Microsoft is notorious for giving you something that you don’t want. You had no choice but to use its browser because it came with the operating system. Google is following Microsoft in a similar fashion but in a different environment.
Google feels threatened according to most social media analysts because it hasn’t been able to capitalize in the current environment where Facebook and Twitter seem to be on top. When Google bought YouTube, I am sure they thought they hit a goldmine but as we know now, YouTube is more of a bandwidth junkie than anything else.
You have to give Google credit for mastering the web search and making billions selling advertising using a very simple no nonsense approach. Problem is, social media is changing everything and Google seems lost. We are no longer looking for products on Google, products are finding us using the social media. That really is the wave of the future and no I am not talking about Google wave here.
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Google is working hard to come up with the next best thing and all bets are on the table concerning Google Wave. While we can all see what Google wants us to see, we are missing out on something bigger. Google is now more interested in digitizing old books and making money at the expense of publishers, writers and consumers.
San Jose Mercury News interviewed the guy who is fighting for all of us, his name is Gary Reback. The anti-trust lawyer who defended our interests against Microsoft is now working with Microsoft and Amazon to prevent Google from creating book publishing monopoly.
Google defeated Mapquest by using the same technique that Microsoft used against Netscape. Gary Reback says:
“It used to be Mapquest had maps and Google had maps, and then Google came out with Google Maps, which was a great service. But people liked Mapquest and Yahoo, and so when you typed into the Google search engine an address, it would give you the URLs for all three. But then they started promoting their own map service, and so they put their own map service to the top, and then they stopped listing the other two entirely. Well, are they going to do the same thing for books?”
My answer to that question would be, probably yes. If social media is going to take over the advertising opportunities that Google so heavily relies on, why will Google just sit aside and not do anything? What do you think? Are you okay with Google slowly taking over all the aspects of your online life? Is it fair?
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Even though some short URL service providers are shutting down, most are surviving because of only one reason, Twitter. Go and take a look at your Twitter stream, most people you are following are sharing links with you embedded in these short URLs. Because there is not much you can do within a Tweet, links serve as an elaboration of your thought process.
