Blogs and Stories
Jeff Jarvis Asks: Is Google an Evil Empire?
Justin Sullivan / Getty Images
What Would Google Do? author Jeff Jarvis on which industries the search giant will take over next, how the company could blow it, and why life is just a beta.
Jeff Jarvis, the blogger behind BuzzMachine.com, has made a career out of challenging and tweaking news organizations as the Internet has vastly upset their business models. But in a newly published book, he also takes the Internet’s signature titan, Google, and uses it as a model for all business to consider.
What Would Google Do? (Collins Business) is Jarvis’ attempt to apply the lessons of the search giant to everything from the news business to hospitals to government. Of course, holding the hardcover in my hands, I wondered: “Book? Dead trees bound together? Surely, this is not what Google would do.”
Click here to read an excerpt from Jeff Jarvis’ book.
Jarvis readily agrees, but he notes that a scribbler needs to get paid. Before setting off for Europe, Jarvis answered some questions about his book, shedding light on the notion of WWGD. He hasn’t had bracelets made yet. He suggests that Google could blow it by getting too big and bureaucratic. And as Google’s quarterly earnings drop was announced last week, he laments that he bought stock at $512.
DB: What are most important rules if you are thinking in WWGD terms?
JJ: I'd nominate these as key rules of the Google age:
1. Be a platform: We are enduring more than a temporary financial crisis. We are witnessing a fundamental shift in the economy. Companies and industries will in great measure no longer grow by borrowing vast capital to make huge acquisitions. The way to grow to critical mass—the Google way—will be to become platforms and networks that enable others to build businesses, grow, and succeed.
2. Life is a beta. Voltaire said that the perfect is the enemy of the good. Google lives the rule as it introduces every new product as a beta. That is Google's way to say that it trusts us to help it finish its products. It is Google's way to open up its design process to our wisdom.
3. Get out of the way. This is actually Craig Newmark's law. As Google built the most powerful tool imaginable—the entire world of digital knowledge revealed behind a simple search box—so did Craig build a simple tool that changed society (and newspapers and real estate and more) without prescribing how we should use it. They create platforms to enable us to do what we want to do and then, instead of giving us rules about their use, then they stand back and put us in charge.
Stars Celebrate the Super Bowl
The Daily Beast is dedicated to news and commentary, culture, and entertainment. We carefully curate the web’s most essential stories and bring you original must-reads from our talented contributors.
How Rich People Smoke Pot
Paul Schrodt is a writer living in New York City. He has contributed to New York magazine, Radar, and Esquire.com.
Touching Bottom
Dave Kansas is president of FiLife, a personal-finance joint venture between Dow Jones and IAC Corp. Previously, Kansas was editor of the Wall Street Journal's Money & Investing section and author of The Wall Street Journal's Complete Money & Investing Guidebook.
The Five Financial Gurus You Can Still Trust
Dave Kansas is president of FiLife, a personal-finance joint venture between Dow Jones and IAC Corp. Previously, Kansas was editor of the Wall Street Journal's Money & Investing section and author of The Wall Street Journal's Complete Money & Investing Guidebook.
apparently
Google is an amazing search engine and credit should go where credit is due on that front, but the ideologies incorporated have drastically contributed to the dumbing down of information. Their rigid keyword doctrine and specific SEO content that websites have to provide is one of the worst things that has happened on the internet. Much content on the web is written for Google alone. Certainly not for the consumer or reader. When Google addresses and corrects this problem, I'll have more respect for other endeavors they try.
Veronicaxy
Google didn't invent web search as is implied here -- Yahoo! and others were in the games years ahead of them -- they innovated search by ranking by a page's popularity instead of by the amount of relevant keywords (trust me Apparently, the other way *really* had a bad effect on content).
I haven't read the book but given what is stated here isn't Wikipedia is the better role model for what is being described as the model culture of democracy, transparency, innovation, stewardship and responsiveness? Google is more economically powerful, maybe that's what is so intriguing to the author really?
If so, I think there needs to be a newer and deeper look at Google.
As the heady days of "we make money hand over fist no matter what we do" are disappearing Google is acting more and more like a regular corporate culture. They're a difficult company to work with: finding someone in charge (enough) to make a decision is a real challenge; they are pretty arrogant and dismissive about ideas that don't come from within and by the way, that 20% time on innovation rule fell by the wayside a long time ago as the economy soured. Check out their response to the public that didn't 'get' their new iGoogle design: clearly the people needed to be told they just don't get a better experience and need to adjust to Google's superior thinking. http://www.google.com/help/ig/tour/
The two people in charge are frequently...missing. Although the rumor is they've issued the mandate to employees focus on creating more revenue.
Given the lack of strong leadership where morality has to be role-modeled and yes, mandated, with a great deal of influence on society and the new and humanly familiar pressure to make more money Google is set up to possibly do something really...wrong.
temekuronny
This interview is fascinating as I'm sure the book is. I intend to purchase the book as soon as I get an advance on my book. What a delicious irony! Google is literally changing business and education models at light speed and will become a victim of their own success. The reason- large organizations inexorably become bureaucratic. The herd animal instinct still influences the human species decision-making process (it's a security thing) but the greatest impact of the Internet is its diffusion of the herd.
Keep it coming TDB. I'm totally addicted. Have you thought of adding a rehab tab?
neo0071
lol no click here lol
http://www.hrhbusinessconsulting.com
Thank you.
As a first time user, your comment has been submitted for review. It can take anywhere from a few hours to a day or two for your comment to be reviewed, depending on the time of week and the volume of comments we receive.