Wikinomics : The Tower of Google

In the second wave of the internet, Pro Blogging News Online Income bloggers bible fast track bloggers bible Make Money With Bloggers Bible – Exclusive Birthday Discount! corporate wordpress theme known as web 2.0 corporate giants of the internet (including some newborn giants of the dot com boom) are adopting a model of vertical integration with an enthusiasm that hadn't been seen in the industrial giants of the early 20th century. When General Motors consolidated its production and value creation all the way from the gates of the steel mill to the parking lot of the dealership it was to leverage the benefits of mass marketing, taylorism and scientific management. Is Google now trying to outpace Microsoft and Yahoo? Each wants to become the essential operating system of knowledge work from IM to blog to email to spreadsheets to project management to publication. Each one is trying to build massive internal communities that flourish with collaboration and connectivity while shutting out their rivals.

Q: If Google (or Microsoft or Yahoo) builds an independent internal community of collaboration; while attempting to the exclusion of its competitors, doesn't this defeat wikinomics?

A: The question is a good one, because information silos are natural enemies of wikinomics - however these corporate giants are very big. A Google or Microsoft sized information silo looks like a huge information platform to everybody else humans. An information silo is a silo only because it is small relative to the community. Google and Microsoft (which looks like it is building alliances with Yahoo) are giant accelerating forces for technical change, and the fact that there is competition between giants is very beneficial, encouraging innovation and evolution. Generally speaking it is a rule of the knowledge economy that the information wants to be centralized while control wants to be decentralized. The ability of the giant platforms to attract users will be based on the amount of power they deliver to the end users.

In the short run, there are (and will be) many inefficiencies. Not everyone is collaborating on the same platforms, but that won't stop people from trying. There should be a global wiki for aviation (in development as we speak), there can be a global wiki for the stock market (it's happening quicker than one may have imagined).

Q: Will businesses eventually be forced to join one of these great nations - or else?

A: This kind of convergence will happen more at the industry level than the firm level. Different industrial sectors will create their own world(s) as the financial markets have already done. The financial world is consolidating itself with the NYSE buying into foreign stock exchanges. In any given industry there are different requirements - some will have a strong tendency to converge on one software platform - as such the industry will become a Microsoft industry, a Google industry, or a mixed industry, with no dominant provider of information/collaboration platforms. Smaller industries are more likely to converge than larger ones, and in others the competing platforms themselves will converge (Google as tweedledee and Microsoft as tweedledum).

Q: Nations - who's talking about nations?

If Microsoft or Google built the internal community you speak of the collaboration would be limited to the ones admitted ...not open to everyone. In effect this is creating borders in cyberspace that people are reluctant to cross. In not too many years these borders may be more significant to people than physical borders are now. Macintosh is not an operating system so much as a tribe. The little details of the user interface tend to display something akin to racism toward PC users - who feel immediately alienated using Mac hardware. True collaboration does not have a confined space where admission depends on having a certain opinion or technical skill - but there is a strong factor in play - trust. Those who trust collaborate better. Trust is mostly a question of shared value systems, which brings us back to tribes again.

Q: Why is everyone SO afraid of google as though it will take over the world? Google applications for spreadhseets and storage are pretty useless for REAL biz apps.

A: That may be true today. Though as with most disruptive innovations, things that start out as inferior offerings (e.g. vacume tube vs. transistor) may eventually improve and dominate. So while Google's spreadsheet doesn't yet come close to features of a desktop versions, it has differentiating capabilities (e.g. collaboration/sharing of data) that suit it to entirely new markets/uses. Present performance may not be indicative of future capabilities. Anther reason companies like Microsoft are wary of google is because of their ad-based business model. Google can take products that others are selling and make them free. If you're in the business of software sales that's worrisome. While the "free" versions might not be a real competitor today (e.g. not good enough for enteprise adoption), the gap may narrow with time. Linux was once viewed as a "toy" operating system, now it's a true contender. That's not to say that Google will dominate - far from it. Google, like everyone else, needs to keep it's sights on where the "puck is moving". Disruptive innovations favour no-one - Google included.
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contributed by sulasuntri on Dec 27 12:06am

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contributed by goaplek Cis on Feb 6 2:44am