Consistency for modern brands: more complex but also more important.
Almost exactly a year ago, I wrote a post that talked about the different forms of innovation that a company might want to provide. At that time I said:
“Google hasn’t really ever been the innovator. While its products are used by early adopters, it has largely built its business upon popularising and improving existing innovations.”
For example, one of the big reasons I now use Chrome as my primary browser is because they started with a UX goal of “content, not chrome.” Their insight is that the web experience is no longer about consuming content, it is about executing applications:
“…we felt that your web applications should not appear to be constrained within the bulky cruft of a browser – they should feel like first-class applications on your desktop.”
This flows seamlessly and elegantly from their overall brand mission “to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.” When information is not organized, when it’s not accessible and when it can’t be used properly, there’s an important and valuable role for Google to fill. In fact, I could argue that this is exactly what all of their most successful products do. It’s definitely true of Search, Gmail, Maps, Voice, Reader and many of the products we know and love.
Unlike Microsoft, the best Google innovations favour reducing complexity rather than adding new features. They attack mature categories which have been around long enough to develop problems and apply creativity and engineering to solve problems for people. In doing so, they offer extremely simple and compelling reasons for people to switch: less spam, more storage, etc.
I think they have less success when they venture from these basic principles, this was one of the reasons I had an allergic reaction to Knol. Wikipedia has its problems, but these are primarily around how information is generated, not around how it’s consumed. In crossing over to solving problems of information-creation, Google moved from reducing the amount of noise in our informations streams to increasing it. Instead of organizing information, they duplicated it. Rather than making it universally accessible, they splintered it and fragmented it.
In my limited use of Wave and Buzz, it feels they are crossing the same lines. They aren’t eliminating complexity, they’re increasing it. They’re not reducing the number of duplicate conversations I have, they’re adding to them.
What do you think?