Product Disruption and the Google Product Management Team

Changing landscapes require renewed focus

Google’s product managers need to step it up a bit. Certainly the rebooted Larry Page leadership must and will provide direction, but product management needs to take that vision and craft an executable strategy. While the acquired android smartphone operating system and accompanying applications development continue to grow and be successful, the foundation of search continues to be on a one way collision course with Facebook. As the social web becomes more and more imbedded into the very nature of how we behave online, search becomes less ubiquitous and more categorical in nature. Google has tried to introduce offerings that defend the home turf and inject identity into the very foundation of what they deliver, search relevancy. But sprinkling social over search continues to fail them. . . miserably.

Wave? Does anyone even remember what it was? Buzz? Dropped by Techcrunch just last week, Hotspot? Assumed into Places (wasn’t Google playing Dodgeball at one point?). And those are just a few. Skype (and others) have boxed Google completely out of video chat, Groupon and Livingsocial are having success holding Google at arm’s length in the daily local deals race, and last but certainly not least and possibly most damaging, Facebook is feverishly working on messages that will supposedly change the very nature of email (and besides, the under 20 set doesn’t even really use email choosing to Facebook ‘inbox’ their friends instead).

Yup, it is a scary world if you are a Google Product manager. Even more so after this week’s Microsoft Skype acquisition. I’m sure on some nights they wake up in a cold sweat after some nightmare that involves the morphing of the primary colored iconic ‘Google’ into the dreary purple of Yahoo. Yet unless and until Google gets its product management act together they very well may find themselves relegated to making headlines simply because Larry Page or some other exec takes to cursing out influential tech bloggers over their frustration and inability to crack the code of their disruptive competitors.

Identity is going to be critical as search evolves. Facebook and Twitter’s relevance cannot be understated as more and more users of these networks look to them first to gain perspective on anything from a software product that they are considering to a movie they might like to catch over the weekend. Could it be that Google is being relegated to a mere directory of relevant data?This is not to mitigate the value of that data, the relevancy that Google offers up is extremely valuable and it is the main reason why their total revenues exceed $23B in fiscal 2010. But how long will this relevancy carry the same value if their paying big brand customers are expecting a high degree of accuracy when they pay for impressions while local businesses expect the voice of the locals to sell for them?

The challenge for the Google product manager is that stewardship over a maturing product in the face of disruptive technology can result in no wins regardless of course of action. The necessity to hold serve on revenue generating opportunities, while developing, many times in parallel, the innovation necessary to succeed serves one too many masters to be impactful. Worse, innovating on the platform of the known yields solutions that don’t solve the as yet to be discovered. Wave and Buzz are, in my opinion, perfect examples of such a situation. Both sort of built on the platform of gmail and tried desperately to pull in the identification of users while injecting a conversational tone to functionality that already existed both inside and outside the walls of the Googleplex.

Complicating the path ahead or the Google Product Management team is seemingly unfocused cadres of technological advancements that at best do not necessary solve any one problem and at worse creates unhealthy competition among the ranks. (Chrome vs. Android anyone?)

How then can the Google product management team contribute positively to the task at hand?

People. Video. Copy. Audio.

Google has the opportunity to own the convergence of digital media with the traditional media, extending new found life for the latter. Being ever mindful of improving identification of the searcher, continuing investments into their real-time search functionality, tastefully leveraging android acquired location based details, and by providing relevancy over the video we watch, the audio we listen to and what we read in the context in which we consume each could establish a much needed barrier to entry against competition looking to whittle away at Google’s massive impression oriented advertising haul. This can be accomplished not by creating new ways to define identity for the Google user base but by making the relevancy of search of these outlets easy. In my opinion, Google is at their best when making things easy. Search was successful because it was faster and easier to find what you were looking for. Gmail caught fire because it redefined the clutter of the inbox. Google Docs is the ever needed Microsoft Office meets Sharepoint light. Chrome? Fast, simple, natural.

Maybe the question for product managers isn’t necessarily how to socialize search, but instead how to integrate the fabric of content consumption into the way and the where of our search. Make it easier for me to search for the people I want to know more about and facilitate my interaction with them. Learn my preferences for the consumption of television and allow me to become my own program manager. Think ahead of me when searching for publications of all sorts and understand the intent of my search. Am I headed on vacation and need a novel for the beach or am I conducting research for my next blog post? Deliver to me access to discover new artists that match my taste based upon what audio store or download.

Google’s flanks are well surrounded. Amazon, Apple, Microsoft, Linkedin, Salesforce and Facebook. Each in its own way offers a threat to not only forward progress for Google, but also to their main revenue stream. Simply read the disclosure of risks as Google sees them in their annual report if you have doubts. With 96% of revenue coming from search there is real concern over the latter. With Linkedin getting ready to raise what will likely be billions and Facebook’s IPO not too far behind Google’s product managers must decide which question to answer and which users to satisfy. Focusing on increasing the relevancy of what we seek in a connected world seems prudent, the alternative is decreased relevancy for Google as a big player on the global digital stage.