Sometimes that’s years after the event, when the innovation, having either failed (Google Base) or been too far ahead of the game (Health, PowerMeter) can be “re-connected” or morphed into new and more important ways of working (Base became Merchant Centre and PlusBox ad extensions and will become even more than that – think “Offers” and online/offline ad spend accountability).

The current talk about Gdrive is another case in point. Yet more eyeballs in front of a Google appliance to advertise to …

They are increasingly in Telecoms (Android, Google Voice, some broadband provision, and a bid for wireless spectrum).

Google want to become the “Infrastructure of our Life” and in many ways have succeeded in that, in others they’re just getting started.

But they do have a monumental task to make it all work together.

In my daily work as a Google AdWords Management Consultant, it’s absolutely clear that even within a single product area, they are increasingly like Microsoft with the left hand not knowing what the right is doing.

The sticking plaster shows all over the place in things that are brain-dead simple as a user, yet fail completely to get into their Engineering consciousness.

I’ve personally begged to give them help with the fabulous AdWords Editor tool which is still hopelessly crippled in some areas yet could so easily be fixed it breaks my heart!

I’m forever logging in or using their tools and seeing that “Duh? Why did you take that away? It was useful, dammit, now you just made my life harder again! (Ads Diagnostic Tool)”

And every time I hear about their failed efforts to help AdWords users by doing “account optimizations” for them, without the crucial qualification of *spending any of their own money* …?

Don’t get me wrong – I love Google to death, and they have provided me with a good livelihood post-redundancy from IT management back in 2001. My life and theirs is inextricably intertwined for the foreseeable future.

But clearly, they have a long way to go, and there’s *plenty* of value we mere humans can add to their machinery!

Thanks for reading my ramble

Horowitz’ description of how the various Google properties operate gives me flashback to a meeting I had at Yahoo! 6 or 7 years ago. Yahoo! similarly had a lot of properties that operated quite independently, and had to compete against much more specialized sites (e.g. email, news, dating, photos, autos…). The properties were described as independent city states that largely pursued their own courses (partly in order to help them optimize against more focused competitors). My comment was “You need a constitution that sets rules around Federal vs States rights.” There was no sense of how a rising tide could lift all boats, so there was little investment in cross-Yahoo brand building or integration.

Let’s hope that Google is able to course correct in a way that Yahoo! apparently never was.

http://setandbma.wordpress.com/2011/09/27/google-plus/

Think about a locked Circles group for your home lighting sensors, or leveraging their search and mapping products within it for object tracking.

Google has the smartest minds in the world working on it today and the innovation engine is in full force. The company is unified behind social from the very top down. Just think how much better and better and better G+ is going to be at the end of October and November and December, etc.

It thrills me to hear that from the stage +Larry Page was mentioning Google+ over and over and over again at Zeitgeist. It’s this sort of conviction that sends a signal to the community that we are wisely investing our time in growing with Google+ — in getting onboard early, in investing more than just our time but our energy, our spirt, our emotions and our rich content.

The future is wide open.

I also posted this comment to my Google+ stream here: http://goo.gl/ySj1C

https://plus.google.com/u/0/112063946124358686266/posts/SrQrSSXeViq

And something else a little later about the “brand” of Google and how it may be seen more like Apple:

https://plus.google.com/u/0/112063946124358686266/posts/ZYS1fJQVkx2

I haven’t read your Google book in years, but I think I’ll read it again. I got it when you spoke at the Newscorp MS “acquisition party” (for lack of a better term).

Wish you were using G+ more so I (and others) could easily be alerted to your blog posts.