Kevin Kelleher ponders over the threat posed by real-time web to google dominance.
Just how big a threat is the real-time web to Google? As Om has pointed out, real-time content marks a still-amorphous but important new phase of evolution in the web, allowing for the instantaneous discovery of newly added information. And Twitter and Facebook are emerging as an alternative to the traditional engine, which presents a big challenge to Google’s core business. As Larry Page admitted this week, the company finally gets that.
It’s easy to imagine Google falling further behind in the real-time content game. The company’s slow entry puts it in the position Yahoo has held for years in search: behind the leader, always playing catch-up instead of spending creative energy on new advances. Google has struggled with social content, producing mixed results. Orkut, for example, was a hit in Brazil, but not in other major markets; initiatives like Friend Connect have shown little traction. It’s had better success as a search partner, as with its MySpace deal.
Google’s search engine has thrived because PageRank uses democratic algorithms that tracked page links. By contrast, real-time discovery engines like Twitter and Facebok use a more dynamic kind of democracy, linking to content that users finds worthwhile. As a result, content on the web is splitting into two basic models, and understanding this distinction makes clear why Google’s centralized role is being threatened.
Simply put, it’s the difference between discovery and search, between the “Now Web” and the “Then Web.” Here’s a more specific analogy: In college, most of us spent a lot of time in the library but also in a social hub like the campus coffee shop. One was a place for digging up information, the other a more dynamic, conversational setting, where ideas were casually exchanged. Google has been the web’s library: archival, organized and oriented around research. Twitter and Facebook, on the other hand, are coffee shops: instantaneous, conversational and oriented around discovery.
I doubt Google will ever make a good coffee shop. But I also don’t see real-time content shutting down its library. Instead, it’s breaking open a new arena of the web over which Google has little control. That makes Google more of a specialized player, but still relevant.
I think real-time web is an important frontier of the web and this is a google’s achilles heel. It is not like Google has been asleep at the wheel on this front. They bought Jaiku a service similar to twitter. Bu it never really took off like twitter did. It is too late for google to create a twitter killer. The horse has already left the barn. If you can’t beat them, join them. So they should buy them or partner with them.