Re: Saying “Do no evil” excludes you from any serious conversation about Google

On Wed, 2011-08-31 at 11:27 +0200, Aristotle Pagaltzis wrote:
> * Joe Blaylock <[email protected]> [2011-08-20 01:40]:
> > in dozens of market sectors?  What if they acknowledged that
> > they're not a search company, or an Internet company, or even
> > an advertising company any more, but that they've joined the
> > ranks of Disney and Nike as Brands? And what if
> > Google-the-brand was actually an umbrella organization that
> > focused exclusively on brand strategy (ie, being popular)?  The
> > various pieces and parts could become an international network
> > of cooperating smaller, leaner, freestanding companies who once
> > again have something to fight for, operating under the broad
> > direction of the Mothership Brand Management.
> 
> C.f. http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/googradient

Oh, that's really interesting.  I like Aaron's idea very much.  Thanks
for pointing that out.

The problem, of course, isn't 'How do I do Google ethically?'.  Well,
maybe it is for you if you want to be the next Google.  To me, the
problem really is one of, 'How does [this] Google do Google ethically?'.
And perhaps something like what Aaron suggested, popping the bubble,
could be the plan for that.

I don't quite buy it though.  They've spent too much time as a bubble
now, and popping it well and proper is (I would imagine) just too 
existentially frightening.  Allowing people to push out of the bubble
into other, new bubbles of their own, though, so that you spread your
infinitely expanding soap over a much greater surface area - well, this
still allows people to stay in bubbles, doesn't it?  

I dunno, I think I broke the analogy.  But wait! I have more broken
analogies!

My point is that refactoring is harder than continuing with the design
you have, unless you designed for refactoring from the beginning.  And I
don't think that Google has.  So now they have this big ball of mud, and
how do they do something with it?  You carve off little balls of mud,
one piece at a time.

Or you keep working with the big ball until, like a Katamari, you've
rolled up the whole world.  I don't think any of us wants to get rolled
up.

Joe

(Please forgive the shotgun blast of messy comparatives. I figured a
borderline-incoherent response today was better than a mildly revised
response two months from now.)

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