Google, at the time of writing of this post is the biggest company in the world by market capitalisation. What that means is that for the number of shares available for the company multiplied by the cost of each of these shares make it worth more than any other company in the the world.
This doesn’t mean however that everything they do turns to gold. In this world today, technology companies are falling over themselves to hit the next home run. They have to. The companies that present new innovations and products to the market that are well received flourish. Companies that don’t innovate, get lazy and rest on their laurels shrink and maybe even perish.
We are seeing technologies perish at a remarkable rate thanks to the internet. Even new technologies. The lastest suggestion is that the USB drive is under threat. With Cloud storage and mobile phone storage, who wants something to store important stuff on that is so easily misplaced? The thing is – it was only invented in 1999!!
When it comes to Google, their search engine is completely dominant. As a result of that dominance, their advertising platform is equally dominant. If you aren’t on Google, you’re nowhere. As online services become the norm, Google are becoming a big player in cloud computing as well.
They are also in social media. Yeah, well that isn’t going so well for them. Their offering is struggling. I put it like this. How many times a day do you go onto Facebook? Now, how many times a day do you go onto Google+?
I know those answers will vary from person to person, but for many of us, the answer for Facebook is several times a day. For Google+ it can vary. It can be either, “what’s Google+”, or “I don’t have a Google+ account”, or I do and I never check.
Now to be honest, why would you check it? You go onto Facebook because every day one of your friends is posting something crazy/interesting/infuriating. There are games you can play. You can message your friends and they’re likely to respond.
If I go onto Google+, I don’t get responses, mainly because not many of my friends even have accounts, and those who do aren’t checking it.
Is Google+ good for anything? Well perversely, it apparently has some impact on SEO. I say perversely, because one thing Google says is that you are not to do anything solely for its SEO benefit. Except it appears in the case of Google+. They are prepared to give a leave pass for that, since it appears to be the only reason businesses are using it.
Mashable has this article about the failure of Google+. If you put the search term “is Google+ dead” you are going to get a whole heap of articles, with some saying yes, some saying no. That’s the internet for you. Every single thing you can think of, there is a compelling argument both for and against.
So in this case, your own experience becomes paramount. No matter what the pundits say, what really matters is what people are actually doing. And as I have already said, all you have to do is ask yourself two questions.. firstly, “how often do I use Facebook?”. What’s telling is the question for Google+ is not equivalent. It is instead, for many people who aren’t total IT geeks, “What is Google+?”.
Shaun
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