The snake sheds a skin: Why Google is splitting up Google+
It takes a second to search for a restaurant. Within 0.01 seconds you get an address, a map, directions, a phone number, a booking option, photos and a bulk of reviews.
Jim Dowling
It is free. It takes Google an hour to make the same amount of money my business makes in a year.
I’m delighted, therefore, to take this opportunity to comment on its latest failure, Google+.
The decision to shed the Google+ label, and shift focus onto two layers of ‘photos’ and ‘streams’, appears to be no more than a snake shedding a skin to get stronger.
Google+, rightly or wrongly at its launch, was interpreted as a tank on the lawn of Facebook. Once the majority had spent a few days fiddling about with ‘Circles’ and not really getting it, the launch punctured like a limp balloon, leaving a hardcore user base and a few shining, popular features (Hangouts the most obvious). Google+ itself is a red herring.
Three things are relevant.
Google collects more data than any other company. It is utterly adept at transforming that data into insight, and delivering an irresistible and ubiquitous advertising platform, as well as an ‘intuitive’ user experience, engineered to within an inch of its life. It is very very clever.
The internet is becoming more and more visual. People are consuming more photos, more videos and broader moving image content. They’re less arsed about text.
On the one hand, it is easy to castigate the human race for becoming ever more dull – unable to read books, a long article or interpret some text. On the other, an absurd statistic from HubSpot says that 93 per cent of all human communication is visual. In other words, we walk around all day with our eyes open, looking at other people's faces, looking out of windows, looing at nice colours and the like. Actually, settling down and dissecting some text starts to feel like an unnatural act.
Human brains naturally deal with pictures and images – so, it’s no wonder Google will serve it up more clearly through photos and streams.
Third, it’s all gone mobile. What is more eyebrow raising is Google’s entry into the mobile network market. It’s not a huge business shift – after all, Asda, Tesco and Sainsbury’s are already at it here. However it is an indication that it is a mobile business.
Fast and broad mobile networks allow Google’s products and services to thrive. Google’s enormous user base is walking round the world with a stiff neck staring at a small screen. Text is tough in that environment. Photos and streams (audio and visual) are a damn sight easier to consume.
Google is not looking over its shoulders at competitors – it is keeping its eyes fixed firmly on how people are behaving right under its nose, and making sure its products follow suit.
Jim Dowling is managing director at Cake