Is Don Norman right about Google? 24 May 2006
48 comments Latest by Harry Blanchard
Don Norman is sick and tired of hearing people praise Google’s clean, elegant look. He argues Yahoo! and MSN are complex-looking places because their systems are easier to use.
Is Google simple? No. Google is deceptive. It hides all the complexity by simply showing one search box on the main page. The main difference, is that if you want to do anything else, the other search engines let you do it from their home pages, whereas Google makes you search through other, much more complex pages. Why aren’t many of these just linked together? Why isn’t Google a unified application? Why are there so many odd, apparently free-standing services?
It’s weird to see a company chastised for hiding complexity. Isn’t that usually a good thing? Doesn’t complexity lead to confusion and poor decision making? I’ve gotta think a lot of people love Google’s “deception” of simplicity (thus the popular notion of the site as clean and elegant).
Still, Norman does have some valid points. Google is disjointed. Some services do feel buried. There is a lack of obvious organizational structure. So why is that?
Start by looking at the culture of Google as compared to its competitors. Google vs. Yahoo: Clash of cultures describes Google as “an intellectual playground” where employees are given significant license to play. And play leads to innovation. As Kathy Sierra says, “Never underestimate the power of fun.” Yahoo, on the other hand, “has morphed into a more mature company with tough management discipline, but perhaps lacking the creative giddiness it had in its early years.” And Microsoft’s culture is, well, you know.
I’m guessing that Google’s playfulness and relatively sloppy integration go hand in hand. When you’re constantly playing, innovating, and launching, you don’t always have time to unify things perfectly. Marissa Mayer of Google says, “I like to launch [products] early and often. That has become my mantra.” That attitude means things won’t always be neat and tidy. Progress sometimes means making a mess and worrying about the clean-up later.
Google probably doesn’t want to spend too much time upfront trying to solve problems that may not even matter. So it kicks new services out the door to see if they have legs. It’s Darwinian. Some of these tools won’t make it (e.g. Michael Arrington theorizes Google Notepad may mean the death of Google Bookmarks).
Sure, Google could delay launches and come up with a way to smoothly integrate each new service. But is that a wise allocation of resources if the tool may not even survive in the long term? (When a service proves its worth, it does eventually bubble up to the top — look at Froogle, Maps, etc.)
Norman’s on to something. Things aren’t ideal at Google. It may not have a coherent unification theory. It may need to pay off some of its structural “debt” at some point. The sheets aren’t all tucked in. But perhaps that’s the price you pay for innovation.