Wednesday, March 28, 2012

Why Apple is Beating Google

I found this article while surfing the Internet the other day and thought it was interesting. The author, Henry Blodget, claims that while Google's products are all built around a strong technology foundation, they are geared more towards "geeky technologist". Apple, on the other hand, design its products for "normal humans". Blodget explains that because these nerds are a smaller, weird niche market Google is struggling to gain the mass market appeal that Apple has enjoyed for several years now. Blodget linked these differences to the organizational strategies that are in place at Google and at Apple. "Google has an engineering culture, in which brilliant technologists are the rock stars."  Apple on the other hand, "has a product-design and marketing culture, in which "technology" merely serves to support a product's function and form."  Looking deeper into this Blodget notes that Google was founded by people who posted stellar GPAs at some of the country's top universities, while Apple was founded by a college dropout, Steve Jobs, who attributed his amazing product designs to LSD and calligraphy. According to Blodget, Jobs, a genius in his own right, would never have been hired at Google because their hiring algorithm would have red-flagged his educational background and dismissed him as a legitimate candidate. Unfortunately, Google really needs someone with Steve's type of genius in order to bring their products to the masses, but in order to do so they will need to change their hiring algorithm, as well as, the colleges that they typically recruit from. The charts below show where Google goes for its talent and where Apple goes to hire its employees.

Google
Apple




1 comment:

  1. As much as I like the idea of Google going toe-to-toe with Apple, I think Google needs to develop along its own path. Thinking about it further, the "geek culture" is Google's differentiator from Apple. Android has its market, and iPhone got its own audience. A company needs to have its own unique value, so that it is special to its customers.

    For example, you have Florsheims, which are nice shoes, then you have Clarks, and Aldo. They are all leather shoes, but they speak differently about their customers.

    Think about this as well: If you turn back the clock 10-years when the Sony music player was everywhere, would you have wished that Apple developed to the mass market?

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