Are you afraid too ?
They have money. They have power. They have numerous ramifications. They hold my data, they see what I search, they search what I see. They could even hear what I say. How long before they plunge one of their countless hands in my wallet ? Are they so kind as they say ? What do they want ?
The acquisition of yet another company (AdMob, for that matter) makes me wonder if I can still trust Google. As a digital entrepreneur, is it really a good option to put all of my eggs in the same basket ? Let’s see…
Diary of a Google addict
Ok, I’m a digital entrepreneur. What is the first thing I do when I leave my home in the morning at 06:00 09:26 ? I check my emails on my smartphone. Of course, they are hosted on Google Mail.
Then I call some of my friends. Gee, I may be using a Google Android phone… And even a Google Voice service. I arrive at my office, then I re-re-re-re-check my emails. This time I’m using the web interface of Google Mail.
Now I have to check if my Blogger.com blog has a great success. Of course, Google Analytics give me this information. Got a foreign customer on phone and have a special word to tell him ? I occasionally use Google Translation to check.
I use Google Documents to share sensitive information with my co-workers.
Got a new employee ? Have to register her on my Google Apps management console. Got a meeting out of town ? Just have to check Google Maps with my phone. Want to make money with some website ? I use Google AdSense, it’s easy and powerful. Want to read a book after lunch ? I’ve got Google Books for that.
Many friends of mine are looking after Google Wave. Personally, I could be using Picasa service.
Oh, and by the way… On the web, I search with Google. As 91,23% of the people in my country. It’s so stunning that in their references techniques, most web agencies now only care about Google ranking. So, yes : I dream of my Google Pagerank at night. Bedtime.
Guess what? Google’s not perfect
Ok, most of you readers have never experienced any Google outage. In fact, we mostly fetch the google homepage to check if an internet connexion is working or not. Google is the « metre-etalon » of the web. But… don’t you remember Google Mail outage ? I even experienced strange conditions where I couldn’t receive Orange subscribers mails immediately. Weird. Google has outages.
Because you know what ? Google is not perfect at all. Even the homepage has flaws. Google’s design motto has always been over-simplicity, bare-naked services, white, space, air — even more that Apple. But sometimes I get tired of this impression of seeing a painting that’s not yet finished. Sometimes I like Bing’s colorful background. Sometimes I find a Google tool unpleasant to use.
And sometimes, a service is way too complicated for nothing. For example, Google Analytics is not a model of simplicity, I prefer some other tools (even though I use it anyway).
Their baseline used to be « Don’t be evil« . Right. Sure. Don’t be. Ask Yahoo if they don’t think Google is a little bit evil ? Ask Microsoft if they liked the marketshare crush Google Mail did to Hotmail ? Ask Apple if they’re happy with Android (oh, and by the way, Eric Schmidt, as a board member of Apple, had plenty of time to keep a close look at what their competitor-to-be were doing before leaving the board). Or, even ask ViaMichelin, a small subsidiary of french company Michelin making an online mapping solution, if they found it funny to have their results drop by 75% between 2007 and 2008…
My Google Fears : Outage. Data Leakage. New ideas.
Ok, Google holds a laaaaarge part of my data (email ; documents ; pictures ; blog ; statistics about my website frequentation ; phone information ; and the list goes on and on and on and on). What if an unrecoverable outage happens ? Yeah, shit happens : Microsoft noticed it recently with Sidekick. So, if Google mail has a big outage, then I’m out of business. And you ? What happens if you loose the online data you blindly entrusted to Google ?
I run a business. I have private data. I give them to google, praying God (He’s the one to pray : He stands in the Clouds, after all…) they won’t give it to a competitor of mine. No, this never happens, data is always stored securely. Not even at Twitter. So, what happens if your private data get exposed ? Are you still in business or do you risk much ?
And, last but not least, Google constantly has new ideas. See the ViaMichelin example: they had a nice business, they run it smoothly, they didn’t annoy anybody, it was a french-only service. Then Google came. They run the same service — but for free. Now ViaMichelin has to struggle to survive. Ok, that’s competition, but can any company fight against one that can make as much as 5.7 Billion $ a year ?! That means that if Google has an idea, they can put 100 engineers on it just in a finger snap. Just to try. Just for fun. And, as it’s not what they make money with, just for free. You’re running an internet business ? You just have to pray Google won’t have the same idea as you.
And I’m not talking about the fact that being a competitor AND being hosted on Google Mail shouldn’t be a good idea.
Remember that : Google holds your data. It owns part of it. It owns some media channels (mobile, for example). It has a dominant position on search engines. It owns the tools to analyze it. Now, if you were a Security Consultant, would you allow any of your customers to trust only one company about all those assets? You didn’t think about it ? That leads us to the last point : evangelism.
One more fear : Evangelism.
Last thing : I’m not that afraid of Google. See, I’ve written about Microsoft several times in the post, thinking « hey, it’s not the same thing, it’s Microsoft, they are bad ». Err… Are we really objective about what Google do ? They roll out an unexplainable mail-stuff-shit service called Wave and everybody’s waiting for their invite (Yes, including me. @w_a_s_t_e, by the way ? :)). Microsoft announces Bing and we laugh at them. Seems like an Apple-ish « realty distortion field » is over our heads.
Google is very impersonal. That may explain part of their success : the bare minimum, that works really good.
Be careful. Google might get less fun than they look now. I won’t remove my Google Mail accounts, but now I faced the fact that I’m addictive to Google and it might not be good for my business. Maybe you should worry too, and try using alternatives. Maybe I’ll try to search on Bing from times to times :)
