If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed or to sign up for email alerts.

If Money And Greed Only Hadn’t Spoiled It

What in the world happened to the promise of Web 2.0? Whatever it was, we are now bogged down in mud hole only slightly resembling the “El Dorado” painted for us over the last 18 months. Innovation after innovation have failed to live up to expectations. Still we remain entranced by the relatively tiny increments of improvement fed to us via the tech blogs and mainstream media.

The vision of Web 2.0 has simply not arrived. Hundreds of startups, fantastic innovation and promises, promises, promises from Google and everyone else - of an Internet beyond imagination. At the end of the day however, 90 percent of what we have been assured would happen, has not.

We were assured that all human existence would by now somehow be uplifted, embraced, enhanced and made more livable through such terms as open source, creative commons, collaboration and the magic of user generated content - but the sad reality is that we are still light-years from home. The cause of this ailing Internet vision - money, unchecked power and mediocrity brought on by a lack of viable competition.

Google Versus Nobody
Google and its dominance of the Internet is part of the problem here. Google currently has almost an 80 percent market share of all Web searches - I believe this number was somewhere around 67 percent form 2005-2006. Essentially, all Google has to do is come out with ANY application that works at all, and their market audience will adopt it. One cannot blame them for doing as little as possible in this scenario, as anything more would be a waste of resources (at least from their point of view). The important fact here is that Google search has not improved significantly in relevance but has diminished. Taking this as an example, the power of their market share overshadows even the quality and relevance of the service.

The Collaboration That Wasn’t
One aspect of Web 2.0 that held great appeal for me was the “hope” that truly excellent innovations and companies would enter into a far reaching collaborative mode. I thought that the resultant combined resources and ingenuity would be enough to not only give Google run for its money, but to also power some far reaching thinking and innovation. Imagine if Yahoo and Microsoft had entered into a collaboration earlier and perhaps even invested in hakia, Wikia Search or Powerset. The search situation may not have changed, but the necessary process of expansion might have been farther along. Fragmented competition has afforded Google an unrealistic advantage over everyone.

There are other similar “fragmented” market segments where startups and developments are doing the “lone ranger” routine, when joining forces could have produced perhaps more dramatic results. I have suggested these collective ventures to CEO’s and the answer down the line has been essentially that they needed to develop first and usually that the investors or business plans would not line up. So, competition for the quick buyout buck (ala YouTube) could have helped cause this stagnation too. My Web 2.0 would have seen collaboration (not buyouts) on a massive scale, and I think most of us thought this would happen.

Web 3.0 - Back On Track
Google has put themselves in an almost unbeatable position I am sad to say. A year ago I would never have admitted it were possible. However, this did not come about because of Google’s strategy alone. Yahoo and others have helped Google as much if not more than the company itself ever could. Through impotent management, over conservative visions, stand alone philosophies and other decayed thinking, many Internet firms quite simply show themselves in the feet.

Getting back on track (if there is one not owned by Google) will require some forward thinking and risk taking. I am not sure there is much room left for risk taking as far as Yahoo is concerned though. There is one sure thing, even if Microsoft buys Yahoo, their combined market share of the search aspect will still be just a shadow compared to Google. This is unfortunate, that such viable and powerful innovative companies cannot even make a game of it. It should have been different, but someone dropped the ball big time