Google has a reputation for being the anti-Microsoft. With its “Don't be evil” tagline, many regard as a good company whose products can be trusted. Never mind that most of its products have problems, that's its image and most people are willing to trust it.
The new Google Pack builds on that trust to offer services that no one would accept from Microsoft. It's essentially just a simple service-configuration tool plus a bundle of software: the Google toolbar, Google Earth, the outstanding Picasa, Google Desktop, plus Symantec Anti-Virus, Firefox, Adobe Reader and Ad-Aware SE Personal. Most people with a passing acquaintance with Microsoft's past history would be loathe to accept any of these products from the Great Satan or other companies.
Cleverly, however, Google can avoid this problem and both build on and improve its “trust rating” through Google Pack. People trust Google (and its promise that it hasn't been paid to include the software in Google Pack) so are willing to install the software; and since the software is designed to make PCs easier to use and more secure, they'll end up trusting Google even more. This will apply even more to newbies: all any PC aficionado has to do is point them at Google Pack when they first get their computer and Google will have them for life.
Google is effectively counteracting the common wisdom that big corporations are out to suck us dry and using the respect it earns to help other companies rehabilitate their images. All this, while implying that Microsoft is not to be trusted. Clever. Very clever.
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Rob,
I don't know if this is cleaver or sad. Google has become a victim of the hype surrounding it. This is nothing more than a half-baked amalgamation applications that, for the most part, were already available for free and have gone head-to-head against Microsoft and lost.
Now we've yet to see how the market will shake out with FireFox. And the Google toolbar certainly has its market covered. But the rest of these applications have already failed or are doomed to fail when Vista comes out. Not that they aren't good applications, but Vista will incorporate many of these features and you'd be hard-pressed to find a compelling argument as to why a user should install a competing application when they already have one on their machine that does the job necessary, save sheer brand loyalty.
For instance, Real Networks has already been unquestionably kicked to the curb by Microsoft and Apple. Ad Aware, a very nice and useful application, is most likely looking at its last days since MS will be including anti-phishing and anti-spyware in Vista.
Google has jumped the shark and this pack is its failed attempt to pull a rabbit out of a hat.
While the tone of this comment is certainly harsh, I believe Google has the best search engine on the market. However, with so many other struggling or failing projects and applications coming out of Mountain View, they need to refocus their efforts on their core business and forget about being an application provider...at least for the near future.
I agree with some of what you say, but Vista is still a year away and it'll be at least a couple of years before most PC users have it. Certainly, there are still plenty of PC users on Windows 98, seven years after its release.
So I think Google Pack has a couple of years in it at least before it becomes superfluous. And then Google, as with all software developers who release OS add-ons, will have to examine Vista, see where its flaws are, and come up with improvements.
In the meantime, it can garner goodwill with products that are "good enough" and free.
You forget that Google still spends 70% of its time/resources on its core business, which is search.
The rest of the apps that come out are majority out of employee's 20% projects, which are basically just gravy on top of the other 80% of their workload, focusing on search and other core products (not sure exactly what those are).
So I don't think they're wasting a bunch of time getting their hands into things they don't really undestand. I think they're being dilligent to stick to what they're good at, while using some of their overflowing extra resources to do some really cool, innovative apps.
Kalen
How hard would it be for Google to lose their reputation for being trusted ?
I think Google has put is trustability at risk by not taking appropriate measures to
monitor the reliability of sites that use its AdWords service. I say this because sponsored links where riding on Google's Trust reputation, but as the popularity of Google AdWords grew, less reliable "entrepreneurs" took advantage of the service and I believe this may eventually have an impact on the click rate as more searchers are directed to spammers and phishers or other generally insecure and dubious sites through Google's Sponsored links.
I think recent news that hackers scan through Google reinforce such risks.
What I am uncertain about is whether Google's Marketing machine will ever
find it remotely challenging to deal with recovering trust.
None the less it begs me to question notions that trust is easier lost then gained.
Michael Zarb (Student MSc ADMIS LSE)