The Goodness of Google

As the world’s dominant search engine, it’s not surprising that Google attracts a lot of attention and, along with it, a fair of criticism for how it operates.

But stepping back from the fray, the thing about Google that’s even more impressive than the power of its search engine is the portfolio of services it continues to roll out.

Google’s services meet specific needs so well that it’s easy to forget you’re using a growing number of them. Before you know it, GMail, Google Reader, Google Blog Search, Google Docs, Google Maps, YouTube and Google News have become regular parts of your daily digital world.

This is probably the biggest threat facing Microsoft. If you think about it, people are very aware they’re using Microsoft products – be it Windows, Internet Explorer or Office. Not that this is necessarily a bad thing but I think it’s more of a challenge for Microsoft when it comes to convincing people to embrace new products and services.

A good example is Live Writer, which is probably one of the leading blog publishing tools even thought it doesn’t get anywhere near the love and respect it deserves (Note: Having a Mac version would be a nice touch!). Live Writer’s is clearly a Microsoft product so there may be a small hurdle when it comes to bloggers embracing it – a hurdle that I don’t think Google faces.

You could also argue that Internet Explorer suffers from the same problem. Even though it is still the world’s leading browser, it gets nowhere the same amount of respect or buzz as Firefox. The world loves Firefox for obvious reasons but IE has been getting better.

What do you think? Does this thesis hold water at all?

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