The problem with Google is that it has such a clear identity.
This clear identity has been a boon to the company for the past ten years. Their laser focus, manifested by the complete lack of clutter on their home page, has led them to be the undisputed leaders in the very market on which they're focused.
But now they've got a problem, and it's similar to the Facebook problem. The problem is that the users, rightly or wrongly, think we own the experience.
It's ours, and we want it our way.
So once we get accustomed to a certain experience, we're quick to defend it and loath to change it. Facebook's several 'launch and retract' episodes, culminating most recently in an 'oh-boy-Twitter's-doing-well-we'd-better-copy-Twitter' redesign, attest to this.
Google, of course, hasn't had the same egg-on-its-face PR snafus as Facebook, but then again they don't launch radical redesigns. Their users are if anything even more firmly entrenched in the status quo; there's too much money riding on algorithm expertise for people not to freak out when the algorithm changes.
So that's the problem. Google, for all its size and strength and domination of the market, is limited to the ability to make small, incremental changes to its search experience.
For now, with search patterns staying reasonably consistent and habits firmly embedded, this may not seem like a problem. But once a new search model emerges, whether it's Twitter search or something else, Google will be shackled by its own success.
Do you think Google can afford to change the way it does search?
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