Why Google can’t build Instagram
scobleizer.com
Why Google can’t build Instagram
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Re: Why Google can’t build Instagram
#2A more detailed and BS-free list than the average one on this topic. I think all of these are good explanations of the problem.
Re: Why Google can’t build Instagram
#3meh, Instagram seems pretty useless to me. Google builds more cool stuff in an average month than Instagram ever has.
Re: Why Google can’t build Instagram
#4Great article, but I'd like to contest a few points.
4. Google forces its developers to use its infrastructure, which wasn’t developed for small social projects
One of the advantages of working for Google is that you get access to this infrastructure. At times I wish Google would start offering a raw BigTable service alongside/instead of the richer, but, limited App Engine services.
6. Google’s engineers can’t use any Facebook integration or dependencies like Instagram does.
I don't know if such a policy exists, but it certainly doesn't seem to apply to projects like YouTube which integrate fine with YouTube.
7. Google can’t iterate in semi-public.
If anything, Google have proven that a large company can iterate publicly. I can't think of a single other company that has had as many perpetual betas as Google...
P.S. Corrected link to Instagram: http://instagr.am/
Re: Why Google can’t build Instagram
#5huh?
Google have built instagram. It's standard on any Android phone. [photo] -> [share] -> picasa/twitter/facebook/gmail/etc
Unless I'm missing something, instagram is a 'feature' that should be on any smartphone. Not surprising it's not on the iPhone though.
(First I'd heard of instagram as well. This is an interesting way to get PR).
Re: Why Google can’t build Instagram
#6Maybe they can, maybe they can't, but do they want to? I'd bet Google's going after fish so big that two guys can't do everything from start to finish.
Re: Why Google can’t build Instagram
#7huh? Google have built instagram. It's standard on any Android phone. [photo] -> [share] -> picasa/twitter/facebook/gmail/etc Unless I'm missing something, instagram is a 'feature' that should be on any smartphone. Not surprising it's not on the iPhone though. (First I'd heard of instagram as well. This is an interesting way to get PR).
instagram applies vintage filters, so digital modern photos look like the ones from a cheap used old camera
Re: Why Google can’t build Instagram
#8I'm not sure I agree with everything Scoble wrote, but it's definitely interesting. One thing I think he doesn't really talk about: whether Google wants to build things like Instagram.
The Google Wave example is a telling one - Wave wasn't the success Google wanted, so they scratched it. Nevermind that there were great uses for Google Wave, and there were probably hundreds of thousands of users on it, at least, who really liked it. In Google's eyes, Wave didn't succeed in becoming the huge hit they wanted, so it was a failure.
A small startup would have considered it a huge deal and pivoted on Wave's good uses until they turned it into a much larger project, IMO.
Re: Why Google can’t build Instagram
#9huh? Google have built instagram. It's standard on any Android phone. [photo] -> [share] -> picasa/twitter/facebook/gmail/etc Unless I'm missing something, instagram is a 'feature' that should be on any smartphone. Not surprising it's not on the iPhone though. (First I'd heard of instagram as well. This is an interesting way to get PR).
The point wasn't that Google can't make the technology, of course it can. The point was that Google can't create the product.
Besides, Instagram isn't even a key part of the post. Swap in any other hot startup of the week and it's still the same point: Google has an innovation problem (according to Scoble).
Re: Why Google can’t build Instagram
#10Great article, but I'd like to contest a few points. 4. Google forces its developers to use its infrastructure, which wasn’t developed for small social projects One of the advantages of working for Google is that you get access to this infrastructure. At times I wish Google would start offering a raw BigTable service alongside/instead of the richer, but, limited App Engine services. 6. Google’s engineers can’t use an…
4 is particularly interesting to me. When I worked at Yahoo! back in 2005 I was constantly jealous of Google's infrastructure stuff - Yahoo! stuff was all replicated MySQL, PHP, memcached and Java while Google appeared to be creating infrastructure that totally changed the way you approached large scale development.
In the past five years, it feels like the world outside Google has mostly caught up - in part through open source equivalents of Google's secret sauce. Hadoop, EC2, S3, the various NoSQL engines, RabbitMQ, Thrift, Scribe... access to the Google stack may not be as big an advantage.
I spoke to a Google engineer recently who complained that the Google stack was actually something of a pain to build agains, with a very steep learning curve and a great deal of innertia to work around.