jessenoller.com

The offi­cial announce­ment (well, the addi­tion of a web­site for it) of Google’s goo.gl URL short­en­ing service’s new web­site and fea­tures on the 11th got me think­ing really hard about com­pe­ti­tion, and Google. Specif­i­cally — how do you com­pete against the biggest tech­no­log­i­cal behe­moth ever seen by man? Some­thing I’m sure is on a lot of peo­ples’ minds at an increas­ing rate.

To be hon­est, many of these thoughts can prob­a­bly be applied to many incum­bents in the tech indus­try (includ­ing “enter­prise” software/hardware giants), Google is an easy tar­get for these thoughts though, because they are sim­ply so bad at some of this. This is part rant, part thought exper­i­ment – it’s entirely pos­si­ble I am entirely wrong.

What drove me to think­ing about this (for well over a week) is a base ter­ror I felt about the vague pos­si­bil­ity of being in a mar­ket Google might whim­si­cally enter at one point. Like, say I was bit.ly — and hap­pily the most pop­u­lar URL short­en­ing and ana­lyt­ics firm with thou­sands of cus­tomers, mil­lions of short­ened links, etc, etc. How would I feel if Google coughed and sud­denly entered an already tight (some would say arti­fi­cial) mar­ket with all salvos aimed right at my busi­ness (bit.ly seems game)? Can an ecosys­tem of star­tups sur­vive if Google pops into the room – can they still get VCs or Angel investors to lis­ten and invest in them? (See also: whatifgoogledoesit.com).

It’s not that Google sud­denly came out with a “bet­ter” thing then bit.ly — Google sim­ply came out with some­thing which “does the job” to the tech­ni­cal spec­i­fi­ca­tions they think are supe­rior, sit­ting on Google’s nearly unbeat­able infra­struc­ture and then threw the weight of their brand behind it.

Does it have all the pretty ana­lyt­ics Bit.ly has? No. Does it have cus­tom URLs? No. Does it need all of that? No, because it’s made by Google. The UI is per­fectly func­tional, but noth­ing to write home to mom about. Mil­lions of peo­ple will flock to the new ser­vice and hap­pily use it because it is Google. Bit.ly could very well now be on life sup­port, and will quickly run out of oxy­gen when/if Google ever decided to give pref­er­ence to goo.gl within their sites and appli­ca­tions (see the secu­rity argu­ment in the announce­ments – how long until the other short­en­ers are deemed “too insecure”?).

The very thought of this pos­si­bil­ity hap­pen­ing on some­thing I work on ter­ri­fies me. I’m pretty con­fi­dent on the tech­ni­cal prowess of the teams I work with and of the prod­ucts we make, but I’ll be damned if Google couldn’t wipe us out with a “prod­uct” with 25% of the fea­tures we have, sim­ply because of who they are. Maybe we could scratch by – maybe we already have an estab­lished user base. Maybe Google would kill their imple­men­ta­tion in a few months – who knows.

But Google has a flaw, sev­eral, in fact.

Com­pet­ing with Google on a tech­no­log­i­cal level is incred­i­bly hard — it’s not impos­si­ble, just hard. They have more PHDs and engi­neers per square foot than just about any­one. I think that breath­ing the Google­plex air alone prob­a­bly increases your IQ. I don’t know – I have some of the air on order. It’s easy for Google to build some­thing fifty per­cent of the way and release it, there­fore suck­ing the air out of the room. They don’t even need to “fin­ish” it — the very fact they’ve made it and put it every­where is enough to make a mar­ket dry up and users to flock to it. It will have enough func­tion­al­ity — and just enough — to get the job done (“per­fectly func­tional, albeit Spartan”).

Google is good at raw func­tion­al­ity and util­ity. They solve a prob­lem in nor­mally the most effi­cient way pos­si­ble, and Google is going to prob­a­bly go down as the most suc­cess­ful tech­nol­ogy com­pany in history.

Where Google fails — time and again — is being human.

No one invites Vul­cans from Star Trek to come and dec­o­rate cakes or enter­tain them at a party. No one accuses Vul­cans of hav­ing “really good empa­thy and cus­tomer ser­vice skills”. No, peo­ple call Vul­cans when they need to fig­ure out a hard prob­lem, or need some objec­tive analy­sis. They don’t expect bal­loon ani­mals and a Dora cake from them.

Google is a utility/commodity tech­nol­ogy com­pany (an exceed­ingly shrewd and pow­er­ful one) — but Android wins mar­ket share because it’s on more phones, not because the expe­ri­ence is bet­ter but sim­ply because it’s every­where – it’s on more and more phones every day. Plenty of the man­u­fac­tur­ers who have adopted it spent mil­lions design­ing UIs that sit on top of the default Android UI and make it “more friendly”. Every mar­ket they touch they fun­da­men­tally change the eco­nom­ics and expec­ta­tions of.

Google has become top dog for a rea­son — their tech­nol­ogy. It is really top notch and their search engine and adwords sys­tem changed the mar­ket (for the bet­ter), but it all shares the cold robotic embrace of the other Google prod­ucts. Their tech­ni­cal skills are beyond reproach, but they still lose in many cases against smaller, “richer” appli­ca­tions and sites because they fail at being human.

Expe­ri­ence Matters.

To Google; you are a sta­tis­ti­cal note — some­thing to be tracked, cat­e­go­rized and pro­filed. Why? Not though mal­ice or ill intent — not even slightly — rather, it is how they aim their real busi­ness at you: Adver­tis­ing. Google is not mali­cious, nor is it evil. Google is the log­i­cal robot who will tell you you’ve got can­cer while ask­ing for the time and not even blink. They con­tinue inter­est­ing projects which could change human­ity – but with the bed­side man­ner of a toaster (note though — the cold, cal­cu­lat­ing nature of the projects doesn’t dimin­ish the value).

When a com­pet­ing company’s users are sta­tis­tics: show those sta­tis­tics love and a human face and they will fol­low you to the ends of the earth. Incite pas­sion – give them a rela­tion­ship. A wise man once told me “the only way you can suc­ceed against an entrenched player is by lov­ing your users to death”.

Love your cus­tomers — say you make a code host­ing ser­vice — it’s hard to beat free (as is Google Code) and it’s hard to beat the fact that, yeah, they have all the basic fea­tures a code host should have — but you com­pete where Google can’t. You beat them in the User Inter­face depart­ment — you beat them with warm, invit­ing doc­u­men­ta­tion and a well designed, invit­ing web­site. You beat them by hir­ing a sup­port staff that actu­ally answers emails and picks up the phone. (See also: “Google Gets a C– from the Bet­ter Busi­ness Bureau”)

You com­pete against them by not being a cold, Spar­tan fea­ture robot. You make your thing usable, you make it pleas­ant. You make it so that users want to come back to you again and again because each time they do they don’t feel like they just got a hug from a Crafts­man work­bench. You make them feel like Mom just gave them a warm hug on a Christ­mas day every time they use your prod­uct. Not like mak­ing out with a socket set.

But, you say, Google can make a UI, right? Not quite — Google Wave may have been the best thing in the his­tory of earth: but no one except a few peo­ple could fig­ure out how to really use it. Tech­no­log­i­cally, it was awe­some, usabil­ity? Not so much. It was a bag of tech­ni­cally accu­rate fea­tures – but not a human inter­face. It was a “social net­work” put together by Vulcans.

The biggest thing, in my opin­ion, that Google has brought to the human side of the tech­no­log­i­cal table is that it has helped in recent years by bring­ing back a wave of min­i­mal­ism, sim­plic­ity of inter­face and speed to web appli­ca­tion design as a whole. In the right hands, min­i­mal­ism and sim­plic­ity are pow­er­ful tools. When they’re not in the right hands — well, hugs from a Crafts­man bench.

So — in order to com­pete with Google, you attack them on design – on engage­ment. You make your social fea­tures and good cus­tomer ser­vice into the barbs of loy­alty. You pick up that phone and let them know there’s some­one else at the end of the line will­ing to hear them out at 3am when every­thing goes to hell and they’re all alone. Even if that cus­tomer is crazy, you show them the respect they deserve as people.

Get vocal, pas­sion­ate users and build a loyal com­mu­nity — that alone will help you suc­ceed against Google. Make sure your cus­tomers know you love them, know that you sup­port them and want them to suc­ceed. Don’t just enable them to do some­thing, enable them to connect.

Build a brand against Google. Don’t be con­tent with doing some­thing — make sure you’re not just “the guys that did that thing” — or “those guys who came out with that thing”. Make your name syn­ony­mous with that thing. Make it so that the first thing peo­ple think of when con­sid­er­ing that thing is you.

Make it so that Google could come out with — say a video shar­ing site — tomor­row, and while it could be the best, most dis­trib­uted video thing ever (the bet­ter tech­no­log­i­cal choice) make it so that your users are so fiercely loyal that Google has to buy you and extin­guish the flames of the pas­sion you’ve incited just to get the announce­ment for their new thing two min­utes of air time.

You can only do these things — build­ing a brand — and build­ing a “cult” by doing the things Google — given its robotic fail­ings — can­not do. Love your users, infect them with your pas­sion — not just your tech­ni­cal prowess or abil­ity to scale or release new web codecs, or give them the right search results, or giv­ing away source – infect them with your pas­sion for what you do. Sup­port them, respond to them — even if you’re giv­ing it away for free — after all, noth­ing is free.

Pas­sion, com­pas­sion — con­nect­ing with other humans, peo­ple are always look­ing for a place that accepts them and makes them feel wel­come. They want to get real sup­port instead of emails that get sent to unknown voids and are never answered. Mak­ing things warm, invit­ing both in lan­guage and in the feel.

Just remem­ber — Google is a fan­tas­tic, nearly unbeat­able tech­ni­cal pow­er­house. You’ve got to be fast, high qual­ity and bet­ter where it counts the most.

“What about Don’t Be Evil?”, you say. Again, this is not an accu­sa­tion of Google being evil – they’re not. They’re being coldly log­i­cal in the way humans deal­ing with other humans aren’t. When Eric Schmidt, the CEO, stands up on stage and talks about pri­vacy being dead in the age we live in (the age of Face­book, and Twit­ter), or the refuge for crim­i­nals – he’s not “being evil”. He’s rep­re­sent­ing the coldly log­i­cal, algo­rithm based view of a search engine, and adver­tise­ment com­pany. (Check out duckduckgo.com)

In the age of blogs, Face­book, Twit­ter, MySpace and online med­ical records and a mil­lion other things, the log­i­cal exten­sion is that, yes – pri­vacy will be dead in a mat­ter of years. Look at the train wreck the buzz roll­out was – they shipped with the log­i­cal, auto-following and auto-public set­tings and features.

How­ever, nuk­ing years of email or delist­ing someone’s web­site with no human recourse is evil, and there­fore, can be used as a com­pet­i­tive advan­tage against them. Be more pri­vate, be avail­able to your cus­tomers. I know it’s expen­sive – but it’s how you can win. First mover advan­tage counts for a lot, but it doesn’t count for any­thing if you fail your com­mu­nity and users.

I use lots — and I do mean lots — of Google projects. I live in the lap of Google lux­ury as they give me free things that have “enough” fea­tures to sate my needs and require­ments. They’re pretty enough — sort of like my code edi­tor. I’m not pas­sion­ate about them, they’re func­tional util­i­ties (albeit incred­i­bly use­ful ones) — and at this point I’d prob­a­bly been inop­er­a­ble with­out a few of them. Google is a verb — JGI (Just Google it) leaves my mouth an innu­mer­able num­ber of times through the day. I have lots of friends who work at Google. Google has released an amaz­ing amount of open source soft­ware, and con­tinue to work on chang­ing the face of the Inter­net, and soci­ety as a whole.

But would I say their UIs are beau­ti­ful? No. Would I ever be con­vinced that send­ing an email about my account being bro­ken or dis­abled to Google’s sup­port line would be met with any­thing but metal­lic robot silence? Do I think pleas to relist my web­site in their index or rein­state an adwords account would be any more effec­tive then yelling at my garbage dis­posal? No.

No, none of these are true. Github (despite it being git) and bit­bucket are the bet­ter UIs for code host­ing — Word­Press and oth­ers are bet­ter hosted blog­ging sys­tems then Blog­ger, and so on, and so on. These ser­vices prob­a­bly don’t scale as well, or they can’t cal­cu­late the veloc­ity of an unladen swal­low if you hit control-m-x-y-*, but they com­pete with Google where it counts.

Com­pete with Google where it hurts the most: Being Human.

The official announcement (well, the addition of a website for it) of Google's goo.gl URL shortening service’s new website and features on the 11th got me thinking really hard about competition, and Google. Specifically - how do you compete against the biggest technological behemoth ever seen by man? Something I’m sure is on a ...

Yup. I just keep gen­er­at­ing foun­tains of use­ful things. I have 15 Jaiku invites, and 5 Ever­note invites. I rec­om­mend both, although right now I use more of twit­ter until I can con­vince peo­ple to move over to Jaiku cause it’s more stable.

And ever­note is awesome.

And, as before — leave me a com­ment or send me an email for an invite — I will need your email address to send it/them to you. Let me say that again: I need your email address. I promise I won’t send you wacky Japan­ese game show youtube links.

Yup. I just keep generating fountains of useful things. I have 15 Jaiku invites, and 5 Evernote invites. I recommend both, although right now I use more of twitter until I can convince people to move over to Jaiku cause it's more stable. And evernote is awesome. And, as before - leave me a comment or ...

Ivan Krstić just posted an entry named “Sic Tran­sit Glo­ria Lap­topi”.

With­out com­ment­ing on the prob­lems of the OLPC project, which — for some time — has seemed to be rapidly push­ing itself into obliv­ion — I com­pletely agree on Ivan’s points on open source and frankly, every­thing else he says.

It’s sad­den­ing that the project which thrilled me — due to the ideas out­line by Ivan — now dis­gusts me and so many others.

Ivan Krstić just posted an entry named "Sic Transit Gloria Laptopi". Without commenting on the problems of the OLPC project, which - for some time - has seemed to be rapidly pushing itself into oblivion - I completely agree on Ivan's points on open source and frankly, everything else he says. It's saddening that the project ...

Just a quick note — I’ve got 10 Ever­note invites — if you don’t know what Ever­note is, check out the Ars review here. Post in the com­ments if you’d like to test drive it. I’m going to need an email address.

So far, I’m lov­ing it — but I’m also some­one with about 500+ book­marks in Safari, a ton of “to read” stuff saved on my hard drive, and over 100 RSS feeds in Net­NewsWire. So some­thing to help me archive/save/search every­thing is key.

Now I just want PDF index­ing support.

Ok, I have 10 more left!

Just a quick note - I've got 10 Evernote invites - if you don't know what Evernote is, check out the Ars review here. Post in the comments if you'd like to test drive it. I'm going to need an email address. So far, I'm loving it - but I'm also someone with about 500+ ...

Took a break from yard­work to cut over to feed burner so I can track some stats on the rss feed — let me know if any­thing breaks.

Took a break from yardwork to cut over to feed burner so I can track some stats on the rss feed - let me know if anything breaks.

I love mak­ing up words.

A recent post on the pycon blog has me rethink­ing using Twit­ter or Jaiku for “micro blog­ging” (espe­cially dur­ing a con). I’ve per­son­ally not used either one of them, but my pref­er­ence would be to try out the now-not-accepting-new-users Jaiku.

How many peo­ple out there in the #python­web are using these?

Edit: I’ve signed up for both twit­ter (user­name: jessenoller) and Jaiku (user­name: jessenoller). Now I have to write a python app that dual-posts to both. Who knew social sites would be such a pain? :)

Edit2: I signed up for pownce too. God. That’s face­book, linkedin, pownce, jaiku, twit­ter, and a blog.

I love making up words. A recent post on the pycon blog has me rethinking using Twitter or Jaiku for "micro blogging" (especially during a con). I've personally not used either one of them, but my preference would be to try out the now-not-accepting-new-users Jaiku. How many people out there in the #pythonweb are using these? Edit: ...

Via Engad­get:

Microsoft just announced what has been rumored for­ever: a for­mal offer for Yahoo. Microsoft’s pro­posal to Yahoo’s board of direc­tors rep­re­sents $31 per share (a 62% pre­mium over yesterday’s clos­ing price) or about $44.6 Bil­lion. Steve Ballmer, CEO and big fan of devel­op­ers, says, “We have great respect for Yahoo!, and together we can offer an increas­ingly excit­ing set of solu­tions for con­sumers, pub­lish­ers and adver­tis­ers while becom­ing bet­ter posi­tioned to com­pete in the online ser­vices market.”

Whoa. This insane. But if it goes through it’s good news for a few friends of mine. Makes me kick myself for not buy­ing Yahoo stock :)

More here, and here

Via Engadget: Microsoft just announced what has been rumored forever: a formal offer for Yahoo. Microsoft's proposal to Yahoo's board of directors represents $31 per share (a 62% premium over yesterday's closing price) or about $44.6 Billion. Steve Ballmer, CEO and big fan of developers, says, "We have great respect for Yahoo!, and together we ...

I’ve men­tioned this before — on Jan 4th, I ended up clos­ing on my first house. The pri­mary dri­ving force of course being my now nearly seven month old daugh­ter, the sec­ondary dri­ving force is well — own­ing a house.

Both my wife and I were excited, ecsta­tic even. I mean, it’s not a pala­tial man­sion by any stretch — but it was ours.

Then, things went side­ways. After clos­ing, after we start paint­ing — we find a prob­lem. A big, glar­ing prob­lem. That prob­lem hap­pens to be a leak­ing toi­let — that has appar­ently been leak­ing for some time (mea­sured in poten­tially years) into the sub floor­ing. This means all the wood beneath the tile floor under the toi­let it rot­ten and moldy, and that damp­ness and mold may have spread to the rest of the floor­ing and areas.

We found this pulling the toi­let to put in a new one — now, instead of a cheap plop-in-a-new-toilet, we’re star­ing down the bar­rel of a much larger “strip to the walls due to rot and mold” deal. We can’t move in, and we didn’t even imag­ine this would happen.

Rot­ten wood, mold. The works. And no, it’s not cov­ered, and it is no ones respon­si­bil­ity (or rather, no one is liable). Nope, we just get left hold­ing the bag. The inspec­tor found a tan­gen­tal issue: but not the pri­mary issue, so no one was tech­ni­cally the wiser.

Stu­pid toi­lets. From now on I’m only buy­ing houses with­out run­ning water, in non-flood plains in areas with no ter­mites. Also the house will be made of stone.

I've mentioned this before - on Jan 4th, I ended up closing on my first house. The primary driving force of course being my now nearly seven month old daughter, the secondary driving force is well - owning a house. Both my wife and I were excited, ecstatic even. I mean, it's not a palatial ...

Ivan, of OLPC fame, made a post a few days ago about some issues he took with a post by Bruce Perens belea­guer­ing some of the recent OLPC/Microsoft press. It’s inter­est­ing for a few rea­sons — other than the back and forth between Ivan and Bruce, there’s a gem of a quote that rang very true for me:

One commonly-forgotten truth about OLPC is that our com­mit­ment to open source and free soft­ware isn’t reli­gious, but prag­matic — we believe Linux and Sugar con­sti­tute a bet­ter soft­ware plat­form and, much more impor­tantly, a bet­ter learn­ing platform.

Not only do I agree with the first part of that quote, namely my phi­los­o­phy to using open and free soft­ware runs towards the prag­matic, and not reli­gious, but that the OLPC is a learn­ing platform.

This quote also reen­forces this idea.

Read his post here: ivan krstić · code cul­ture: The para­dox of choice

Ivan, of OLPC fame, made a post a few days ago about some issues he took with a post by Bruce Perens beleaguering some of the recent OLPC/Microsoft press. It's interesting for a few reasons - other than the back and forth between Ivan and Bruce, there's a gem of a quote that rang ...

Man. 2008 is already going side­ways, in a good way. In this case — I knew it was com­ing, which is a good thing. Last Fri­day, I spent a chunk of time sign­ing more paper­work than I’ve ever had to in my life, but walked away with the keys to my very own home.

Other peo­ple have goals like “punch a camel” or “jump off a bridge” — one of my long­stand­ing goals has been to “sim­ply” get a house. Some­thing is rather off-putting about pay­ing some­one else’s salary/mortgage and rais­ing a child whilst renting.

Munchkin will now have her own large yard in which to run, although my idea of putting a run­ning line up and get­ting her a har­ness so we could just let her run back and forth were sum­mar­ily dismissed.

I’ve already bought paint, been to Lowes a few times, and bought myself actual tools for “work­ing around the house”. Once the next month of “omg gogogogo” wears off, all should be happy.

If you really want to see pic­tures, I put some up.

Now, to jug­gle the out­stand­ing python stuff, a tight work sched­ule, a six month old and moving.

Man. 2008 is already going sideways, in a good way. In this case - I knew it was coming, which is a good thing. Last Friday, I spent a chunk of time signing more paperwork than I've ever had to in my life, but walked away with the keys to my very own home. Other ...