I manage one of my domain using Google Apps and while going back to edit some stuff, I was stopped and shown this error message:

I really liked the extra warning they gave me: Continue at your own risk. Now I had no choice but to try…!

What could happen? Would I break something? This is something you normally don’t do on your computer (or at least you proceed carefully) but in this case, the data is “in the cloud” so I had to see for myself the kind of damage I could do using an unsupported browser. 

Maybe I was totally careless and could’ve deleted the whole cloud? :) Nah, but this does bring in an interesting “theory”… Could a “cloud virus” infect a “cloud environment” ? What will happen with bot nets once we all run the Goggle OS? How will viagra spam be delivered? Is Google the Matrix?

The big question is why on Earth was Cuil labeled as a Google killer? I don’t know but here’s what went wrong. We all know about the David & Goliath story. In my version of this story, Goliath is Cuil and David is, well, the user. Where the story went wrong, is instead of having a fearsome, scary Goliath (Cuil), David (us) is faced with a 2 years old toddler. Sure, everyone in Goliath’s village said how big and brave he would eventually become. So Goliath’s ego grew immensely and he went on his quest and met with David.

Here are some mistake that you must not reproduce in your product.

First mistake : don’t let your ego blind you. In "David & Goliath" terms: what you want to do is train until rumors spread outside of your village that you are so good that you can beat anyone. Do not label yourself or let anyone else label you as a warrior when you are not one. In business language, let your product do the talking. In geek terms, let your coding do the talking. This applies to all aspects of life. If you are the best, people will find you. Bragging rarely works in life. Does Tiger Woods brag about how good he is or does Bill Gates brags about his bank account? No. Staying low is cool.

Second mistake : don’t use a name that is not pronounceable or that sounds like a male body part in French. This could be excused as domains are getting harder to find. Or perhaps this is a marketing scheme well implemented by Cuil. Indeed, instead of the famed Google slap, Cuil will be holding you by the balls. I guess this could prevent black hat SEO from happening after all… English is not my native tongue but even some native English speakers are not too sure how to say Cuil. If you’re not sure how to write down the URL, you’ve got major problems.

Third mistake : have a scalable, user friendly interface. Cuil has none. A simple search for the word "test" returned millions of results but only 11 results on the first page. One thing I particularly hate is to scroll lots of pages so I like to have a lot of information on the first page. Cuil forces me to click next many times. Another user interface issue is the "home logo" on the top RIGHT coder. I think this is the first time that I have seen a logo on the top right corner. Very annoying and confusing. It’s ok to make it simple, but please make it correct/logical at least.

Forth mistake : be bold, but don’t be bold, italic and underline at the same time. I’m curious why journalists and even many tech bloggers claimed that Cuil was a Google killer. It takes some guts to write this down without losing all your credibility. Even a non-tech journalist could have quickly concluded that Cuil is obviously not par with Google. Not even Yahoo. Not even MSN search. Now when your product is not as good as Microsoft’s product, you’ve got a big problem (that’s almost an insult actually). Why did people even spread this information? I don’t know. The problem here is that users will not return on Cuil’s website for many months as they know the product doesn’t work well. Had it really been a Google killer then things would’ve been different and the fire would’ve spread by itself. But this is not the case. I, myself, will probably not return for a few months even if I tend to give the runner a second chance. But most won’t give this extra chance. It’s just too late…

Cuil is dead. Long live Google.

I don’t think anyone will be able to compete with Google just now. So what should you do if you are in the search industry? The obvious choice is to partner with them. One thing I can think right away is to outsource the crawling of web sites. Since the Google index is not updated in real time, if you can do something for a few cents cheaper in another country then you might have a case.

I’m not a Google fanboy, I believe that Google will eventually collapse on itself just like other search engines did in the past. It’s life. Webcrawler, Hotbot, Inktomi, Altavista were all good search engines until they were left behind by users. I’m not saying the fight is hopeless but that if you claim to be a Google killer, then how come no one is using your product?

So there you have it. How not to do marketing.

Croisons-nous les doigts!

Google apps are now free but consider this: in the future, would you mind watching a 30 seconds advertisement to use a totally free version online? This is a great way of making a LOT of money for Google. Say that Google restricts you to 1 hour of free online editing after which you must watch another advertisement, that makes a lot of money at the end of the year. I don’t want to do big calculations but if we estimate a revenue of “25 cents per ad” X “usage per year” than that’s big money IF because there is a IF, you consider software piracy.

See, when Microsoft gets his software pirated, they don’t get any money at all. Some might say that MS wants people to pirate their software instead of other software as it creates a big pool of people who know and want MS software at work. The Microsoft rebates for students and teachers is a great way to mould those innocents brains and dictate them in the right path. Let’s face it, what are the alternatives to Excel and Word? While I could quickly give out some alternatives, most people don’t even know about Word Perfect, Star Office or Open Office.

But back to money. If you pirate Microsoft software, they get no revenues. That’s plain simple. If you use free software from Google, they get some money. Once again, using the 25 cents per ad example, someone using a Google app once a week for 1 year will bring in 13$ in Google’s pockets. If you use it everyday then that’s 65$ in Google’s pockets. See where I’m going? It’s not a lot, but better than nothing! Of course, if someone is paying for a full license, then Microsoft is making more money. But I’d be curious to know the percentage of people who pirate software and I’ll bet you the Google boys studied that as well and I’m sure they’ll be coming with a “watch ads as you need” plan soon… Evil? Hmm not really. Genius? getting close.

Also, let’s not forget that Google now includes Star Office in their free Google apps package. Time to sell your Microsoft stocks?

Forward yourself a few years in the future. The future is and will be the browser. TV channels, radios, newspapers and yellow pages are all virtually extinct within the geek crowd. Google is working on everything “online” including user storage. What we need to do now is to work on getting decent bandwidth and online storage will be interesting (I’m not even going to talk about privacy here!)

As a bonus to the readers, here’s a free idea to anyone willing to take on the challenge: Come up with a great way to play games “truly online”. By that, I’m mean games that are playable in a browser (without a console) and playable anywhere and anytime. And while we’re at it, why can’t games be free just like those Google apps? Product placement and micro-localized advertisement could do the trick. There’s money to be made in them kids!

Oh well, maybe when I get old… :)

I probably know you won’t read me but here it goes. I promise to keep it short and sweet. Looks like both of you are working on some “secret social network” so here’s what I think about this.

1. Please don’t reinvent the wheel.

There are dozens of popular networking sites out there and there are hundreds if not thousands that are not so popular. You have a dog? There’s one for you. You’re a single mom, there’s one for you. You like to play tennis underwater in underpants? I bet there’s one out there jusssst for you. Sorry to say but Youtube won over Google Videos. Why? there were some factors (I’d say lack of innovation) but the mean thing is that Youtube won and that cost the Google guys a few billions. But that’s ok, you guys still have some cash left so let’s move on…

2. All sites require you to register and fill out this lengthy questionnaire.

I’m on a few networking sites and I don’t want to waste my time joining others. Will I join Yahoo’s or Google’s? Perhaps I will if they use the same ID and keep it short. It was a great idea to move Orkut to the centralized account but that should’ve been done a long time ago. Because of that, I never bothered migrating my Orkut account so it’s basically dead. I’m probably missing out on some things but I don’t know and don’t really care at this point. So a lesson: keep it easy otherwise people will move.

3. Build stuff people want.

First, I don’t care about what my friend’s music preferences are and I really don’t want to hear his/her favourite song while I visit his profile. I hate the music they like anyway! I’m very picky as far as music so I couldn’t care less about the fact that they like the latest Madonna album. In fact, I don’t really want to see my friends’ profiles. They’re my friends, I know who they are, right? They could be allowed to “push” things onto my profile (like shared pictures and such) but I shouldn’t have to visit their profile every day just to see if they uploaded new pictures. Lesson to learn: everything should be customizable. Not only your own profile but others as well.

Second, any network site around is just that: a network site. That really sucks! I beg you, please build something on top of it. As I mentioned in the past, Facebook started their “classified site”. This is what I’m talking about! Think global! Think Linkedin meets eBay meets Digg meets Monster meets rent.com meets CNN meets Facebook meets Expedia meets Delicious meets Youtube and so on. Why go to eBay when you can see who has what you want around you? Yes these things already exist but they are pointless and should be centralised into a giant site if you prefer. Yahoo!: you guys already have all this but spread all over..! Please fix this! Yahoo 360 is nice but it’s too complex even for a geek like me. Your services are still not integrated! Are you getting too big to act quickly?  Google: you guys have many pieces of the puzzle, keep working on it but hurry up..! Both of you need to hurry up as Facebook is expanding (that was a great move, but hurry up and get features!)

4. Build something fun, new but interesting.

Tag not only images to events, places and so on but also people to images. If I read critics about a restaurant or some travel destination, I should be able to see pictures people took while over there. Same goes with profiles. If I see my friend’s pictures, he should be able to tag people in the picture so that I can visit their profiles. That way, your network grows easily as you can search not only your friends’s friends, but also their friends in their pictures. Now that’s something new and fun, no?

Why not make a social network of social networks? For example, I like cats so my front end should be about cats (sort of like catster). My friend like motorcycles? Well he should have a bike front end (sort of well… you get it). When I search for friends, I would see their “cat view”, meaning I wouldn’t really know they have a Kawasaki bike, but I would see they have a brown tabby named “Brownie”.

Micro blogs are also a neat thing. Add micro blogs to anything you can think of. From pictures to restaurant ratings to travel destination. Now something important!

Build something interesting and long lasting! I’m pretty sure Myspace will be deserted as soon as the latest trend pops out. That remains to be seen but knowing the current generation, their attention span is not very long and if the word is out that Myspace is sooo 2006, people will move on. What do you get from Myspace? Not much… It is really the convenience store from the 90’s but now online. People are still hanging out and wasting their time…! Now this also brings in a serious question: who is your market? Lots of pre-teens and teens with no money? Middle-age people with lots of money to spend and don’t know where to spend it? That’s a marketing issue that I will leave up to you to decide but remember: build something for everyone. Even my mom should be able to enjoy this place. I definitively don’t see my mom using Myspace. No way.

5. Hire me :)

Just joking (well maybe not), but you see, this is only 1% of the ideas I have in mind. You guys need to listen to the early adopters and start building something new and useful. I haven’t seen anything innovative coming from you guys lately. Perhaps those two projects will make me go “Wow!” but I’d say the drag and drop map thingy on Google Maps was the greatest thing in the last few years or so. Smaller players are catching up and acquiring them doesn’t always work out as you want (Where’s Dodgeball now?).

6. Good luck

Will there be a “winner”? I doubt, it’s like TV stations. You need all kinds of TV channels to keep everyone happy but you need to keep everyone happy. Some people don’t like when I say that but I think “niche” is a nice way of saying that you failed with mass market.