Steve Jobs’s Contribution to Google Plus
Nobody would expect that the famous and late Steve Jobs, Apple’s driving force for over a decade whose direction made them the world’s most valuable company, was a key contributor to Google’s Google Plus “social networking” website, but it’s true.
In addition to that, I’m going to reveal that Google+ is functioning exactly as intended – instead of the popular opinion that it is a failed Facebook competitor.
Enter Steve Jobs
Google and Apple have an interesting recent history. It all started when then-Google CEO and Apple board member Eric Schmidt had to step down from his influential position from Apple due to conflicts of interest: Apple had the iPhone while Google had Android, so the CEO of one should not be allowed to call the shots for the other.
Both now hover around the median $600/share stock price on the stock market, though Apple has a remarkably higher cap than Google does.
But where does Steve Jobs fit into all this? Before he passed, the famed Apple CEO (and former LSD user) met with Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin, with Page as Google CEO by that time.
He told them something to the effect of,
You have so many products spanning several services: Search, GMail, YouTube, Maps etc. – why not unite them all under a fluid user experience to both you and your users’ benefit?
The Benefits and Google Plus
So Google Plus was formed more into a unifier of all of Google’s products and services, further evidenced by the controversial unified privacy policy released earlier this year. Everything done on non-Search services add to the “filter bubble” where search results are filtered based on what a user likes on YouTube, Plus, GMail contents etc.
For Google and advertisers, a user’s “fingerprint” of browsing habits and their profile of what interests them is further built and enhanced by unifying all of the data gathered across all of the separate services umbrella’d under the new privacy policy and linked via the Google Plus login.
Even Eric Schmidt has confirmed this in interviews, easily verified via his Wikipedia page. Also note the quote on there by him about the Patriot Act’s far-reaching influence: all that compiled user data has eyes other than Google, he suggests.
All that data is used to simply target advertisements to users more effectively to rake in more dough for the already huge corporation, as Apple themselves are just now discovering via iOS’s iAd program and API.
If Jobs ran Google and what Google Plus really is
Was Jobs’s conversation with Brin/Page meant to stir the data giant into even more of an unstoppable data bank, or was it merely an innocent remark meant to give the users a more pleasant experience? Probably both.
But there is one thing often-overlooked by analysts: Google Plus is no longer attempting to be a social networking site as its primary focus.
Nobody uses it anywhere near the magnitude of Facebook, and Google is very aware of that. I’m told by people familiar with the situation that even internally the employees laugh at it as a social networking site, and almost everyone has a profile that they never even use past the first two days of experimentation.
But eventually, as indicated by the Google Plus links everywhere, Google Plus will be everything. Every YouTube account is really the video section of Google Plus. Search is just querying the Internet via Google Plus. GMail accounts are Google Plus recipients, and so on.
This is the goal of Google Plus. It tried to magically overcome Facebook, and that obviously did not work, so instead Google Plus has a new strategy: if it can’t hit the target, encompass it. Wrap everything else around Facebook and the users will cope.
I project that it will work, with stiff competition from Facebook as they continue to expand themselves before it’s all over with. What do you think? Let us know in the comments below.
Sources:
http://googlesystem.blogspot.com/2011/10/how-steve-jobs-influenced-googles.html
http://www.blogbloke.com/google-acknowledges-steve-jobs/
Personal unpublished interviews with anonymous people close to the matter.
http://www.meetmicah.com/2011/10/the-best-advice-steve-jobs-ever-gave-larry-page/
About Chris:
Chris started at The Coffee Desk during its hey-day as an infrequent guest author who slowly grew to becoming a mainline contributor. He is a business grad student at USC who is very fluent with technology and the ever-evolving web, and has priceless contributions to Silicon News as a result. He is known for looking at the "big picture" of things, namely new technological trends, and analyzing them from a business perspective that so many IT professionals tend to glaze over in their focus on the technology's specifics.
52 comments on “Steve Jobs’s Contribution to Google Plus”
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Jobs states the obvious, and Apple fanboys think it’s Genius.
LOL, so true. I’m tired of the crazed fanaticism of Apple’s fan base. According to them, Jobs invented the touch screen and Siri is completely original…
Where do you think we would be today if it wasn’t for the release of the Macintosh, iPhone and iPad?
Microsoft was just a software developer in the early days with no OS, Google was copying RIM and making a duplicate of the Blackberry phones in 2006/2007 and Microsoft was still pushing Windows Mobile 6.1 or so and no changes in line at that time.
So where would we be today?
Apple doesn’t necessarily invent things, Microsoft had tablets in the 90s and sure other technology was out there like the Apple Newton, but what Apple usually does is reinvent things. They reinvented the Computer, Phone, Tablets, etc and they get the credit for the relaunch of an insanely great new product and takes the world by storm. No other company does this and thats what makes Apple so different. They make drastic changes to old technology and reinvent them into a new unbelievable product.
Again I have to ask, where would we be today without the Macintosh, iPhone, iPad? Microsoft would be on 6.5 of Windows Mobile and Google might have 50% of the market share again Blackberries or would have failed and tablets most likely wouldn’t exist and netbooks would probably still be selling.
So the crazed fanaticism of Apple’s fan base has every right to be a crazed fanaticism fan base, because believe it or not Apple changes the world unlike any other company.
We’d be exactly where we are. Someone else would have done what Apple did, because the market would have demanded it.
Same place, considering the CrunchPad was functional before the iPad and was just briefly tied up in legal stupidity that meant it was released afterwards.
social network will destroy us all, the apocalipse is coming.
With spelling like that, the apocalypse is surely near.
Who is your source? Imagination?
Sources added.
Let’s see, for me, G+ has replaced Twitter, SMS, email, phone calling, conference calls, and is a one-stop convenient communication hub I use constantly all day.
I have a wide circle of acquaintances covering a variety of ages, none of them have been to Facebook in months.
Sure, G+ was never designed to compete directly with others, that was obvious from the start, it was designed to make a marketing company more money by improving their product, us.
The trade we make for that? Convenience. Win.
What is suggested may be true, but I wonder how it will be significantly increasing revenue for Google. As for Google+ failing as a social tool, that isn’t at all obvious to me. It has UI issues that need sorting out, to be sure, but it is a more grown-up version of Facebook. As a result, it attracts the less goofy and neurotic.
I dont use facebook.or twitter. But I do use G+. There is nothing for.me on facebook. And why companies dilute their brand by making facebook their advertised net presence on tv os beyond me.
With spelling like that, the
apocalypsedictionary is surely near.Pingback: La contribución de Steve Jobs a Google Plus [ENG]
The big issue here that everyone is over looking is the end user experience. Google can combine everything all it wants. The product is very ugle and not eye pleasing. Most end users are use to the whole lets share this article on facebook for all my friends to see and lets share this youtube video on facebook.
So here is my great idea that is much better then what Steve had. Google needs to get rid of google plus and make google a one stop shop. Make google the whole brand of all there products. Then inside of that you can offer a link for the clean no ad search. They will need to stop hiring programmers and hire some designers to get users to change there online habbits.
Thank you for listening and this is why I should be the next CEO of google. LOL
I think taste must be a personal thing because I like the look and feel of G+ way more the FB.
This who labeling thing is kinda of funny. It’s like saying Ford puts out an ugly failure of a TV but when I look at it like a car its fine.
When I received my Google+ beta invite ages ago they described it as mainly a federation service to unite all of their services. I didn’t realize this wasn’t common knowledge.
“…the famed Apple CEO (and former LSD user)…”
I have no idea what relevance mentioning LSD has on this article.
Do some and get back to us afterward.
Same here, character assassination ?
I agree. This article smells like some sort of crazy conspiracy theory that Jobs was the evil hand behind a tech. world domination play. Very odd vibe!
Also citing Wikipedia as a place to confirm concrete “facts” is odd as well. Wikipedia is very good, but its not a proper source of record at all. It doesn’t really confirm any assertion about a person .
I presume they mean citations on Wikipedia to the original sources.
No wonder I now stay logged out to use Google (the search engine) and YouTube. I just use another browser to check my GMail, and sometimes if I’m really bored, my G+.
If you know the term “filter bubble” you know as well why it is bad for you.
i think they missed his point
Yeah with so many heterogeneous products, it occurs to general public that Google is not able to focus and that they have produced ‘too many kids than they could control’. That advice by Mr Jobs seemed timely and opportune.
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G+ could not take on Facebook this time around, but I think Google have split all their products up intentionally.
This way they do not force users to take a stand on a service provider and considering how easy the “hipsters” can lure people to choose something just to be hip I believe they made the correct move.
Meanwhile they try to win users to one or more of their other services that they provide. This way they get you to use their cloud service in the end anyway. And so in the future when you figured out G+ holds all your contacts, e-mail, calendar appointments etc and you have to take a stand between some service provided by a new or old competitor to google you might be more inclined to use the google service instead of trying out something new.
So I think Jobs tried to make google “re-launch” everything as one product to easier crush it with his own cloud service. Most youth’s today will through their mobile phones get hooked into either google cloud or iCloud. Seeing how popular Iphone is with the kids and the “hipsters” Jobs could have screwed google if they consolidated their products into one name. The name/brand game was won by Apple many years ago.
>crapple
Its too bad it took Steve to show them…
If anyone implies that google and its filter bubble is evil – think of it – every single other major company is doing it too – facebook/ microsoft and apple will be there shortly. And pretty much all the netizens have one foot in any one of these networks and they are all more or less uniformly evil!
as regards steve job’s comments I bet he’s going to be EVEN larger than life 10 years from now, the way he’s being attributed everything with. 10 years from now he’d have “invented” the whole darn mobile phone, the maps and ANY apple services
Facebook had enough time to make users familiar with new features. It wasn’t hard for them. But Google is trying to do all-in-one platform. And it becomes really hard to get all the features of G+.
They need to take it slow and give users a bit of time to adapt. they can approach with most popular ones first. GMail, Youtube & Hangout and can gradually integrate others
Your attempt to spin a failure as a success has failed. “In fact, we never intended to compete with Facebook to begin with”. Right. Stevie had very good advice for Google, I’m sure. Then they were good friends and the whole reason Google has maniacally developed Android had nothing to do with Apple shutting Google out of search on the mobile phones.
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“Martin says: Same here, character assassination?”
No, he is just pointing out that Jobs had already committed ‘character suicide’.
Thanks for mentioning my article, Chris! Yours is a fascinating read. My favorite quote:
I think it explains G+ really well, and hits the mark better than just about any other review I’ve read out there.
I think that the G+ integration of services is a genius strategy.
You described it as “wrapping around Facebook” like it is some kind of snake or something.
But I think that it is more in line with what users want. I love that Google has focused on integration of services in a way that few companies have. I can now use one account for a number of different services, use integrated search to search gmail, voice, chat, etc.
And finally, I actually did not like the “social search” idea when it first came out, but it has grown on me. Seeing what experts in my G+ circles saw as relevant DOES help the end user find what they are looking for.
The Google Plus profile being linked to GMail and Picasa is why I deleted my Google Plus account and profile some months ago. It took a while for me to realise this, but once it did, my real name disappeared from Google Plus and not long after that, Google said fix your name or it’ll be disabled, so I deleted it.
I agree that I wish they did not require “real” names. What is the point really? But I do like having the integrated services. It would be nice if you could de-integrate if you wanted though.
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