Google: Recycling and Me Too-ing
July 20, 2017
Quite a week for the Google. The company’s Glass product is now positioned as a tool for the world of the enterprise, not the world of the low cost Snap glasses. Snap glasses are available on Amazon for $129.
Google informs me that “We’ve all been busy.” Nah, I have not been busy no matter what Google asserts.
Someday I will recount some of the information I collected when Google Glass was a fashion thing, a home wrecker, and a mechanism for destabilizing a Silicon Valley whiz kid. But not now, not in this post about recycling and me too-ing.
The recycle part is wrapped, is it not? Google Glass is back as an non-fashion statement. Recycling is good. Newspapers, plastic bottles, and heads up displays which work until the battery dies or the online connection is lost.
Now the me too-ing.
I read “Google Formally Announces Hire, Its LinkedIn Competitor.” That pretty much tells the story. LinkedIn, the job hunting and self promoting engine loved by many folks who want to be in the top one percent, is part of Microsoft. Google wants to be the 21st century Microsoft in order to do something other than sell online ads, finds the job hunting and self promotion sector promising. Well, maybe it will annoy Microsoft and take a bite out of that company’s efforts to be more than a vendor of apps and laptops covered in synthetic fabric.
The idea, as I understand the write up’s version, is:
Google has formally introduced Hire, a recruiting app for small- and medium-sized businesses, which also integrates seamlessly with G Suite…Google has announced Hire, an app that provides a recruiting platform aimed towards US businesses with under 1,000 employees. Hire makes it easier for companies to find suitable candidates for jobs, and manage the interview process efficiently. The app is further aided by seamless integration with Google’s G Suite, which over three million businesses use.
The service looks like “LinkedIn Light” from my vantage point in Harrod’s Creek. But what’s interesting to me is that Google has a dossier invention which creates profiles of people from disparate sources of information. If my memory is working this morning, the example I learned about takes items from multiple databases and assembles a profile. The case example was a snapshot of Michael Jackson. The report was a dossier which included aliases like “Jocko”, pop culture effluvia, and some substantive stuff like location. The presentation seemed quite similar to what is called a bubble gum card in certain circles.
If Google keeps wood behind this project, perhaps the dossier type function will become available. That would be more useful to me than a self promotion profile on LinkedIn. For now, Google seems content to do the me too thing in order to nibble away at Microsoft’s multi billion bet on a social media platform for “professionals,” whatever that term means. Is it possible Google wants to remind the Microsofties that the GOOG wishes to see the company fade into the sunset or buy ads on Google to promote its fabric covered laptop?
I am okay with “LinkedIn Light” because it has a bit of a kick unlike low cal me too alternatives. Google’s innovation balloons may not be able to take off.
Stephen E Arnold, July 20, 2017
Stephen E Arnold,
Comments
-
- Subscribe to Beyond Search
Feature archive
News archive
-
