Review: What would Google do? by Jeff Jarvis

So this was the first book I read during my last holiday on the beach, having received it as a gift at this years DLD. First of it is important to note that he just signed out Google because they are so successful. This “singled out” leads to the biggest problem as it makes this an opinion piece, not a “Built to Last” kind of real analysis of a group of companies with comparison group and all. But being a good journalist with lots of relevant experience, his opinions are very valid and should be considered. So with that, here are some of the main themes that stuck for me. As always, this is part review and part rememberall for myself.

Nugget: After Google’s Doubleclick acquisition, Google controlled 69% of online ad serving but only 24% of online ad revenue in 2008. I am actually not sure if that is good or bad, with Google often being the saviour of online advertising. This makes it clear that it is mostly working on the low end. You should remember though that Doubleclick probably includes DFA and DFP and some DFP installations have loads of house ads that pull down the revenue but still has ads served.

First up are relationships and I agree with his notion that customer care is as important as never before because everyone has a voice and is a multiplier. Above that, the link changed everything and his reasoning is that it was just not possible before to link as efficiently and this allows for new ways to distribute and create content. Why write twice? Simple enough but very important to remember.

Nugget: Tom Evslin, who introduced $19.95 unlimited bandwidth at AT&T is quoted as saying: “Explosive web companies — Skype, eBay, Craigslist, Facebook, Amazon, Youtube, Twitter, Flickr and Google itself — don’t charge users as much as the market will bear. They charge as little as they can bear.”

Jeff’s example is an ad network: lower margins -> more companies use your -> you get more sites -> you get critical mass -> you get top advertisers -> higher prices … . Sadly it’s just not true. There are lots of more variables. This exactly has lead to lots of networks that say they have the traffic when they can drop a pixel and give back the ad impression if they do not serve an ad. But higher prices in the end only come from auctions and this only happens if you are constantly overbooked. Sales just does not scale. So being a platform, joining a network is correct, and the example is good two, but the reasoning is wrong. Above that, thinking distributed (aka the widget economy) is important but only if your monetization is not within the widget, which might drive traffic or be a pay for widget or something, but ads in widgets is not something I buy into.

His next point was the new publicness which I in general agree upon and live my life by, just with a clear barrier between my life and my family. I am still working on a clear strategy to use this in a B2B setting though.

Another good one is that he quotes Zuckerberg as saying that the important thing is “elegant organization” in the sense that everything you can do online already exist, but you need to do it better.

As a side note, Jeff seems to agree that Agencies live be TV Ads at the moment as they are getting % of their spending and online is so much more complicated, especially as it is measurable. They need to rethink how they work and I know some already do.

You also need to remember that often people will do a lot for free, actually more so than for a little money, as long as they build something, have influence, gain control, help a fellow customer and claim ownership. This fits wonderfully to how customer care should work.

There come the new business realities and it gets very scary here. Watch Fred Wilson’s talk at Google to get another point of view here. Let me rephrase from what Jeff says, please remember he didn’t say it like that but his words with Fred’s words …: You want it all digital, cutting out the middle men, and potentially free, putting loads of people out of business, killing work places, and shrinking the economy, but very profitable at that … I somehow don’t buy that or I just don’t want to. This is probably simply because it will get a lot worse before it gets better but it is still very very scary indeed.

In the end you need to get “smart about bits” and that even though you are in retail. Where are your bits? The question is: “Can what you offer be somehow done for free?” If that is the case you need to do it. Where is your value and where your revenue is can be totally different.

Then comes the new attitude. Here Weinberger’s Corollary sets the start: “There is an inverse relationship between control and trust.” Then comes Jeff in saying: “Abundance breeds quality” and it all falls into place. This once again enforces agile softare development which also means you do not build the mother of all systems but go one step at a time.

To continue here I first need to quote Dee Hock: “Mistakes are toothless little things if you recognize and correct them. If you ignore or defend them, they grow fangs and bite.”

The thing is that correction enhances credibility and mistakes can be valuable as perfection is costly especially in the terms of opportunities missed. This is of course not true for all mistakes :) “It’s not the mistake that matters but what you do about it.”

Be honest is something I have said again and again and another point would be to stop the PR talk. It ties in with the next chapter in that we live in new speeds. So mistakes become monsters faster, hence you need to admit sooner and better. Of course he also talks about distribution but just read innovators dillema for that one.

He ends the book with some interesting thoughts about different industries in terms of how would Google run them.

He ends: It is only just beginning. I wish I knew how that change will turn out. But I am thrilled to be here today with you to witness its birth.

I agree. Highly suggested book to get.