The nonexistent Google-Microsoft rivalry.
Like so many others, I have been watching what everyone’s favorite search behemoth has been up to for some time now. Thousands of articles have been written about each new product, and yet everyone seems to be getting it wrong.
Two of Google’s newest products, Spreadsheets and the word processing application Writely, seem to be challenging the Microsoft Office suite, by allowing people to produce and share these documents online. This makes it easy to write articles about a Microsoft-Google rivalry, which even Microsoft seems to be taking seriously. But it’s also wrong, as a friend explained to me recently.
This is my attempt to expand on his argument.
Google’s business is ads. Microsoft’s is software.
If Google’s applications make a dent in Microsoft, it will be incidental to their real goal, which is improving your search results, or rather, improving the ads they serve alongside your search results and on some of the sites you visit. The key to Google’s plan is getting as much of your data online as possible, where they can search it and have their technology determine what ads best match your growing profile.
If you look at it this way, Google’s strategy becomes clearer. Google Desktop allows them to search your hard drive. Google Maps/Local lets them know where you live or where you might be interested in living or visiting. Writely and Spreadsheets gets you to put the full text of your documents in their hands. Talk allows them to see your conversations. And Gmail provides them with a vast corpus of communications (and probably pays for itself along the way, since it serves ads and the storage space is very close to free).
So Microsoft’s business model is safe–enterprises don’t want their documents stored on Google’s servers, for security reasons. And Google is safe–who really thinks that Microsoft will make a credible effort in the search arena?
But journalists want to play up this rivalry, since it really is a compelling storyline. What is left to end users is a simple question–do I want so much of my data in the hands of Google?
For now, my answer is yes. They seem to be doing more than one reasonably could expect to protect privacy. And why not? They need the trust of their users to do what they’re doing. We just need to keep them honest.
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Great analysis, Jeff. To play devil’s advocate, what do you think of the alternative attention trust model where the individual holds on to all their data and can give away or sell all or parts of it? You lose an improved Google and maybe some new and better tools, and you hold on to privacy and maybe empower the individual somewhat.
Dave: thanks for the thoughtful comment. I think that in theory the model you suggest could be better, in that you could choose to exchange this data for better search results, cash, or whatever, or to keep it to yourself, rather than just giving it away by default. However, it seems to me that we don’t really have a good framework for doing these sorts of transactions or a good idea of what their real value is. If my search terms are worth $50, I care a lot more than if they are worth $ .05. But I really don’t know. I suspect it’s closer to the latter, and since (at present) I expect Google to be a relatively decent custodian of my data, I am content for now to let them use this data as they see fit.