What we can learn from Google’s strategy shift
Google just made a huge shift in their company strategy. In their recent madeByGoogle Keynote they had a clear focus on usability and moved from a nerdy search and data science company to a usability-focused, user-centric hardware and software company.
In the past Google mainly focused on software. They were providing their search engine and next to leading the development of the android OS, they were offering different internet services like mail, music, photos, messenger, etc. With their Nexus smartphones and Pixel laptops they also took small steps into the development and selling of hardware; but most of the times they used partners like LG or HTC to actually manufacture and support the devices. Now it’s all Google — providing both software and hardware.
But why did things change?
Googles move also represents the path computers took in the last decades. Started as better calculators for research, computers became personal and got into the hands of everyone in the form of smartphones. That also meant big changes in the requirements for usability. And in the future, computers won’t be limited to a single device but instead will be everywhere and part of your home as well as your surroundings wherever you are.
In 2011 Apple released Siri and brought the visions to live that already existed since the beginning of computing: an intelligent voice assistant for your everyday life. Still limited to your device and the nearly nonexistent third-party support, Siri gave a glimpse into the future.
In 2014 Amazon released Echo — a speaker for your home and the possibility to speak hands-free to your personal assistant Alexa in every situation. You can ask general questions, control your home and your music and of course shop products on Amazon. Alexa is always there and listens to you when you need her.
It’s the beginning of a new era with always present intelligent computers controlled with your voice (or text if you like) — the most natural user interface every human understands instantly.
A few months ago I read some articles predicting that Google will position itself as a knowledge- and data-layer in the new world of Artificial Intelligence (AI); providing AI-services and acting in the background— based on their history in search and managing big data.
But now Google is stepping even closer to the user and presented the Google Assistant as a personal assistant that helps you with every question, social interactions and the control of smart devices. With Google Home they will also sell a stylish speaker for your home and with the Pixel smartphone you can have the Google assistant with you everywhere you go.
Why Google is stepping forward and wants to get into the hands and the homes of the customers gets clearer when you think about what a shift to an omnipresent computer in the form of an artificial personal (voice) assistant would mean:
In a world where everyone has its own assistant and gets everything done with it, every company who doesn’t provide this assistant looses the direct contact to the customer. But providing this personal assistant requires a huge amount of resources (software + hardware), why I think the personal AI-assistant can only and therefore will be owned by a big company who can afford it.
The assistant will be the entry point for every computer-supported interaction with the real and the virtual world. Customers won’t go to websites and won’t use a company’s app. The user asks the assistant and in the background the assistant contacts a third party service and acts as a mediator between user and service. Providing a service in this new age no longer means providing a front-end to the user (like in software, web or app), but providing data and knowledge to the AI-assistant (that’s a huge difference to the current trend of building fancy apps and interfaces). The assistant decides what services to contact by knowing the preferences of the user and also knowing how to support the user in the best way. Given a big tech company providing the general and personal assistant, that also means that the goal is to control and provide the biggest possible part of the whole ecosystem and user experience. And its not in the interest of Amazon or Apple to rely on Google in the background as a critical part of their AI or functionality. And in the same way it’s not in the interest of Google to be a replaceable part in another company’s background processes.
Google’s only chance to continue scaling is to be the artificial personal -always and everywhere available - AI-assistant and control the user’s ecosystem and the way he interacts with the real & virtual world.
But this presence of a dominating assistant doesn’t mean startups or other young companies don’t have a chance building a sustainable business. For startups it will still be all about building a service for a special niche, solving a problem and doing this better than the big companies can. Building and providing this service could even get easier by placing more focus on building the actual service that gets things done, instead of caring about the development of apps or other front-ends.
I am looking forward to the future where the focus will be on usability and where computers are part of your everyday life and are at the same time stepping more and more into the background. It’s the end of the fancy app era, its about getting things done. For service-providers the backend is the new frontend. Its all about data and AI. And having no interface is the new interface.
