Google's Dice: It's a Gamble

About a month and a half ago, Google Operating System noted that a previous iteration (from 2001) of the Google Toolbar had an intriguing functionality that at the time no one thought much of: voting a site up or down (via smiley face or frowning face). I noted the obvious, that this functionality was identical to StumbleUpon's thumbs-up or thumbs-down vote, but also that it was odd that Google would lack the foresight to see the social implications (or potential) of this feature (not only as used by StumbleUpon but it was also similar in many ways to Digg with the up or down vote for a site).

Yesterday, Google got blindsided by StumbleUpon as eBay made a deal to purchase the company, supposedly beating out both Google and AOL. In what isn't likely to be a coincidence, Google fired back by launching a new feature for the Google Toolbar: a pair-of-dice button that when clicked takes you to a random site based on your search history. This, of course, is basically the same thing as the Stumble button on the StumbleUpon toolbar, but just uses a different methodology for determining what to display to the user.

msaleem_stumgoo.jpg

There is no question that Google has a wealth of data at their disposal for this service thanks to their Personalized Search queries, but Google lacks the community-aspect of StumbleUpon (the most important aspect of the service). After downloading and testing out the button, my fears were confirmed. Google is doing nothing more than using your search history to feed you sites it thinks you will find interesting. The problem is that many people don't use Google to find stuff that is 'interesting' to them, but they conduct work-related/school-related searches.

For example, I live in San Diego and so I've done quite a bit of searching for various places in the city. What's the first site that the Google Dice takes me to? The San Diego Zoo's website. The 2nd site? San Diego's AAA site. The problem is that these are sites that a computer algorithm thinks I want to see, and while at one time I did want to see them, I don't want to randomly see them when I'm attempting to find something interesting or entertaining. No human would vote for these sites as beacons of entertainment or knowledge, they are simply the result of a one-time need to find information.

This situation points to what could be a larger problem for Google in the future. They have all of this data, but as of now they are lacking the social networking components to bring it all together in a manner similar to Yahoo's idea of networked individualism. Google missed the value of a service like StumbleUpon in spite of having some of its key components in place very early on. They have the data and capital to make an interesting copycat feature, but the lack of community could leave it as just another stream of data pouring out of Google.

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Reader Comments (11)

Joe Whyte, April 19, 2007

Why dont they just buy stumble upon? I heard yahoo was looking into this right?

MG Siegler, April 19, 2007

@joe - too late. See the second paragraph, eBay beat them all to it.

Joe Whyte, April 19, 2007

I see. I was wrong woops ;-).

What is ebay going to do with them?

Andy, April 19, 2007

Glad you tested it out already, MG. Right now, it definitely lacked the social capability that made SU success.

If Google decided to go full force on this project, they would probably able to do something with Google account. Like "sharing" links with other Google account users?

MG Siegler, April 19, 2007

@joe - no worries. I'm not really sure of eBay's angle here - I supposed it could be a good tool to stumble upon interesting auctions, but that would be pretty annoying to current users.

@andy - good thought. first I want to see them add more social aspects to Google Reader though - this could really all tie in if you think about it.

Andy, April 19, 2007

@MG good point on Google Reader, simply the best RSS reader today.

The structure and resources are already there for Google, it shouldn't be too difficult for them to move ahead if they decided to.

Hashim, April 19, 2007

Google loses when it comes to anything social.

Miles, April 20, 2007

Good post MG, I think that Google Dice and SU are going to be a bit different like you said since it is based on an algorithm instead of categories of choice (and your ratings on various sites).

Good to see you on another blog as well, keep up the good work.

jas, April 20, 2007

Well, stumble is really degenerating, so it's a good thing google didnt get them.

Tim, April 21, 2007

SU is defenerating indeed. Good for Google too, because they would have been scapegoats for SU's descension.

Adam, April 25, 2007

Another example of the Google machine eating its way into all new and good ideas on the web. Its like a selfish child, keep to your own thing, stop trying to own everything else.