Smarter Geek

Many people seem to point like pointing out the many failures of Microsoft over the years… however when it come to their beloved Google they always seem to give it a free pass.

Update: TechCrunch has also recently did a post about Google that mirrored some of my thoughts… Check it out Is Google In A Dream World? If So, Just How Close To Limbo Are They?

So I thought I would make my own list of failures that that Google has had recently:

• Google TV
  • With its crap reviews … Google has now Delayed launch of Google TV which will really piss off a lot of electronics vendors who were planning launches at CES early 2011. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/20/technology/20google.html?_r=1&partner=rss&emc=rss
• Google Buzz
  • In what would be the most epic launch failure ever of a social network this stuff up even got congress to look into the privacy issues with its launch. Google Buzz — and you thought Facebook had privacy issues
• Google Wave
  • Cancelled… Did anyone use Wave more than once? Nuf said.
• Chrome OS
  • Delayed until 2011 after saying it would be out late 2010 No silver lining in Chrome OS delays Relevant Results – CNET News . A lot of people are also saying they just don’t get understand what’s the point of a Chrome OS device when you will be able to run Windows (or even Linux) on the same sort of device for the same price but do more…
  • Update: Google Chrome OS Faces Serious Risk of Failure: 10 Reasons Why
• Nexus One
  • After lots of initial complaints about having crap support for the phone Google Nexus One Problems- Support Forums Failing-, after only a few months Google stopped selling the phone Google changes Nexus One plans, will stop selling handsets online. While Android OS has been successful it seems that by Google selling an anointed phone was just confusing for consumers and seeing that it could only be bought online made this a phone which was destined to failure. Maybe Microsoft should have learnt this lesson from Google as even good phone can fail (e.g. Kin) if the are not marketed correctly.
• Goog-411
  • A voice based directory service in the USA was shutdown in November 2010 http://www.google.com/goog411/index.html
• Google Streets Wi-Fi Privacy
  • It has come out that Google has been capturing Wi-Fi data via the Google Streets cars but they said they were NOT capturing any user data… However it then came to light that they did actually capture people emails, username and passwords. While anyone with an un-secured Wi-Fi access point needs seriously needs to get a clue….  This does not excuse the fact that a company such a Google should have been more careful with what they captured and stored. See Federal Police investigate Google Wi-Fi privacy breach – Networking and Street View cars mistakenly nabs personal data over open WiFi networks, says Google
• China hack
  • Back in January 2010 is came out that Google was hacked by the Chinees government using an IE6 vulnerability http://arstechnica.com/microsoft/news/2010/01/microsoft-warns-of-ie-security-flaw-used-in-google-attacks.ars.  While many people would lay the blame squarely with Microsoft I have to ask why the hell are Google still using IE6… i mean REALLY!!! Google even has their own browser and Microsoft have said “We … continue to strongly encourage Windows users to upgrade to the latest IE.” http://blogs.msdn.com/b/ie/archive/2009/08/10/engineering-pov-ie6.aspx.  So for Google to blame anyone else for their inept management of security in their own systems is quite frankly a joke
• Google Fibre
  • Google plan to rollout out fibre to a select number of communities however they are realising that it not as easy as they thought and have said “we’re not quite ready” at http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/12/update-on-google-fiber.html

Updated: Engadget just posted an article called Google haters, now’s your chance for revenge with a few more failures I had to add…

• Google is Evil – This is why…
  • Lee Williams from Symbian’s thoughts on why Google is evil (video)

My favourite quote of the video was “When you have to say in your motto that you are not evil… right away the first question in my mind is why do you have to tell me that”

• Google executives found guilty of violating privacy of student bullied on video
  • “An Italian judge found three Google executives guilty of violating the privacy of an Italian student “ See Google executives found guilty of violating privacy of student bullied on video
• Google Invades Privacy
  • Angry British villagers block Google Street View car, incident captured on CCTV
• Net Neutrality flip-fop
  • After denying there was any thing going on about making deals with prioritising internet traffic Google finally announced they were actually trying to control the internet. See Google and Verizon’s net neutrality proposal explained

Update2: Seems that TechCrunch also has a thing against Google… they have posted another vicious article Can Google get its MoJo Back? Some of the other failures that mention that I have not already listed below are:

• Bizarre errors with Google Maps
• Many of its best engineers are leaving.
• Losing 1.2% search market share from October to November
• Google failed attempt at copying the Bing UI which embarrassingly failed after less that 1 day…
• How it takes six months to fix a SMS bug in Android
• Not to mention people abandoning it Google App due to strange things happening.

Now I want to be clear that I am not saying this means that Google is destined to failure nor and I acknowledge they have also had many successes such as Android, Chrome Browser, Gmail and of course  Search.

What I do think this shows is that technology is hard and that if you are going to have few successes you are also going to get a few failures and even Google is not immune to having a failure or to along the way…

What do you think?

Update 3: OMG!!! Maybe there was just one to many failures as the Google CEO Eric Schmidt has now stepped down (a.k.a. Pushed) as CEO. http://www.engadget.com/2011/01/20/larry-page-takes-over-as-google-ceo-eric-schmidt-now-executive/

Very interesting…

Source The Dogs of War: Apple vs. Google vs. Microsoft – Apple – Gizmodo

Quite a nice warm hearted add that Google ran during the Superbowl 2010. Apparently it cost them 2 million dollars to run… Of course i have to point out you can do the same thing on Bing.com

After lots of rumours about Bing being the default search engine for the iPhone and iPad it seems to have been squashed with the images of the iPad that Apple have released. Now in theory this is something that could be changed easily as it is just a case of changing the default setting however this is looking less likely.

1. Google can be seen as the search provider in Safari.

2. Maps used for the Map application are from Google. (Map on right is from Google Maps, note they are the same)

There has been a lot of speculation on the Internets in the past day about a BusinessWeek Article  (here here here here here and here ) saying that Apple are considering making Bing the default search provider.

While some people might think this seems like Hell freezing over this to me seems to make a lot of sense due to a number of reasons.

1. There are only two selectable search engine options on the iPhone Safari browser namely Google and Yahoo. With the Bing/Yahoo deal getting closer to being finalised this would mean the iPhone would two search options would then be Google and Bing.
2. Google recent entry into the phone market with the Android OS means that Google now are a direct competitor to the iPhone. This is in stark difference to when Apple first introduced the iPhone back in 2007 when Google did not have a phone OS.
3. Apple already licences the Microsoft Active Sync protocol for the iPhone which is used large number of users for syncing their email with their corporate email server. So having Microsoft technology on the iPhone is really not
4. Microsoft Bing is already a search option on the iPhone via the free Bing iPhone App.

What I would really like to see would be if Microsoft could make some sort of a deal with Apple to support hotmail natively in the email client in the iPhone 4.0 OS update in exchange for using Bing as the default search engine.

But what it really boils down to is Apple only having two choices (Google/Bing) as the default search engine and them deciding which is the lesser of two evils.