Jan 13
3
Google is entering the New Year trying to tie up loose ends. Interestingly, it’s not business or operations or even technological loose ends Google is thinking about. Given the company has the most intelligent work force ever assembled; Google is coping with most of its own loose ends. It is your loose ends that interest them.
Google Plus You
Over the next decade, Google expects to facilitate many of the physical tasks and mental chores you need to do daily. From basic grocery shopping to ordering and recording the complexities of our financial lives, Google is building systems to improve our abilities to achieve what can best be described as life-needs fulfillment.
Google developed the prototype for the self-driving car. The company now maintains a fleet to shuttle staff and key visitors around the San Jose region. Safer and ultimately less costly than human-controlled vehicles, Google’s driverless cars are moving metaphors for the future of Google services. A huge number of those little annoying chores you need to do every day can be automated.
Why shop for groceries when your life-system knows you need more milk, rice, beans and such and can simply order those items for you? Similarly, why should you drive to pick up the kids from school when a perfectly autonomous automobile can do that driving for you? Having used Google Wallet, which is tied to your bank account, to conduct major transactions over a one year period; it is far easier to figure out your taxes in March, especially now that the tax structures for entrepreneurs have become so bloated and wonky. Beyond taxes, Google might be able to prepare a manageable personal budget, one you can post with pride to certain circles of advisors and facilitators on Google Plus.
There is only one essential factor made up of seven billion unique things standing between Google Services and the promise of an automatic lifestyle. That essential factor is what makes you essentially you and me essentially me and makes that weird girl slouching over her coffee in the corner booth such an intriguing being. Call it a soul or call it a unique configuration of neural pathways, the end result is the same. Every person on the Earth has a slightly different combination of personal needs, wants, abilities, resources, talents and ambitions. Thus, every Google Service has to be unique to the person using it.
For most of us, that would put end to any attempt to assume we could automate people’s lives for them on a truly global scale. Notably, most of us aren’t sitting at the C-Level at Google or Amazon or Apple or Facebook. In fact, most of us laughed at Google’s attempt to build its social network, Google Plus. We giggled it was a ghost town. We goofed about abysmal user numbers. We staggered in awe at the audacity of authorship via Google Plus and felt forced into adopting its dictates.
What we didn’t understand while laughing at them was, in fact, the key to Larry Page’s strategy, one Google has been slowly revealing over the past couple of weeks. Google Plus is the identity machine binding all of Google’s services to Google’s growing impression of your personal needs. This isn’t about search or social, it’s about you.
Over the next three months, we’re going to examine Google Plus closely. Digital Always Media SEO Bria Jordan will take a look at various components of Google Plus and outline how to best use it. I’m going to be looking at the roles Google Plus is playing in both Google’s overall ecosystem and the Web in general, and how that affects integrated digital marketing moving forward into 2013.
Today on the Webcology @WebmasterRadio.FM radio show, we start by looking at Google Plus and personal privacy. The show starts at 2pm eastern and a podcast of the show will be posted here sometime tomorrow.
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Jim Hedger
Jim Hedger is an organic SEO and digital marketing specialist. Jim has been involved in the online marketing industry since 1998 and a SEO since 1999. Best known as a broadcaster, interviewer, content writer and search industry commentator, Jim is a frequent conference speaker and organizer. He hosts the search focused radio show Webcology on WebmasterRadio.FM and is a WebmasterRadio.FM conference interviewer. Jim brings a wealth of knowledge, experience, passion and creative thinking to each project. Preferring a teamwork approach, Jim strives to inform and train his clients and their staff to run and maintain their own search and social media efforts.
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