For years Microsoft has been the post-Soviet Evil Empire, the Beast from Redmond and the object of hatred and derision from Linux and Mac lovers far and wide. Google has blasted its way to adulation and a huge market cap the last few years as Gates and Co. appeared to get lost in their huge SKU list. But the Mountain View boys lately seem to have loosened their definition of evil, as in the “Do No Evil” motto, earning an unpredicted measure of scorn and backbiting.
For my part, I think to a large degree both companies have produced lots of good software, have hired many good and smart people and yet have failed to totally reach the lofty goals to which each aspires. Or at least which their marketing engines attempt to sell us. Some of the decisions taken have been different to what I’d prefer but then again I haven’t founded a company with thousands of employees and billions in sales. Yet. There is that whole antitrust morass, a big black mark against the Microsoft leadership.
One difference which, to my eyes, Microsoft does come ahead of Google is providing early information on upcoming releases to users and interested outsiders. Just look at the betas and community technology previews, often available more than year before products like Windows, Office and Visual Studio hit the shelves. Google, conversely, rarely allows confirmed whispers more than a week in advance.
The most significant product of Google’s where this is simply bad, unnecessarily, is Blogger. I started using it long before Google bought Pyra Labs, hell I even worked for them as a contractor for a couple of months and helped write a PHP class library for the API. From the business side I just don’t see why–other than an unwillingness to grant variance from corporate policy–a real product roadmap should not be published.
Just today Eric Case, one of the three publicly visible staffers working on Blogger, posted to the developers mailing list yet again this message: “Google doesn’t tend to talk about these things publicly, and Blogger’s part of Google, so… silence. It sucks, but it’s just how it is.”
Google makes no direct revenue from this service. I suppose the blogs running AdSense and the search results content are reasonably valuable. They certainly don’t seem to spend much money improving it. There are a few direct competitors but I don’t see any of them benefitting much from learning the company’s plans regarding OpenID, which is what drew Case’s answer.
Doesn’t someone have connections to Marissa Mayer? Make the call, get some muscle behind this loyal user base.
BillSaysThis 