Google doesn’t get people, it sells them

[onehandle]

“What is Google? What do they sell?” asks Don Norman, the author of The Design of Everyday Things and a demigod of the design world.

It’s a question that gets asked a lot, especially as the company’s power and products continue to expand. In a talk on Friday at the dConstruct conference in Brighton, England, he pointed out that –despite the complexity of the organization — the answer usually looks pretty simple.

“They have lots of people, lots of servers, they have Android, they have Google Docs, they just bought Motorola. Most people would say ‘we’re the users, and the product is advertising’,” he said. “But in fact the advertisers are the users and you are the product.”

Then he went further. “They say their goal is to gather all the knowledge in the world in one place, but really their goal is to gather all of the people in the world and sell them.”

http://gigaom.com/2011/09/05/don-norman-google-doesnt-get-people-it-sells-them

[TreasonousBastard]

1. Yanno, as worked up as people get about Wal-Mart, it's really...

Google, Amazon and Facebook that are poised to take over the world.

[Tunkamerica]

2. And in 10 years it'll be something else.

[MineralMan]

3. Actually, it sells access to people.

It's good business.

I've recently discovered something. Amazon is the only store I need on the Internet. It's huge. It's insidious, but any product I need is available there, either directly from Amazon or from one of its affiliate sellers. I can always find the best price and no purchase I've made has gone awry. I'm even using it for oddball things like specific fishing lures. I've never not found exactly what I'm looking for, and it's easy to compare prices.

Google delivers eyes. It delivers eyes that are looking for specific things. So, there you have it. I don't find anything really strange about that or anything ominous.