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What is Good for the Web

Published by James September 28th, 2008 in Advertising, Business Model, Learning, Life, Working, World

Should be good for all web companies. I believe this is true, but I don’t think all web companies believe in it. Via Noah, I was pointed to this piece by Umar Haque, entitled, How to Chrome Your Industry. His article puts Method, to what most people think of as Madness, in Google’s overall strategy. In all of Google’s strategy you can see the concept that, “What is good for the web, is good for Google” and Chrome is the latest such project. To Umair’s point, he asks, why are more companies not taking up the same philosophy?

Chrome is a shared resource that ensures the sustainable growth of a larger ecosystem. There are two key words in that sentence. The first is shared. Google is investing in a shared resource because it has the potential to expand the pie dramatically for all, and so Google stands to benefit more than by hoarding it. The second is sustainable growth: through Chrome, Google ensures the ecosystem stays a level playing field, amplifying incentives for innovation, quality, and productivity.

The question from above and this quote exemplify the feeling I walked away with after reading Clay Shirky’s latest book. A few excerpts from that book really struck me, especially in the current climate of our economy and the changing face of many industries. A fundamental flaw we live with in most of our institutions can be seen in this exerpt from page 248 of the book.

The cost of trying things is where Coasean Theory about transaction costs and power law distributions of participation intersect. Institutions exist because they lower transaction costs, relative to what a market could support. However, because every institution requires some formal structure to remain coherent, and because this formal structure itself requires resources, there are a considerable number of potentially valuable actions that no institution can afford to undertake. For these cations the resources invested in trying them will often costs more than the outcome. This in turn means that there are many actions that might pay off but won’t be tried, even for innovative firms, because their eventual success is not predictable enough.

Might pay off but won’t be tried, is a tough one to swallow, and speaks to Umair’s point that:

Rethinking and rebuilding business in a radically better mold is the fundamental challenge today’s boardrooms face. It is what the 21st century demands. Because as a confluence of crises tells us, tired, rusting, obsolete industrial era business as usual cannot go on.

Umair asks: Where is the Chrome in your Strategy?

At FM, one of the original reasons I joined, outside of seeing a major market shift as media and technology continued to collide; was that I funadamentally believed the time had to come to support independent publishing brands online. I wanted to help the dying industries like newspapers and to that effect, journalism. Can it be done? From Clay’s book, the “lump of labor fallacy” speaks to how, in our case, the web, can help break the traditional models while also, and this is important, creating more value than originally existed.

I still see the day when FM “officially” builds it’s own Media Lab, and we help fund innovation that will get us to a place where, “what is good for the web, is good for FM.” Our soon to be released “Toolbox” is a good example of this, in many respects it is a,shared resource that ensures the sustainable growth of a larger ecosystem, as we help define value for web projects that are built with publishing brands and marketers.

I’m rambling a bit here and creating run-on sentences to boot. What do you think, does your company have a Chrome Strategy? Is there a need for one?

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Viewing 3 Comments

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    The industrial era businesses you speak of would, could and should fall by the way side if our economy operated in a true free market society and let them fail. Since we don't, they won't and we will continue to begrudgingly impart government intervention that is not unlike socialism. The guise of a capitalist is exactly that. A disguise.

    If/when Google shits the bed there would be no one to the rescue. Google recognizes that complacency equals death and their only sustainable resource aka safely net is innovation. A general lack of ego has allowed them to admit that they will never come up with all the solutions internally. They embrace their users/customers as their greatest assets.

    Its easy to say "the customer is always right" but it's amazing how few companies do just that. Chrome, from the little I've read seems like another way to not only build a community but give individuals exactly what they want; empowerment.

    Its hard to fail when you get everyone involved.

    ~ Joe. G
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    In general, I agree. Certainly seeing the same kind of corporate altruism in the software space where companies like IBM hire 100s or 1000s of developers that are asked to simply improve the linux kernal and associated open source products. What is good for linux is good for IBM.

    I'm not convinced that Google will adhere to the "good for web, good for Google" mantra however. Why do I think this? I see more and more of Google appearing prominently in their organic search results. Is that the best result for the searcher? Or does this practice create a self reinforcing loop where the ease of access creates more referrers which creates more links to their properties, and so on.

    Also, it may not be so clear what is good for the web. Who decides? Google decides. In general, I agree with their decisions but I no longer trust them to make the right decisions for the web.
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    I agree with you Pete. More and more, Google is portalizing their search results. In time, search will have to be open sourced and released under some sort of GPL. But that is not anytime soon, and it will be projects like the above that will allow Google to diversify their revenue streams in order to give up search as their main money maker.
 

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