Ballmer: Google Got There First
Incumbency and culture are two easily misunderstood topics. And unlike what Steve Ballmer says it is more of a “Chicken and Egg” scenario than as cause and effect.
According to the man behind Microsoft’s Bing, the Google search engine got it right when no other search engine can. During the early days of Google, there was plenty of steep competition among different search engines. Systems such as Alta Vista, Lycos, Infoseek and Ask Jeeves were among the first on the scene. Right before Google came around; Yahoo! was dominating thanks to the addition of its free webmail service –rivaled then by Hotmail and similar web services.
Google did not arrive until three years after Yahoo! and yet the search engine easily bested every single other service out on the net –quickly gaining the top spot and favoritism among users. When Google expanded to offer even more services, people began flocking the site for invites to try out the then-invite only Google Mail service.
According to Steve Ballmer, it is all about simply getting it right first. But to take that explanation at face value would be to imply that Google got lucky. In fact, it was more than luck; Google became successful because they approached the concept of web searching differently –in a well mannered method that made them the most reliable search engine to be used.
Google’s presence singlehandedly changed the way keywords and SEO works.
To say that incumbency is without ties to Google’s culture is a big mistake for the man who presented the amazing Windows Phone 7 user interface. There is something about Google’s internal culture that has made it the success that it is today –to say otherwise would be an affront to the genius behind the company.
Get to read more about Steve Ballmer’s opinions about Google at the Guardian UK.
Tags: Google
