Google is loosing the mojo – too evil, are we? Comments Off
I don’t know what Google is up to lately, probably survival, but it’s mojo is going away, fast. At least for me it is.”Don’t be evil” – my ass. Nobody even questions that they are a gigantic corporation, a monopole is search and online advertising, but until not so long ago they were trying to put on this cool “I’m just a giant start-up” show. OK people, game over, nobody believes this anymore.
So why is Google evil? Well, let’s stat with the latest thing. They’re trying to get this incredibly hard to replicate preferential agreement with various network providers. Basically they want their content to go faster in the web. Web Neutrality begone. See here for more details. They say “Anybody can do the same”. Let’s get real Anybody = Google, Microsoft and Yahoo?
Their the new big monopoly, the new Microsoft. Remember when Google backed down on the Google-Yahoo deal? Check here for more info. The main idea was that they backed down because they were afraid no to go down the Microsoft road with this.
For me, as a developer, there are few things about Google more iconic then the famous 20% time for personal projects thing. Maybe even more famous then their cook… maybe not, but anyway. It is so exciting to
David vs Goliath (source ZDnet)
hear how every programmer can have this wacky idea and maybe one day see it become THE thing. Maybe they still give the 20% but they are now focusing at a big level only on the really promising projects, the ones that can bring some… value. This is part of their financial crisis plan (more here – article in Romanian). Wait a minute, this ain’t startupy anymore.
By the way, is Google in a hiring freeze or a firing meltdown (I want to get all the credit for the bad word play, thank you)? Nobody seems to know. Officially no, in off the record, probably.
So google is not David anymore it grew into Goliath. It’s normal for Google to do what any big company has to do to survive – walk on the bodies of their competitors but the change is a little bit too sudden. Maybe the so much talked about crisis is contributing to this, who knows.
But I must give them this – they’re aplications rock, and as long as this is so I don’t care who they act as.
LE: Google tries to answer the Net Neutrality issue on it’s blog – see here.
