I have been thinking a lot about Google this week amid the launch of Google Buzz and after talking to a few people on Twitter about it I am in no doubt that they are losing a little big of their brand magic. The last six months seems to have been a constant stream of new products which although promising to do things like “change how we use email” have actually delivered very little. I have always loved Google as a brand because they have managed to stay very cool and classy brand while raking in tons of cash and that was my opinion up until six months ago. I’m not really sure what the tipping point was but to me it just feels like they are trying to over innovate and are just pushing out new product after new product as well as constantly trying to hog the news headlines with quirky stories and facts. I personally think they are worried for the first time in about 5 years and feeling the pressure to innovate and stay ahead of the game because for the first time in a long time they have real competition on their doorstep from the likes of Facebook, Twitter and Bing. To me Google always did search and mail and they did it really really well but here are some of the gimicky things they have been doing recently that just didn’t sit that well with me…

Constant Tacky Homepage Changes

Google has always been known for making small subtle changes to their homepage and these changes used to be once a month or on very special occasions so as they would become a talking point. Those changes seem to be nearly daily now to the point where hey are no longer special and a lot of them are downright tacky. Could the need to change so often and highight their homepage in new and “innovative” ways be down to the fact that Bing has such an interesting and unique concept on their homepage? Either way I go to Google to get the best search results and not to view tacky stars busting all over the page.

Publicity Stunts

There always seems to be some sort of crazy innovation of invention coming out of Google these days and the latest one was the Google Street Snow Mobile which Eamon brought to my attention. Google just has way to much money ($40 billion war chest of cash at the moment) and it is starting to show in some of the products they release. Now I am sure that the snow mobile has a great use (mapping snowy places) but I just get the feeling that these are more publicity stunts and rather than keeping them quiet Google are starting to use the media in a way which I had not see them do before. I am not denying the fact that some people might use this and even find it useful but these sort of stunts just seem to be happening more and more often these days.

Craving Social Way Too Much

I have written in the last couple of days about how much Google wants to get in to social and they have been trying everything from Google Wave and Google Buzz to buying Twitter, adding social elements to their search results and basically trying anything they possibly can to break in to the social space. It remains to be seen if Buzz could just be their trump card but early signals are that they have tried too hard once again and have just added some extra noise to email. Facebook and twitter are very much starting to encroach in to Google’s territory and Google is very aware of that and is trying to fight back but so far has not had massive success.

Spread Too Thin?

Google seems to be trying to take on the world with the list of products that it is now offering. Take the latest example which was announced this week which was a project to deliver super fast broadband to up to 500,000 homes. Now I can see the logic that faster Internet will eventually mean that Google can serve more adverts and thus make more money and increase profits but going full steam ahead and becoming an ISP on top of everything else they already do? Google are currently heavily involved in advertising, analytics, Youtube, mobile operating systems, new Chrome computer operating systems, Blogging software, maps, phone manufacturing, online document sharing, web search and much much more. Just how thin are they going to spread themselves?

What’s The Future?

Google does an awful lot right. I would 100% invest in their stock right now but I just wonder are they not trying to take on a little too much. They still have vast amounts of cash to play with and that allows them to have the 20% innovation time which results in some of these great products but it also creates a lot of products that don’t do much. Google Earth is very cool for example but won’t really generate revenues but that doesn’t stop Google going off and trawling the world’s oceans to map them as well. What really bugs me is that feeling that they have just become a little insecure in the last 6 months and are innovating for the sake of innovating and coming out with gimmicks rather than great products. Google will continue to be a great company long in to the future (Their 200 year business plan will see to that) but they just need to be careful with over stretching themselves and not losing focus of their key revenue streams. Just to prove my point here are just a very small sample of videos they have produced in the last while highlighting some of their new products…

Google Buzz

Google Fibre Network

Google Social Search

Real Time Search

Google Goggles

Nexus One

Google Voice

Google Sites

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