The Coming Google Apocalypse (Hint: It's Not Just About Media)
We Know to Fear Google Because of Its Search-Ad Dominance. But Its 'Cloud' Is What's Truly Scary
Why should we fear Google? There's an easy, obvious answer to that, particularly if you're a media or marketing person: because Google is killing us. It is, duh, blatantly steamrollering the business models of countless business sectors, from Madison Avenue to print media. (Despite all the Bing hype, it appears that Microsoft's refreshed search engine -- er, decision engine -- isn't making a dent in Google's dominance.)
But let me suggest that we -- not just media people, but all netizens -- should be as obsessed about another reason to fear Google. Vogelstein briefly alludes to it when he writes of Google's vision of "a world in which Web services replace desktop software" -- i.e., cloud computing -- and how it could "become a de facto standard, locking businesses into using its services."
Fine, you might think; businesses will just substitute maybe-evil Google for demonstrably-evil Microsoft. But the larger reality is that more and more businesses and individuals are trusting their mission-critical data and applications to Google's cloud. And the problem with that: Google's cloud has the potential to blanket us -- smother us -- in ways much more systemic and potentially apocalyptic than Microsoft's desktop software monopoly ever did.
When Microsoft software -- installed on a PC or a server -- fails, it can seriously disrupt business, but the disruption tends to be contained (to one workstation or division or company). But when Google's cloud fails, millions can be affected simultaneously.
Users of Google applications, including Docs, Spreadsheets and Gmail, know that outages are hardly a rare event. In February, Gmail users (there are more than 100 million worldwide, most of whom use the free, ad-supported version) went ballistic when the service was unavailable for more than two hours. In March, Google Apps was down for 30 minutes, but Google was forced to admit that some unspecified "small subset" couldn't access their docs, spreadsheets or e-mail for -- oh my God -- nearly 22 hours.
Even paying customers -- who use the so-called Premier version of Google Apps -- are not immune. Though Premier users get a service-level commitment from Google of 99.99% uptime, in the past Google has offered customers an extension on their contracts to make up for particularly egregious outages (in other words, that 99.99% uptime isn't guaranteed).
If Google Apps Premier Edition can achieve 99.99% uptime, that allows for about 53 minutes of downtime per year, but it's amazing what a difference fractions of a percentage point can make. For example, 99% uptime allows for 87.6 hours of downtime per year.
Meanwhile, keep in mind that Google itself can and does fail. Consider what happened in May when what Google called a "routing error" caused its basic search functionality to fail for 14% of its users. According to Information Week, the hourlong outage, rather astonishingly, caused a 5% drop in global internet traffic.
(Microsoft, by the way, is ramping up its own cloud-computing offerings to attempt to compete with Google; it recently had a 22-hour outage of its own.)
On July 20, my colleague Michael Learmonth reported that Google has been busy seducing college IT departments onto its cloud, with some 4 million students on campuses across the country already using Google applications in place of desktop software. Last Tuesday, New Zealand's postal service announced it was abandoning Microsoft software, including Office and Exchange Server, in favor of Google Apps. In Britain, the Daily Telegraph and other newspapers use Google Docs for word processing. Stateside, the 38,000 employees of the District of Columbia are using Google Apps. Last September, Google Apps hit the 1 million mark of paying business users.
Google typically affects an everything-is-under-control posture, even when its users are freaking out. Still, consider the scary language of Acacio Cruz, a Google reliability manager, who posted on the Official Gmail Blog after February's outage:
"This morning, there was a routine maintenance event in one of our European data centers. This typically causes no disruption because accounts are simply served out of another data center. Unexpected side effects of some new code that tries to keep data geographically close to its owner caused another data center in Europe to become overloaded, and that caused cascading problems from one data center to another."
What are your favorite words and phrases in that post? Mine are "unexpected side effects," "overloaded" and "cascading problems."
Now, what happens when 10% or 20% (or, heck, 75%) of, say, all U.S. small businesses come to depend on Google Apps and there's an outage of two hours or six hours or eight hours? What happens when 10% or 20% or 75% of U.S. small businesses effectively have an entire workday wiped out, thanks to Google cloud downtime?
Cascading ... flop sweat. Tears. Screaming. Desperation. Apocalypse.
~ ~ ~
Simon Dumenco is the "Media Guy" media columnist for Advertising Age.
You can follow him on Twitter @simondumenco.
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Some people have been burned by cloud services that have lost important libraries of files. But those have occurred during the cloud computing infancy and have thus far been few and far between.
It's also true in nature that when there is a single source of anything for the majority that use it, there is a risk of a fatal collapse in the supply, leading to an adverse domino effect when the unexpected does occur.
But Google understands that and is working to become not a single source, but a multiple point resource that is always on and always has multiple copies of everything the user has entrusted it with. It's in Google's best interest to do so.
If you look on the positive side of Google's cloud Chrome OS, beyond the, "Google is putting the world at risk," perspective and look at what is driving the need and desire for cloud computing, you see a powerful promise. But, certainly not powerful enough to overnight get the majority of people to drop Microsoft's Windows found on 90% of the world's personal computers or Microsoft Office software used by more than 450 million paying customers.
Google could go down for a few hours for a portion of its customer base, as it did earlier this year. But even a situation 2-3 times greater in time and customers reach, than the 2 hours and 14% of customers affected from a failure earlier this year, is not apocalyptic. If it were, than every time an internet service provider, server or hard drive went down, all would have already been lost.
As smart phone penetration takes off, currently 19% and expected to more than double by the end of 2010 to outnumber PCs in the US, you can understand why cloud computing is so alluring.
Imagine the functions of all the software that currently reside on your computer done through the Web with the information stored on your computer or phone in a cloud of connected computers. Any web browser on any device could give users instant access to all of your files with your permission.
No more downloads and upgrades. E-mailing large files will be replaced by simply allowing others to access files online.
Now imagine the ability to opt-in for a free cloud operating system in exchange for greater granularity from contextual search returns and suggestions that take into account the actual content of your files.
A Web 3.0 world filled with proactive communication, based on consumer behaviors and the content in each person's cloud file will make 1-to-1 communication possible on a very large scale and will realize marketing ROIs like none ever experienced.
Given just a few of these thoughts, perhaps there is a positive article on the upside of Google's Chrome OS on the horizon?
Rodney Mason, CMO
Moosylvania
The Great State Of Design
www.moosylvania.com
www.twitter.com/rodmoose
www.twitter.com/moosylvania
Think you might have wonky maths there. 99.99% uptime leaves .01% downtime.
that's 0.876 hours, or 53 minutes if you prefer
As for Rodney33, I'm not suggesting that Google has lost anybody's documents, and I agree that it clearly has redundancy -- a "multiple point resource" system, as you put it -- built into its services, so that your data is never residing on a single (potentially fallible) server. What I am suggesting is that those multiple online backups become useless to you if can't access any of them for a short or extended period of time -- something that has happened repeatedly, and which Google has acknowledged, in February, for example, in owning up to "cascading problems."
Simon
That's because of the current monopolist over business software, Microsoft. I'll take Google, the cloud, and "only" 99% uptime" any day.
Bob
"The cloud" has as many questions and answers, and they aren't only going to be answered or faced by Google.
Then part 2 of the equation, how can I ensure in-house firewall security, when I'm in a cloud-based server system?
It's always interesting to see the changes that take place, based on campaign-support.
http://digg.com/business_finance/Google_CEO_to_endorse_Obama_WSJ
Maybe it's not Halliburton, but I feel like if Bush or Cheney had implemented a strictly Microsoft Office policy, people would freak out.
(Of course, this is all assuming that it's Obama that caused this change.)
That's precisely the problem: Any web browser on any device could give users instant access to all of your files WITHOUT your permission! Does history say it will "Never happen?"
Have you ever tried to connect with a human at Google when any of its systems go down?
Talk to your screen ... you'll get the same response .... silence.
While a user of Google's cloud, I am not convinced of its security on any level.
Back ups are the only solution.
Paul Benjou
Industry Blog: www.MyOpenKimono.com
Unsophisticated, parsimonius users with little to lose or spend will be the initial market for this service. Should it become more reliable it may be a threat. But who pays and how much? If this is provided for free it's hard to see the business model. Granted Google could becme the Craig's List category killer for IT but I doubt it. What about security? Most corporations will not feel secure putting sensitive corporate data on hackable clouds.
In any event this is an easily replicable service, unlike search. It is doubtful that Google could develop an edge in simple software and storage anything like its search advantage. Competition will be plentiful, as Microsft has signalled by pushing its own cloud initiative. They may have lost the search colony but they will defend the applications and storage homeland to the death. Anyone who makes software aps will do the same.
I will lose no sleep about this one.
Can't wait. It's about time. The sooner, the better.
Just look at that dancing doped up bald monkey from msft........what good that would benefit next generation could come from his fuc&*% head?
GOOG ROCKS.
Then when you go online, they just sync up.
This would make the cloud an extension of your personal data and not the sole repository.
Eventually, local clouds will develop, after all, the vast majority of local data is used by locals. A mesh network, pc/smartphone based cloud is the next logical extension for the same shortcomings with the cloud described in the article. Whether the tools come from Google, or Microsoft is irrelevant.
When it's Google's time to be displaced, the technology displacing will do so in the same way Google displaced MS, with services an order of magnitude more open and useful that what was previously available.
Learning to use the new tech to your advantage is a more useful use of time than being alarmed about its implications.
I was correct. The original article has now been edited, as noted by Simon
http://adage.com/mediaworks/article?article_id=138105#comments-42797
Perfect target for mother nature, terrorists, or fate. "If?" is not the question. "When?" is.
Similarly, the cloud is increasingly congested, particularly that last mile, increasing competition for wan bandwidth that is necessary for what would become routine io.
Further, whenever there is global wan disruption due to viruses, network upgrades or major trunk re-route, traffic slows to almost a standstill.
In all of these cases, my desktop and lan are readily available and fully responsive. The cloud may be a helpful augment for some distance needs or recreational use, but can't replace a mission-critical, server-based and fully accountable business lan.
Neither service works as well as it did before Google entered the scene. In fact, there is NO support for Blogger or Feedburner now.
Google is like a ravenous, monstrous many-limbed entity that is gobbling up all the information it is served, to disseminate as it sees fit.
If I had to write the definition of a bureaucracy, I would write: Google
Even Warren Buffet, who admire the company, compared Google to "sharks and crocodiles" company "that no one can get near". No one is getting near Google, but it's Google which is going after everyone and is spreading fear all around.
To the question "who is afraid of Google?", Kevin Kelleher of wired.com replied "Everyone".
Today, when you call Google name in business circles, people are mixed with fright and a kind of admiration. Google want to dominate everything. The company is using its deep pocket from search advertising to storm and disrupt several industries and players: newspapers, magazines, radio, television, mail, yellow pages, translation, office software, e-commerce, payment system, maps, mobile, video, books, classified, Wi-Fi, instant-messaging software, Print, Feed Reader, online Groups, blogs ... The Sharks and Crocodiles company is spreading fear ...
Great article here: http://linkcrafter.com/blog/?p=648
Let us be precise. Certain utility companies are monopolies. Governments operate as monopolies. We have always had a choice of operating systems, computers, search engines, software and browser options. Microsoft and Google are very much competing with each other or will be, on all software fronts. While we are reporting the news . . . let's not create it by miss-labeling anything that is offered competitively as a "monopoly" regardless of its wide-spread adoption. The greatest danger we face in marketing is lack of clarity in our communications.
Wildly popular and extremely successful brands do not equal a monopoly. No technology developer in the world goes to sleep at night believing that there isn't a kid in a garage somewhere who will wake up and make them obsolete. The use of the term "monopoly" when applied either to Google or to Microsoft is inaccurate.
I for one, believe that Google makes the entire industry, including Microsoft, better. It creates fiercely competitive products and inspires fiercely loyal fans. So does Microsoft. Ask anyone of us in love with Word, Excel, or XBox.
Especially as marketers, let's stay professional. Let us admire companies who have built great brands and when writing about them, praise their achievements and berate them for their mistakes; but resist the temptation to use hyperbolic language outside of a venue where it is both entertaining and often persuasive, our ad copy.
Casey Jones
www.jonesandbonevac.com
You shouldn't put all your eggs in one basket.