A discussion about the software industry and their coders

You don't seem to understand the difference between mission and strategy. They are related but not the same. Google's mission is to organize the world's information - that's what they are setting out to do. Strategy is prioritizing and setting objectives to accomplish the mission: everything is not a priority all at once.

Strategy is not simply what you choose to do, but also includes how you prioritize what you do. The question you must ask is what does google prioritize. The media hypes google's small projects much more than needed, but Google's main business and priority is still Ads and search. Microsoft and Yahoo decided to compete with Google because of search, before google bought writely or had a personalized home page. It's the media that overhyped Google Base as going after Ebay, when Google has said google base is just another way to add to its search results, similar to Google Sitemaps.

Of course it is clear that Google's portal features are a second phase in its strategy, but its priority is clearly second to search and ads. In addition, google has shown no addition to take on Microsoft head on in its main business of computer operatin system. People seem to forget that MS does everything so its almost impossible not to be a MS competitor in something. Its the media hyping Google's intentions, not Google. (Btw, odn't people notice that both Yahoo and Microsoft have much more products than google? So how is it that google gets this criticism of doing too much - its just overhyping.

I think you either misread or misunderstood my post. What I meant is exactly what you are stating -- choices lead to prioritization.

What I am stating in my post is that I can’t see a choice process and therefore prioritizing happening at Google to accomplish their mission. Organizing the world’s information has come to mean messing with everything and everyone in the tech world.

I don’t think the media "alone" hypes Google’s small projects. It’s a choice by Google to allow media and the general public to have access to what you think Google’s management considers as “small projects”.

In reality keeping things simple is quite simple. Don’t give access to media and general public to what Google considers not-important or strategic on Google Labs. Instead this is what Google Labs says “Google labs showcases a few of our favorite ideas that aren't quite ready for prime time. Your feedback can help us improve them.” So it is fair to think that whatever is exposed on Google Labs can be considered to be a Google favourite.

Another thing Google could do is build a priority system which reflects the strategic importance of what is released on Google Labs. E.g. Just a hack that you can play with V/s a top thing that our engineers are working at and want your feedback on.

Bottomline, currently Google hypes "all" of its own products by placing them on Google Labs.
If Google’s main business is Ads and search what is Google Mars doing on Google Labs? It is clearly a "favourite" project within Google not related to Search & Ads. It isn’t marked with a statement that says -- "this is a cool fun thing that an engineer built in his free time. Go play!” One can ofcourse argue that seeing Planetary information is of interest to people. I would grant that. But it goes against what you state -- Google Mars isnt about Ads & Search. People will interpret its presence on Google Labs beyond Ads & Search...

Then, it's not the media alone that is hyping Google Base. eBay is already talking to Yahoo and Microsoft trying to wade off the threat of Google Base. The reason is:
Search is a Horizontal service. That is the threat. Search leads to results and ads. Ads lead consumers to commerce. That is the threat. Google controls its search service and is secretive about the ranking process. Whenever Google search rankings change; several deserving companies lose business. There are some cases mentioned in John Battelle's "The Search...". How threatening is that? Remember that Yahoo at one point used Google's Search service and eBay advertises on Google.

If users search through Google and Google at some point decides to guide the top 3 search results to Google’s own properties (by chaging the ranking system) – whether about auctions, classifieds, or books– wouldn’t the eBay's and Amazon's of the world feel threatened?

If Google were only focusing on Search then it would focus on improving Search in several verticals; better personalization strategies without saving user data (which has caused a wail of protests on privacy issues) etc. But this stuff is clearly absent from Google Labs.

I agree with you that its hard not to compete against Microsoft if you are in the software world. It now seems to me that soon that this would become true for Google also.

Yahoo has a lot of products. This is true. Notice however, that Yahoo has always sought to be the “most essential global internet company for consumers and businesses.” Now tell me some products & services that Yahoo has built that don’t express this mission? My guess is that you could list opportunities that Yahoo has not followed, products it has not offerred to completely express its mission?

However "organizing the world’s information" and becoming a wireless-ISP for San Francisco or providing an epayment system is stretching things a bit too far. Everyone will notice that. My2cents.

The strategy for Google seems to be to get a foothold and hence create and consolidate every sphere in a users life that can/is affected by the internet. While Yahoo may be known as the best portal, and Google only for its search services and Microsoft for its software services, the fact remains that the brand association and a loyal consumer base that each of these brands carries along is enough to be able to sustain the momentum of growth, innovation and most importantly change in order to be able to create a world which benefits the intended audience the most ie. Users with more choices and the freedom to choose the best. This is what Google seems to atleast want to do, its not as eveil as some of its competitors and like it or not: it has given users some choice in the past few months, even if the choice has been some substandard beta products.

Marrisa Meyer has said in one of her interviews that user feedback is what has determined and hence changed some popular features in products. If the company believes that user experience (as determined by user feedback) should govern product features, then one should actually laud them for their efforts. They believe that putting more products (in beta version) out in the market is going to help them build “better” products. This is obviously new to the product world and hence earns criticism, but what does Google do that doesn’t have his share of critiques shredding its every move to threads?

The simple, no frills web search page itself was doomed to be a failure, but its ironic that its now considered iconic. Hence, though you may disapprove of Google’s strategy or lack of it now, as “compared” since its so different from what’s conventional, what’s tested and hence what’s proven, one doesn’t quite know when this strategy rocks Microsoft/Yahoo into doing something “extra ordinary” to counter this strategy and more?