Yegge covers a bunch of topics, mostly focusing on how Google just simply doesn’t understand platforms. He praises Microsoft, Apple, Amazon and even Facebook for “getting it” when it comes to platforms, how long term growth in a product requires that product to be a platform for others to develop more products on. But he thinks Google just doesn’t understand how to do that. Yegge wrote:
Google+ is a prime example of our complete failure to understand platforms from the very highest levels of executive leadership (hi Larry, Sergey, Eric, Vic, howdy howdy) down to the very lowest leaf workers (hey yo). We all don’t get it. The Golden Rule of platforms is that you Eat Your Own Dogfood. The Google+ platform is a pathetic afterthought. We had no API at all at launch, and last I checked, we had one measly API call.
He goes on about how Facebook murders Google+ as a platform:
Google+ is a knee-jerk reaction, a study in short-term thinking, predicated on the incorrect notion that Facebook is successful because they built a great product. But that’s not why they are successful. Facebook is successful because they built an entire constellation of products by allowing other people to do the work. So Facebook is different for everyone. Some people spend all their time on Mafia Wars. Some spend all their time on Farmville. There are hundreds or maybe thousands of different high-quality time sinks available, so there’s something there for everyone.
Our Google+ team took a look at the aftermarket and said: “Gosh, it looks like we need some games. Let’s go contract someone to, um, write some games for us.” Do you begin to see how incredibly wrong that thinking is now?
And he’s totally right. We don’t think Google+ will ever beat Facebook. Never, ever, ever. But Google needs to take this advice and learn from it. Learn from mistakes like Google TV. Learn from success like Android. Learn from weirdness like Wave. Learn it all! And then maybe they can compete (or do something else). We love Google and it’s obvious Yegge does too, he just wants them to get better. Read his whole post (where he reveals stuff about Amazon and Jeff Bezos) here. [Hacker News via Silicon Filter]
wiz1974
Thursday, October 13, 2011 at 8:31 AMI agree. I quite like google and the things they attempt, however Google+ had so much more potential, it seemed like they created it and then just abandoned it.
NOZdroid
Thursday, October 13, 2011 at 8:37 AMI bet they’ll be updating so shit like that doesn’t happen again. While I know its true what he says…if I were to bash the company I work for publicly on Facebook like that I’d get a severe warning for whatever that’s call.
EMH
Thursday, October 13, 2011 at 8:45 AMI feel neutral about Google and I dislike Google+ as I dislike Facebook. I tried Google+ and I tried Facebook and quite simply I cannot find a single reason why these things should exist. They do nothing for me. They do nothing that has any value to me.
Jon
Thursday, October 13, 2011 at 12:11 PMThanks for your unhelpful comment. I guess by your logic – you do nothing for me, nothing that has any value to me, hence you should not exist.
BenDTU
Thursday, October 13, 2011 at 9:02 AMIt’s like “Burning Platform” all over again.
jeremy
Thursday, October 13, 2011 at 9:23 AMSome perspective peeps. This is the rant of one staffer. If you live in a country where facebook dominates (I do) it is easy to tink no other social network can compete. But fact is, there are countries where other social networks are very sucessful, particually in the non-english speaking world. Google may well come to dominate in India, for example, or south america. Even in “facebook land” linked-in survives quite nicely in its niche. Time will tell … and roll on diaspora https://joindiaspora.com/ :-)
James
Thursday, October 13, 2011 at 12:25 PMLooks like someone will be looking for a job today.
M4192
Thursday, October 13, 2011 at 12:35 PMSome people don’t want Farmville, Mafia Wars and Horoscopes filling their news feed or stream. People shouldn’t be joining social networks just for the games or apps they have.
nik
Thursday, October 13, 2011 at 2:47 PMstill don’t like any of that social networking stuff, i have so many friends that only communicate over fb, and when we go out they play with there phones on fb. wtf is that, we are becoming insecure and anti social on the human level not on the digital level. sad I believe but I’m in the minority I feel.
Ekbul
Thursday, October 13, 2011 at 5:03 PMI hear ya. I’m not into it myself and trying to talk to your friends at the pub while they’re updating their profile or whatever is annoying. I also hate being told “if you were on facebook you’d know about that”.