Kevin Rose on why Google needs Buzz

http://kevinrose.com/post/385156078/why-google-needs-buzz

by MikeCapone • 16 years ago

13 10 16 years ago

MikeCapone3• 16 years ago

He's basically saying that Google needs the real time info that sites like Twitter produce, but that they don't want to rely on a third party like Twitter (which they probably would have bought if they could).

He notes how Google gives Twitter a prominent space in its search results, and how that it not something they've done often in the past, and probably want to change in the future.

fnid22• 16 years ago

yep, that's exactly what i think too. Google needs real time search and the best way to do that is to have the data on their lightning machines.

If it's not on their lightning machines, then the content owner (twitter, facebook, etc) is the king and google has to wait until that content owner makes the data available to google's bots.

I imagine google talked to facebook and twitter, but google is getting a lot of push back from content owners because content owners don't want to let google put servers in their data centers or have quicker access to the data than can be gotten through polling for updates.

And why would they? They all work on advertising meaning they are all competitors. It's the same thing with newspapers, except in this case, the content owners actually have some power to say no to Google, because twitter and facebook users don't go through google first to get there. Google is a gateway for the newspapers, but twitter and facebook are themselves gateways.

Google wants everyone in the world to start their browsers on a page controlled by google.

MikeCapone3• 16 years ago

If we're going to have real-time search, I'd rather it's from Buzz than Twitter if only for the fact that it's not limited to 140 characters and doesn't have to use URL shorteners, you can include pics/maps/videos/etc, and it's easy to see comments made about a post.

Twitter's 140 char limit was cute at first, and it sounds great in concept ("deep thoughts in few words!"), but in practice it's starting to get on my nerves.

fnid22• 16 years ago

OT: Is there a literary term for the situation where something's greatest strength is also that thing's greatest weakness? Like an Achilles heel, except the Achilles heel isn't also a strength.

It applies here, because the 140 char limit is what helped twitter take off, but it could also be twitter's greatest weakness.

marcusestes• 16 years ago

Please Kev, next time you reach this point of inspiration just take a few minutes to write your thoughts out. Your delivery adds too little to your thesis too make up for the bother of listening to you deliver it.

marksbren• 16 years ago

As I was watching this I also thought that Google could be using Buzz to devalue Twitter. If Buzz can get a mass audience Google may be able to acquire Twitter more cheaply. Twitter has way too much of a head start for Buzz to actually rival it.

lallysingh• 16 years ago

Twitter's hit mainstream, and even turned into a verb. Google can't really compete on that, as their name is already a verb in a different area :-)

hexis• 16 years ago

not text; didn't read

Kevin Rose on why Google needs Buzz

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