Google Trims Its Sails
April 21, 2012
I live in rural Kentucky on a pond filled with mine runoff. I know zero about sailing on the open seas. However, I do know that the phrase “trim the sail” means a series of steps taken to deal with what the Dockside wearing crowd calls “heavy weather.”
Sailing ships with canvas sails can be tough to handle when the wind blows with gusto. The idea is that the sails should be rolled up in order to minimize the likelihood that a sailing vessel will turn over. The Ahabs call this capsizing. Old geese in Kentucky call this loosing control.
The USS Google, the largest and most unsinkable search system based on advertising, is taking prudent measures to streamline itself. I would describe the actions as “trimming its sails.” The reason? My hunch is that the MBA-speak word would be “efficiency.” My word would be “control.”
“Spring Cleaning: Google Shuts Down Patent Search Homepage, One Pass, Google Related & More” informed me that Google is presenting a lower profile to the economic winds. The write up reports:
Ever since Larry Page took over as Google’s CEO, the company has shut down more and more of its products that were only being used by a limited number of users. Today, the company announced another round of “spring cleaning.”
But here’s the comment which caught my attention, a verbal fog horn perhaps:
As part of this process, Google is also retiring a number of APIs, but most importantly, it is moving to a one-year API deprecation policy across its products (that’s down from three years for some of the company’s APIs).
APIs matter little to the garden variety Google user. APIs do matter to the enterprise, and I think APIs may have a contribution to make to the legal process underway between Google and Oracle.
My view is that most people are blissfully unaware of many Google services. Seven years ago, I counted about 80 Google products and services in The Google Legacy. I no longer keep track of Google products and services because many of them seem anchored in Google’s brute force approach to content processing.
For me, the shift in Google’s approach to APIs will signal that the company may be moving toward a more proprietary approach for developer interaction with Google services. I also think the shut downs and direction changes may give some enterprises additional variables to consider before embracing a “total” Google approach to storage, email, and hosted applications.
A final thought: Perhaps Google knows a major storm is coming. Precautions may be designed to keep the USS Google safe until it reaches a safe harbor.
Stephen E Arnold, April 21, 2012
Sponsored by PolySpot
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