In my perception, very few entrepreneurs in the last few decades have invented something. Most of the entrepreneurs basically look at existing product or service and then look for something beyond that. Thus, they come up with something which is better than existing product or service. Google came into existence on this basis. Facebook came into existence on this basis. There are numerous other examples to name here. What decides demise of these new services or products is that how quickly they realize what is the reason behind their existence and how can they bolster their position without jeopardizing the actual need of consumers? What I mean is that, there are different kind of innovations. When someone invents something, s/he has a clear upper hand in using that invention for a long period of time because his/her competitor can not follow it. But if you invent something based on renovation of existing idea then your life cycle may not be very long. This is what makes me feel that 'Google' and 'Facebook' are closing to their death.
At present both Google and Facebook are changing there outlook constantly based on their own perception that they understand their consumers very well. But, in doing so, they are taking many steps which clearly (at least to me) taking them to death valley. Few weeks back Facebook changed the profile page of users. First it asked all users to switch to new profile. To which most of its users did not pay attention. Then it switched the profile page of all users to new versions by itself. To me it is like offering a product what a consumer wants and then forcing him/her to another product because he bought your first product. It is totally ridiculous. Facebook is changing many things probably to optimize the data it can extract from users profile but it is not realizing the process it is taking is highly dangerous. Its recent change is the way users' friends can see the pictures. Now each picture is opened in second layer and gives an option to download without even asking permission from owner of the picture. Facebook does not understand that there are hell lot of users who are technically not so advanced. Facebook should realize that many users add friends which are just net friends. Now these users will not want that each and every friend should be able to download his/her picture just because they are Facebook friends. In earlier version, friends were able to download pictures through 'save as' option, which everyone did not knew but in new version option is available directly and that may not be acceptable to many users.
Facebook's privacy settings is still a big loop whole, which a good innovator can use to get into Facebook and offer a better social networking site. Therefore, unless Facebook understands the truth behind its existence, it may become history by the end of teen age of this century.
On the other hand, Google arrived on the horizon when Yahoo was acting as Google acting today. By the time Yahoo could take proper and effective action, it went off the radar and Google was all over the web. Now Google is acting quite similarly. The whole base of existence of Google was its search engine. It was clearly a very quick search engine. But pretty soon Google started what every innovator does when they take over market. It started playing with search engine with 'search words', which it started selling to different web-sites and users. The direct effect of this was that many websites did not appear in the search lists or they appear on 5th or 6th page and the reason was - these existing website did not want to conform to Google search words. The reason Google give is that it shows the list on the basis of number of hits a particular website gets. How these hits are counted? Are hits counted for each website are based on how many users it gets over a period of time or is it counted based on how many times a person clicks on particular website through Google? If it counts on basis of how many users open any website then I am pretty sure it would not be able to sell its 'search words'. In fact the search process of Google is promoting bogus websites as owner of these websites have all the time to play around with dirty tricks and that annoys a careful researcher when s/he tries to find something on the net through 'Google'. Because, to my perception, Google at the moment is busy in selling search words and getting those words embedded into different web-sites and this is creating two problems. One- not everyone, who searches on web is aware of those words and therefore gets annoyed when s/he finds useless results on front page. Two - not all companies will try to embed Google search words into their websites. And, add to this, a lot of bogus websites use Google search words craftily and comes on top of search results which further annoys person who is searching something. That's why people are looking for alternative search engines. There are already few websites which are dedicated to particular profession or stream and they are eating a huge junk of Google's business. Therefore, if Google does not introspect properly and finds a solution, it may be setting a trend and following footsteps of Yahoo soon.
At present both Google and Facebook are changing there outlook constantly based on their own perception that they understand their consumers very well. But, in doing so, they are taking many steps which clearly (at least to me) taking them to death valley. Few weeks back Facebook changed the profile page of users. First it asked all users to switch to new profile. To which most of its users did not pay attention. Then it switched the profile page of all users to new versions by itself. To me it is like offering a product what a consumer wants and then forcing him/her to another product because he bought your first product. It is totally ridiculous. Facebook is changing many things probably to optimize the data it can extract from users profile but it is not realizing the process it is taking is highly dangerous. Its recent change is the way users' friends can see the pictures. Now each picture is opened in second layer and gives an option to download without even asking permission from owner of the picture. Facebook does not understand that there are hell lot of users who are technically not so advanced. Facebook should realize that many users add friends which are just net friends. Now these users will not want that each and every friend should be able to download his/her picture just because they are Facebook friends. In earlier version, friends were able to download pictures through 'save as' option, which everyone did not knew but in new version option is available directly and that may not be acceptable to many users.
Facebook's privacy settings is still a big loop whole, which a good innovator can use to get into Facebook and offer a better social networking site. Therefore, unless Facebook understands the truth behind its existence, it may become history by the end of teen age of this century.
On the other hand, Google arrived on the horizon when Yahoo was acting as Google acting today. By the time Yahoo could take proper and effective action, it went off the radar and Google was all over the web. Now Google is acting quite similarly. The whole base of existence of Google was its search engine. It was clearly a very quick search engine. But pretty soon Google started what every innovator does when they take over market. It started playing with search engine with 'search words', which it started selling to different web-sites and users. The direct effect of this was that many websites did not appear in the search lists or they appear on 5th or 6th page and the reason was - these existing website did not want to conform to Google search words. The reason Google give is that it shows the list on the basis of number of hits a particular website gets. How these hits are counted? Are hits counted for each website are based on how many users it gets over a period of time or is it counted based on how many times a person clicks on particular website through Google? If it counts on basis of how many users open any website then I am pretty sure it would not be able to sell its 'search words'. In fact the search process of Google is promoting bogus websites as owner of these websites have all the time to play around with dirty tricks and that annoys a careful researcher when s/he tries to find something on the net through 'Google'. Because, to my perception, Google at the moment is busy in selling search words and getting those words embedded into different web-sites and this is creating two problems. One- not everyone, who searches on web is aware of those words and therefore gets annoyed when s/he finds useless results on front page. Two - not all companies will try to embed Google search words into their websites. And, add to this, a lot of bogus websites use Google search words craftily and comes on top of search results which further annoys person who is searching something. That's why people are looking for alternative search engines. There are already few websites which are dedicated to particular profession or stream and they are eating a huge junk of Google's business. Therefore, if Google does not introspect properly and finds a solution, it may be setting a trend and following footsteps of Yahoo soon.
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