Google I/O 2011 is on
And my, do I not care at all right now.
Let’s review some of the big things of past Google I/O:
2008 – OpenSocial, Gears, Appengine, GWT
2009 – Google Wave
2010 – Chrome WebStore, WebM, Google TV
2011 – Android, Chrome, Music, Movies
Google, imo, has a terrible track record as a technology platform. As a developer (and I am not talking about a big time company, like Adobe, who obviously married into Google somehow – there is no explanation for the support Google, an open and “innovative” company, is giving that piece of crap software called Flash), no as a small time developer, you can not rely on Google.
It’s 2011 now, and at least they do focus on 2 things that make my “I want to believe” Google-Files list.
In general, i do not believe Google to be a particular good software company. They are a great infrastructure company. In no other company in the world you can run code as easily on a million CPUs (maybe at Amazon?). And their software is, at times, brilliant, at other times distastefully bad. But what makes a great software company, in my book, is consistency and a vision.
I don’t believe Google has a software related vision that last longer than from one I/O to the next. And they don’t need to. As long as the platform, the web, stays open, they make money. Their software efforts only exist to broaden the reach of their advertisement platform, nothing else matters. So they do have consistency. Hey, one out of two ain’t bad…
There are 4 projects at Google that I bet on, that I believe will still be around in 3 years:
- Chrome. Having a successful browser guarantees that at least that percentage of the market has access to their ads
- Android. Having a mobile OS that they can heavily influence (yeah, it’s open. Take Google away, it’s gone) guarantees again mobile advertisement revenue.
- AppEngine. I am not really sure why I believe that this is a safe bet, because I don’t see yet how they benefit from this. It is probably considered to attract developers to move into the cloud, which means more functionality is available in the browser, which again makes ad revenue soar.
- Google Apps. Same argument as the others. Have more people use the browser, more people get ads, more money for the big G.
People always seem to forget that Google, in it’s truest sense, is a sales company, even more, it is an advertisement sales company. Normally, those companies, in terms of respect do rank right beside Lawyers in the USA, but Google managed to dodge that bullet nicely so far. But never forget that this is their purpose, their motivation, in all they do.
So if they release any technology that does not really fit that profile, or where it is unclear how they make revenue from this, don’t bet on this to be around, and especially do not bet money or your business on it.
Therefore, they can announce what they want at I/O. They are like Microsoft these days, they use vapor ware to prevent others from entering the market, or to encourage you to wait for the “open solution”.
