Tuesday, September 13, 2011

"Google doesn’t get people, it sells them"


Don Norman: Google doesn’t get people, it sells them, article
“They say their goal is to gather all the knowledge in the world in one place, but really their goal is to gather all of the people in the world and sell them.”
[...] “Google doesn’t understand people,” he said. “Have you ever spoken to a Google support person on the phone? They don’t have them.

Here's another article, about the reason for Google's insistence on real names on G+. Is it to make people behave better, or for Google's future profits? 
For example, there’s a San Francisco-based sex blogger named Violet Blue. She’s an institution in the Bay Area and very popular across the Web. Shortly after she signed up with Google+, her account was suspended because the service’s operators (or its algorithm) didn’t think that was her real name. However, Violet Blue really is her name, and her account was later reinstated (complete with a “verified” badge). 
[...] He replied by saying that G+ was build primarily as an identity service, so fundamentally, it depends on people using their real names if they’re going to build future products that leverage that information.

2 comments:

Bruce said...

Network TV is somewhat similar. TV shows are not made for people, they are made for advertisers. The advertisers pay for the shows, not the viewers.

I wonder how easy it is for advertisers to tell how effective each individual TV show is in getting people to buy their products.

Eolake Stobblehouse said...

I think that's one of the old problems of traditional media. One of the big guys said something like: "half of my advertising money is wasted, the problem is I don't know which half."

I guess they can see if sales goes up during a campaign, but I also guess that much advertising is made for long term branding.