What if Google was a ... platform!?

After the infamous Peanut Butter Manifesto Yahoo! signed Brad Garlinghouse, a Vice-Presidents of Yahoo! at the time, now is the "peanut butter manifesto" of Google, signed Steve Yegge, an engineer at Mountain View, in which he demolishes Google + (and that his opinion has leaked intentionally or not is beside the point, there are precedents far more famous and more senior than him)!

google more if Google was ... platform!?

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He criticizes the failure of Google to reason over the long term in terms of platform (Platforms are all about long-term thinking) rather than products (The problem we're a Product Is That Company-through and through). A platform that would base its foundations on two pillars: accessibility and security. And more accessible, because basically, platform = accessibility. Thing missing in Google:

    We do not get Platforms, and we do not get Accessibility. The Two are Basically the same thing, Because platforms solve accessibility. IS A platform accessibility.

He said Google does not know or understand realize what a platform, and Google + is the first example of this lack of culture "platform":

    That last one Things That Google Does not do well IS Platforms. We do not understand platforms. We do not "get" platforms.

    ... It's like our Tenth or eleventh priority. Or Fifteenth, I do not know. It's pretty low.

    The Google platform + Is A pathetic afterthought. We Had No API at all at launch ...

    This is a cultural thing ...

At Google, first we try to anticipate what people want, and after we give them. This is not really how it works. This approach is not reliable. Steve Jobs could do that, but we do not have Steve Jobs, Google, sorry (sic):

    The problem we are Is That Trying to predict and Deliver What people want it for 'em.

    You Can not Do That. Not really. Not Reliably. There Have Been precious FEW people in the world, over the Entire History of computing, Who Have Been Able to Do It Reliably. Steve Jobs WAS one of 'em. We Do not Have a Steve Jobs here. I'm sorry, we do not aim.

Larry appreciated :-)

According to his analysis, Google + would be a Pavlovian reaction to short-sighted, based on the false premise that Facebook is successful because they have developed a good product. What is wrong: the success of Facebook is that they have built a platform that allows others to develop a constellation of products, which allows everyone to have a different experience, personal on Facebook. Some spend all their time on Mafia Wars, some of Farmville, etc.. There are hundreds if not thousands of silos of content which waste time, there is something for everyone.

    Google + is a knee-jerk reaction, a study in short-term thinking, predicated on the incorrect notion That Facebook is Successful Because THEY built a great product. Goal that's not Why They Are successful. Facebook is Successful Because THEY Entire year built constellation of products by allowing to Other People Do the work. So Facebook is different for everyone. Some People Spend Their time is all Mafia Wars. Spend Some Time On Their all Farmville. There are Hundreds or maybe Thousands of different high-quality time sinks available, so There's Something There for everyone.

It's not just Facebook that has managed to develop a platform, it is the same for others, each for its own reasons, such as Amazon (all part of Jeff Bezos is priceless), Microsoft, Apple or Twitter but not Google.

Or a product that is not associated with platform will always end up being replaced by a product that can run on a platform (A Product is useless Without a platform, or more accurately and PRECISELY, a platform-less product Will Always Be Replaced by year equivalent platform-ized product). The important thing is to give third parties the opportunity to develop their own apps for grafting on the platform automatically, after which everything will happen naturally (He just needed to enable third-party developers to do it, and It Would Happen Automatically ).

This is not to launch the first products to hope to make an open platform, magic and stretch a second time, what Google already tried without success (We can not keep Launching products and pretending we'll turn 'em Into magical beautiful extensible platforms Later. We've Tried That and it's not working), but rather to start with the platform, and then use it for all products and services. While not perfect from the start, there will be time after the polish, the important thing to do now. Because even if it is not too late, more and more Google expects it will be difficult and expensive to properly implement this strategy:

    The Golden Rule of Platforms, "Eat Your Own dogfood" Can Be rephrased as "Start with a Platform, and Then Use it for Everything." You can not just bolt it on Later. Certainly Not Easily At Any rate - ask anyone WORKED Who is platformizing MS Office. Or is anyone Who WORKED platformizing Amazon. If you delay it, it'll Be Ten Times As Much work're just doing it Correctly up front. You can not cheat. You Can not Have secret back doors for internal apps to get special priority access, not for ANY Reason. You Need to solve the hard Problems up front.

    I'm Not Saying it's too late for us, along the goal we wait, the closer we get to Being Too Late.

I stop here a summary of his analysis, he pondered for 6 years (This post has-been six years in the making), to complete the question that came to my reading of this post:

What would Google if it was a platform?

It is already hard to understand what Google, if a company is about to build $ 200 billion (I still remember when Eric Schmidt said he wanted to make Google a media company weighing ... ... $ 100 billion) (it looks old, it was two years ago !!!), which began as a search engine (Search), then an advertising (Ads), prior to its many products and services many apps (Search, Ads & Apps), then add the social to Google + would be expected now centralize all of this on its platform.

Generally, the approach "beta" Google is important, since the use or not users of the products that launched the company can determine their abandonment or replacement, but the launch of Google + there just three months suggests Google is betting that this time much bigger than what came before, playing directly in the field of Facebook.

Do they succeed without opening the platform Google + third-party developers, as Facebook has to do is one of the key questions posed by the long analysis of Steve Yegge, an engineer at Google. Anyway thank you to him. I also encourage you to read reviews.

What do you think of this analysis vs. platform. product / service, and do you think Google + eventually succeed where his previous attempts to break into the office have failed?