This is not about the Google Nexus One Android powered phone. This is about business and economics. My question is simple: how will Google fare when it’s straying away from its core business? When Apple went from the computer sector into the music business with the iPod and iTunes, then jumped happily and successfully into the smartphone field, it precisely did not abandon its core business. It did the exact opposite and applied a tested recipe to another sector. The value proposition and the appeal stayed the same: the guarantee of a fabulous user experience through technological prowess and superior design. Let’s accept it, Apple has, quite simply, fundamentally altered our perception and our acceptance of what I want to call “the machine”. It has done it by eradicating the distance between ourselves and our tools. Using an iPhone for the first time feels as simple and playful as drawing a funny face on a foggy window. No learning curve, no need for a user manual. Apple’s interfaces are extremely powerful metaphors: how could a virtual music collection NOT look like iTunes? How could the extension of my palm, a mouse, NOT look like a polished sculpture rather than a contraption? End of necessary digression and back to the Nexus One.
Google’s core business is the search/advertisment business thanks to a complete and so far unchallenged mastery of superior algorithms. Until now, every single application or service developed by Google has been built on that, powerful information processing and integration. Every time Google has tried something else, it has been met with mixed results. Sometimes even when staying within its core business, Google has been unsuccessful. Remember Google Video? Well, it bombed. Until Google bought YouTube. And if YouTube is a success, it is largely due to the fact that Google has played sugar daddy by pumping millions into it. Generated by what business? You guessed it: its core business, the search/advertisement business.
The digital ecosystem is going mobile. The desire for mobility need not be created. To this extent, Google thought it probably had to venture outside of the computer screen. But my basic question remains: what for? As a consumer, what is the real benefit to me of the Nexus vs. the iPhone or the BlackBerry. Will my search experience be enhanced? Nope. Is Android a superior operating system. Not sure when I read the reviews. Might Google have gone into that business out of arrogance and pure hubris? Might the”don’t be evil” company be suddenly blinded by its success and think it has become invincible?
No Comments