Bronte Media

It doesn’t matter one bit that Google Notebook is a poor man’s version of delicious or FURL. Or that Google Calendar is not quite as good as 30boxes, or perhaps any of the other 20 AJAX calendar startups. Startups in those spaces probably wont even see that much of a hit to their usage growth trajectories. But the loud and clear message from Google is that they will not buy those companies.

Google is always mistakenly mentioned as an acquisitive firm but in reality has done a few ‘hiring bonus’ deals with small teams of engineers at startups. Yahoo and Microsoft, not to mention firms like Experian, IAC and Scripps acquire Internet companies; Google acquires small teams.

It is one of the misunderstood cultural nuances of the company - an almost early nineties Microsoft-like approach that they will get it right by version 3 and everything will take care of itself.

That was the case in Google’s core success, but that was in an industry that was asleep at the wheel at a time where it was a cost rather than profit center. But there are relatively few markets where that is the case now. Take email for instance.

Gmail is one of the most fantastic email applications and I cannot wait for the corporate version to roll out. But if you zoom out into the real world, Gmail is irrelevant and stagnant, and shitty services like Yahoo mail and even Hotmail still dominate and are growing nicely. The best product doesn’t win. Much akin to the world of laptops where Apple continues to amaze, releasing better and better products only to see it’s market share flat and even declining.

Google Base will not make any difference to eBay . Don’t get me wrong, Google Base helps the company index and search more of the web, by taking structured feeds on pages that are highly perishable, but to hear that it is a competitor to eBay is laughable.

I doubt Google will ever admit Gmail is a failure - technically it is the best and most elegant product available, yet the usage scoreboard tells a sombre tale.

So copycat products like Notebook and Co-Op and Calendar and whatever else will continue to make their way through the pipeline - after all, all those new employees have to *do something*. But until the company admits there are more to markets than technology and product, and that audiences and human behavior matter, Google wont come out to play in the outside world and will continue to tinker away at the computer in the dark, making boatloads in core search and finding it impossible to dominate large markets outside of it.