Holy Cats! I wake up this morning after a week of travel and think maybe I should blog about something floating around in popular space. So I pop over to Techmeme and 8 of the threads being discussed involve Google directly.
We have Powerset threatening Google.
We have people leaving Google.
We have Google adding to increasing economic dispairity in the US.
We have Google potentially saving freedom in China.
We have Google creating a mobile video service.
We have a comparison of on-line mail which includes GMail.
And...
We have the continuation of a blog flame war involving the SEO community and "Everybody Loves Jason" Calacanis.
Everywhere I look, it's raining Google.
And no matter which article you choose, the overwhelming psychological weight of Google sits (with lots of whitespace).
The NYT says:
On Friday, PARC is announcing a deal that underscores that strategy. It is licensing a broad portfolio of patents and technology to a well-financed start-up with an ambitious and potentially lucrative goal: to build a search engine that could some day rival Google.
(Emphasis mine)
Even with clearly superior technology, the subtext here is that Powerset's new natural language technology can only hope to rival Google.
Isaac Mao from Shanghai writes:
Google is ever regarded not only a leading Internet business, but a hope for many people around the world to open their thinking. Many bloggers in China still believes that in their everyday writings. We guess you were misled by incomplete information on how censorship is good to Chinese people.
Even when Google specifically limits use of their technology due to pressure from outside Governments, people still trust Google.
People want to believe in Google.
And in Techcrunch's comparison of various email services, GMail wins hands down, and yet has the least users...
(Image: Techcrunch)
I find this all fairly amazing. Google maintains goodwill consistently, Google has unprecedented market inertia, it seems.
Why does Google get such leeway - the ability to be forgiven for huge and well-publicized mistakes - while Microsoft gets bitch-slapped for even minor slips?
I have a few ideas of my own, but I'd love to hear from others. Why do you think Google has such goodwill? Is it truly good, or the angelic faced bully?
Blogged at my house in Seattle with Live Writer
As a user - Google was a really clean website not covered with big ads - a direct contrast with AOL, Yahoo! and MSN. Plus the site was fast and did what it advertised. The story is also appealing, techno nerd engineer types create a huge company. They got back to creating a useful product that lived up to the hype. And in picking the least offensive I'd sooner trust Google (or apple) with my data than MSFT, YHOO, or AOL.
Posted by: Webomatica | 09 February 2007 at 15:34