts to make a difference in several areas of the Web, and they are doing a phenomenal job in a large percentage of those.

Google Pack is described as: “a free collection of essential software”. They might be using the word “essential” pretty loosely here, but really what they’re trying to do is bring some of their most used projects under one roof where everyone can grab them at once.

Alex Albrecht, of Digg Nation, recently said in a broadcast “Google is trying to find more ways to integrate itself into the system because they realize that today’s Web users are not using Google to see what’s new and hot on the Web”. Has anyone ever gone to Google to see what is new and hot on the Web? I’ve been using the Internet since before the days of Google, and I can honestly say I’ve never heard of anyone using Google to find out what’s hot, but rather they use Google to find anything and everything in general.

Alex went onto mention that today’s Web user, which I’m assuming he means the younger audience, is using MySpace, social networking (telling your friends about a site) and services like Digg.com to find out what’s hot on the Web. But what he failed to mention is that Google is still used, more than any other service on the Planet, to find stuff on the Internet. Are you going to go to Digg.com to find a recipe for your Anniversary? To research how others have used PHP to solve a specific problem? To learn all there is to know about the Galapagos Islands?

Google.com is an extremely powerful tool to find what you’re looking for in a short period of time. Digg.com is an extremely useful tool to see what its users are interested in at this very moment.

Getting back to Google’s announcements

Kevin Rose, in the very same broadcast of Digg Nation said that Google’s engineer’s are some of the most talented people we have working in our industry. He went onto say “but what they really need it to higher some designers and usability experts to make their great products actually look good”. I could not agree more, and I think I might know some people that would be more than willing to help out.

While some of Google’s announcements were lacking, I’m looking at Google Video here mostly, some of their efforts have really changed the way things are done. Gmail spearheaded the “online email space” wars, which has made free email space much larger since its release. Google Talk, while nothing revolutionary in most people’s eyes, is really more a long-term project for Google than anything. I think that some people are starting to see, since Google released their technology as open source, that there will be some really great things built on top of this platform. With AOL keeping everything so closed, and MSN Messenger being just horrendous, something needed to budge. And the openness of Google Talk will end up making it one of the more widely used platforms (not the existing client(s)) in the next few years.

No, Google is not going any where. Their foundation is strong, they have the ability to fail at somethings, and succeed at most and still be alive.

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