For a word that is almost synonomous with digital search, infact when you are looking for some information related to anything you more often than not ‘Google‘ it. ‘
But for a company that has grown to the size of a towering behemoth it seems more and more apparent that Google may have lost the ability to innovate. beyond a few core products and competencies the Google stable has yet to produce a product that can change the world the way Search did.
Google Search – Did Google invent search? No. I believe Google redefined the paradigm that was search. To search for a website, meant to search through multiple engines or directories, to see what offered you the best product for your needs, Google said, No! ” Lets actually index the keywords in the data, so you actually see the content being searched for.. This was the birth of Google, a company destined to be called Gogoole ( if i havent missspelled that)
Google Adsense – What is the point of any world pervading business empire, if you cannot be making any money out of it. This was where Adsence came in. Adsence was different – in a world where you were bombarded with ads from apples to online casinos, adsence offered a bit of sanity, not just to publishers, but also to viewers. In a world of nonsence advertising,users were seeing ads that finally made sense to them, advertisers had a new concept of payment – per click and they could see how users actually used their ads. Actually adsence was not a new idea.. Google may have polished the technology but the idea was Old..infact Google were reluctant followers of the PPC model
Gmail – Is Gmail an Innovation? Well in the day when all providers were giving you 2 MB of space Gmail gave you 2GB and growing, It was unheard of and it integrated google search and some of the best Spam filters out there and it was good…
and it was right there that Google first stumbled, Gmail has yet to come out of official Beta, in what has been Invitation only since 1st April 2004 to a public beta of 4th April 2004, it could be the longest April fool’s joke in History. On June 5th 2008 Gmail Labs was introduced as a new feature that allows users to test new and experimental features of Gmail… hmm is’nt Gmail still officially an experiment.
Now in 2008 Gmails competition has beaten it in my opinion, Hotmail and Yahoo both offer large attachments, Storage you are not going to run out of and a searchable interface that while fast can knock the socks of the elementary Gmail Interface – thats right I dont believe the Gmail Interface is great, it is in need of a serious ovehaul.
So what else did Google Innovate…
Docs…Nope that was Writely
Analytics…Nope that was Urchin
Picasa…Nope another Purchase
Youtube… Need I go onn
Sketch Up …@last software