Google vs. Apple

After separately watching the Social Network, my father and I had a great conversation about 21st century companies, and what it means to be one (vs. a 20th century company).


It's waaaaay too late to be writing very much on this, but I wanted to quickly throw up some food for thought that I will elaborate on later. Without really going into specifics of what I think makes a company belong to either century, I stumbled upon what I think is a useful example that distinguishes the two:

Apple is a 20th Century Company, and Google is a 21st Century Company.

Apple creates new products based on old ideas. Google creates new products based on new ideas.


In many ways, Apple is still really ahead of the curve - it makes astonishingly intuitive products that people often don't know they want until they see firsthand. Apple creates markets for new devices in an extremely short period of time.

All of Apple's products however can be explained in terms that people 30 years ago could understand. Apple makes computers, Apple makes phones, and Apple makes music players. The fact that these devices are extremely well designed or stylish or use amazing technology to accomplish their aims is in some ways irrelevant. An ipod is thousands of times more useful than a portable cassette tape player - but playing mixtapes on a walkman and listening to your ipod on shuffle is not a fundamentally different activity. It's an evolution.

Television and YouTube are fundamentally different sources of media. The fact that huge amounts of YouTube server space is filled by what boils down to 'America's Funniest Home Videos' doesn't reflect on YouTube - it reflects on its users. People are still not adapted to something very, very different from what they're used to.

Go watch the Phillip DeFranco Show. I'm no huge PhillyD fan, but the format for his 'show' would not work on TV. It would not work on radio. The short, rapid-fire burst of entertainment, news and blogging is perfectly at home in framework that allows it to:

1) Be watched any time, and repeated multiple times quickly
2) Provide viewers instant access to related content and additional information about what was talked about

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To summarize: Imagine doing what I remarked about earlier. You travel back in time, and are tasked with explaining Apple's latest - the ipad - to an average consumer in 1980.

The Apple II had come out in 1977, and although personal computer ownership was nothing like it is today, the average consumer would be aware of computers. If you told this consumer that thirty years in the future, handheld computers would exist, I don't think they would be shocked, and they might even expect it. The fact that it plays movies would likely not surprise anyone either. People in the 80s grew up on Star Trek, and computers playing movies instead of TVs just makes sense in an evolved future.

This is how things like touch screens mean perhaps less than we might imagine. A touchscreen is a useful interfacing tool, and a great way to make technology more accessible, but it's not a game changer.

Now imagine explaining another 21st Century Company - Facebook - to someone in 1980. Explain to them what exactly it does, and how it alters how you interact with people. Explain the idea of 'liking' things, and how ratings and comments can create 'buzz'. Explain how something on Facebook might become 'viral'. Explain why everyone from your Grandmother to your employer will be using Facebook for multiple hours every day of their lives.