This morning I was reading Om Malik's post entitled Google & The Big Ideas where he writes

Earlier today, when I read about Google launching a mobile version of Tasks. I was amazed by the attention being focused on essentially a to-do list website. And while it wasn’t worth a story, I shared my feelings via I sent Twitter. My tweet read:

I think google has no big ideas. this morning they announced a to-do-list. FGS. [For God Sake] Remember the Milk MUCH better.

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Matt’s comments and the responses both on this blog and FriendFeed resulted in some thoughts about what constitutes a big idea, where Google is right and where it is light. Instead of responding on FriendFeed, I decided to share my thoughts with you, hoping that we can have a larger conversation about Google and the big ideas.

For me startups and products such as Skype, Flickr and YouTube represent big ideas. Why? Because they not only redefine our notions about certain technologies, but they also change our behavior and cause massive disruption. For instance, Skype redefined our relationship with our phone and in the process put disrupting the telecom industry. Flickr made a largely way web into a dynamic, thriving social community. Today even our friends at Wall Street Journal have comments, and the New York Times is hoping to use LinkedIn to foster a community. YouTube made us rethink television, by making it dead simple not only to consume video but also to broadcast video.

Similarly, Google’s Search changed how we consumed information. Instead of going to destinations, we now consume information by just finding it. What made this “big idea” even more disruptive — Google’s use of data analytics to offer highly focused advertising messages to marry search queries. (Of course, Google wasn’t the one to think of this big idea, but that’s a whole another story.)

The problem with "Big Ideas" is that sometimes people get obsessed with how game changing or disruptive their product is instead of focusing on making it the best at what it does.

I remember a few years ago when every other article out of the technology press was about how innovative every product Google created was. For a while, this created a scramble amongst various Web companies to show that they could be just as innovative as Google. Yahoo! tried to do this by buying innovation in the form of every hot startup they could get their hands on (Flickr, del.icio.us, Jumpcut, Webjay, Konfabulator, Upcoming, etc) which only led to spreading itself too thin as eloquently captured in Brad Garlinghouse's Peanut Butter Manifesto memo.

On the other hand, there are lots of products that have been unoriginal ideas now seen as game changing because of how these ideas have been executed. One example is the iPod + iTunes which started of as yet another MP3 player with a proprietary music player but has grown to be a cultural force and the number one retailer of music in the United States. When Facebook launched it plowed ground that had already been covered by MySpace, Orkut and Friendster yet today it is the number one social networking site in the world. In both cases, these have been very focused products that have been careful to grow their feature set in a limited way but have done an excellent job in providing a very user-centric experience. This isn't to say that there aren't any innovations in Facebook or in iTunes+iPod but instead that they are examples of products that have been game changing not by being a "big idea" but instead by being full of lots of good ideas.

Being original or innovative is nice but even better is building a product that your customers love. Never forget that.

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