I had to run some stuff over to the storage unit tonight from Christmas, nothing interesting. On the radio (NPR) they are discussing Google’s push for a new privacy policy. The voice is talking about how bad the policy change is or can be, how it could harm consumers. I’m not necessarily laughing while this is taking place but I’m amused.
Ten years ago I started a new web design and development company. We built websites for small businesses that needed to get online quickly and didn’t want to spend a ton of money. We had a lot of fun building websites for a couple of years and then (I think) in 2005 Google announced some new service that was going to effectively destroy the independent web design industry by giving businesses the ability to make their own websites using “plug and play” “wysiwyg” tools for Google hosted sites.
I remember for months that was all anyone around the office wanted to talk about. We had a couple of bigger clients that needed custom stuff, which meant we were still busy making product, but the gang felt this overwhelming sense of dread about the future of the business. I bought in to it myself.
The company I started in 2001 is still doing business today, still making websites for small and medium sized businesses and as far as I can tell now, Google Sites had absolutely zero impact.
“You see Timmy,” the lesson here is that regardless of what Google puts in it’s search results, or what it’s policy is about your “privacy” online - at the end of the day they have to provide value. If a product they are producing doesn’t provide value (see wave) to the right kind of people (see buzz) then people won’t use it and it will eventually fade away.
In the case of this latest privacy thing, what they are effectively doing is moving in a direction where all of their products will become basically, just “Google.” The risks seem pretty obvious to me and I sincerely hope they can continue to supply value to consumers.
Or maybe I’ll just take my cue from Apple, and whether or not they remove Google as the default search agent in Safari in the next major release.