What Would Google Do?
The key take away from Jeff Jarvis’s What Would Google Do? is that “making money through controlling production, distribution, and marketing is a diminishing game.” Instead companies need to focus on becoming platforms upon which other people can do their business by becoming a hub for aggregating and distributing data.
After reading the first 20 pages, I felt like I’d picked up a Google public relations pamphlet. Jarvis wasn’t telling me what Google would do, so much as what Google wants us to do— share as much as we can about ourselves on the internet for free. Ironically, I was reading this in a book, something that needs to be purchased. Curious, I did a Google Books search and noticed What Would Google Do? was conspicuously absent. Hmmmmm
But just as I was warming up to do a post on the hypocrisy, Jarvis brings it up himself: “I confess: I’m a hypocrite. If I had followed my own rules—if I had eaten my own dog food—you wouldn’t be reading this book right now, at least not as a book. You’d be reading it online, for free, having discovered it via links and search… I’m no fool; I couldn’t pass up a nice check from my publisher.” Jarvis with the save.
But I still wasn’t done. I had to take Jarvis’s perceived argument to another level. Wouldn’t doing exactly what Google does contradict the whole idea of what Google would do? As Google continues to grow, they’re beginning to derive revenue by way of controlling large swaths of the search and online ad markets. Is Google becoming a middle man? Someone thinking like Google is trying to take them down.
Backing up even further, I found the key flaw in his argument. It’s money that drives business, those who control it are the ones who control the destiny of start-ups around the world. Banking is far from a transparent industry. Clients pay handsome fees to investment consultants for access to their extended network of clients—a pay to play environment which opposes everything that Jarvis argues. But upon further inspection, the concept of a closed banking industry is fully consistent with one of Jarvis’s main observations: a successful business is one that creates a platform upon which other’s can build their own enterprises. By dealing quietly, banking institutions have created a climate where their clients feel they have access to proprietary information that will allow them to run their business more effectively. While Jarvis presents the concept of creating a platform as a novel approach to business, it’s difficult to claim it’s entirely new.
Jarvis is mostly on the mark. But the achilles heel of an argument about openness and the facilitation of information exchange would be a company like Apple. If openness is the key, how can Apple not just exist, but dominate? Jarvis waits until the last pages of his book before addressing this. He notes:
“Apple does not manage abundance. It creates scarcity. Witness the fanatics who camped out overnight to get each version of the iPhone. According to blog reports, the company cut off sales of the phones on the first day with devices still in stock so there would be lines again the second day. Apple makes its own mobs.” So what’s the reason? Why is Apple so good? He throws up his hands and has to concede, “It’s just that good. Its vision is that strong and its products even better.”
Alas, it seems, even the most well thought out positions have flaws. He notes that life—not unlike a Google product—is a beta. Jarvis is clear, honest, and like Google, he’s encouraged people to correct him where he is wrong. In the process, he’s lived his message and has a fun book to show for it.