pc

Google is winning because it works.  People like things that “just work”. 

Let’s look at home computers.  They have become more complicated and error prone.  This has to do with Viruses, half-baked software, Microsoft engineering, and too many options on hardware.  Users get frustrated when their IT friend says, “Just buy a new PC from Best Buy”.  The answer is usually upgrade the hardware, wipe the drive, put better virus software on…. But the answer to “just make it work” is get a new PC.  Wonder why a lot of people are trying the Mac?

How about Google?  What “just works”? For an experiment I tried the Yahoo search bar in my browser first for two weeks. After a few searches I usually reverted to Google, and got what I wanted on the first page of results.  Today I’m switching my default search bar back to Google.  Remember “just works”?  Try putting “buy Mark lunch next Friday” in your Google calendar.  Yes, it will figure it out.  Google Calendar “Just works”. 

Rather than wrangling over features and functionality I’ve started just asking the question “Does it just work”?