Kryptonite made great bike locks for years, until it notoriously hit the Blogosphere that they could be hacked by a Bic pen.
This was seriously bad news for the company. And how did they react - or perhaps more accurately, how did they appear to react? Hugh MacLeod put it best at the time:
DAY ONE:
KRYPTONITE: Our bike locks are the best.
THE MARKET: Yes, your bike locks are the best.DAY TWO:
KRYPTONITE: Our bike locks are the best.
THE MARKET: Yes, your bike locks are still the best.DAY THREE:
KRYPTONITE: Our bike locks are the best.
THE MARKET: Ummm… yeah I’m sure they are, but what’s all this about some recent video on the net that’s supposed to show how you can crack your locks in 10 seconds using a simple Bic ballpoint pen?DAY FOUR:
KRYPTONITE: Our bike locks are the best.
THE MARKET: Hey, I just saw that video on a friend’s website. And I’m kinda ticked off because I just paid $60 for one of your new locks 3 weeks ago, and I’m wondering if a Bic pen can crack my lock or not… does the pen crack all Kryptonite locks or just one or two models?DAY FIVE:
KRYPTONITE: Our bike locks are the best.
THE MARKET: Hey, I just visited your website and saw no mention of the Bic pens. What the hell are you doing about it? Are you going to fix the locks? Are you going to give me a refund?DAY SIX:
KRYPTONITE: Our bike locks are the best.
THE MARKET: No, they’re not. You guys are assholes.
To read Kryptonite’s version, see the blog of Shel Israel & Robert Scoble’s book. In fairness, their defence makes some good points, but to many people, they will always be the company who ignored the Blogosphere and got badly burned in the process. This is compounded by many blogging consultants who use Kryptonite as the classic “how not to” case study. And once people believe this kind of story, you’re not going to change their minds very easily.
But Kryptonite are about the old economy and while history hasn’t been very forgiving, I think we can be generous and draw a parallel to Douglas Adams’ idea that earth was demolished, as mankind didn’t appeal against the hyperspace bypass.
“There’s no point in acting all surprised about it. All the planning charts and demolition orders have been on display in your local planning department on Alpha Centauri for fifty of your Earth years, so you’ve had plenty of time to lodge any formal complaint and it’s far too late to start making a fuss about it now.”
But surely, a new company, a new media company, would never fall into the same trap, would they? Well, you’d have thought not, but Google is ignoring this story I wrote last week and has been pretty widely quoted all over the Blogosphere.
In a nutshell, the post highlighted that Google had unilaterally decided to change the way they display content on people’s phones. They almost certainly did this with the very best of intentions ie to give the mobile user a better use experience. But the result is that they are changing other people’s content, without asking or without at least having a debate about it. This is presumptuous - at best.
Now, I’m certainly nor arrogant enough to think that Google execs have nothing better to read my scribblings all day. But this has crossed over into CNN Money and other big, respected sites like Danny Sullivan’sSearch Engine Watch.
And at the risk of being like a 5 year old kid poking a 1000 lb gorilla with a short, blunt stick, I even asked their press people to comment yesterday and haven’t had any response.
I don’t buy the idea that Google are too big and busy to bother about this little gnat of a story buzzing around their head. The Blogosphere has shown that it can blow this kind of thing into a major, major issue in no time at all. Lots of companies take time to comment on stories I write (normally offline) and the one thing all these people share is that they’re busy and short of time. Google might be bigger, but that means that they should have more resources to listen and respond to conversations and concerns.
Google’s silence on this means one of the following:
1. They don’t know that the conversation is happening. I find this really hard to believe, but if true, someone is doing a really poor job over there.
2. They’re just ignoring it and hoping it’ll go away. Bad strategy. It might die down now, but when the time is right it’ll explode. Deal with it now.
3. They really don’t care what we, the people, think anymore. I find this really sad as I know they used to care a lot and that’s how they got big. If they really are taking this line, it’s time that they remembered where they came from and how they got there - by people like you and I telling their less geeky friends about how cool Google was.
There may be other conclusions that you can draw from their refusal to engage with us, to join the conversation and to debate this important issue. But my take has to be that their attitude is just an extension of re-purposing the mobile content in the first place. It’s simply arrogant. Worse, it’s old school Microsoftian.
And I never, ever thought that would ever be written about Google - especially by me. We expect more of our idols, so it’s hard when you find that their feet are in fact, made from clay.
is google the new kryptonite?…
From Mobhappy:”Is Google the New Kryptonite?”I dont buy the idea that Google are too big and busy to bother about this little gnat of a story buzzing around their head. The Blogosphere has shown that it can blow this……
You write:
“KRYPTONITE: Our bike locks are the best.
THE MARKET: No, they’re not. You guys are assholes.”
I might have missed this, but the last time I looked the market did no such thing. A couple of bloggers got all in a lather about the power of blogs™ but that was pretty much it.
Kryptonite reacted by making changes to the product and sales were pretty much unaffected the last time I looked.
Did they react in a way that seemed almost designed to antagonize the (small) part of their market who reads blogs? For sure, it wasn’t clever.
But that blunder certainly didn’t cost them half as dear as some bloggers would like us to believe.
Andreas - thanks for the comment, but not sure what point you’re trying to make here.
Do you think it’s a good idea to behave like Kryptonite and as Google appears to be? Or a bad idea? Or frankly, that it doesn’t matter as bloggers and their readers are a tiny, insignificant, if vociferous market?
What would you recommend Google to do?
Russell
“Do you think it’s a good idea to behave like Kryptonite and as Google appears to be? Or a bad idea? Or frankly, that it doesn’t matter as bloggers and their readers are a tiny, insignificant, if vociferous market?”
1. I think reformatting for mobile devices is fine and nowhere near as serious as described by you. But I also appreciate that opinions differ.
2. google is a huge company and it is my opinion that this particular story, while of immediate importance to you, is simply at the bottom of a heap of other, equally or more important stories they’re dealing with.
3. Yes, I do believe that part of the blogosphere (and I am not pointing fingers at anybody) has at times taken itself way, way, way too seriously. The signal to noise ratio in blogs is low already and, with the addition of whatever the number of the day is for blogs added per second, falling.
The successful blogs already resemble the magazine websites of yesterday, following the same business model, facing the same restrictions.
Don’t get me wrong, I am all for blogs. I am all for conversations, for equality in marketing and in our relationships with people who are after our disposable income.
But when I read statements like:
“There may be other conclusions that you can draw from their refusal to engage with us, to join the conversation and to debate this important issue. But my take has to be that their attitude is just an extension of re-purposing the mobile content in the first place. It’s simply arrogant. Worse, it’s old school Microsoftian.”
my gut reaction is to say “get over it already.” Nobody is refusing a conversation, chances are you’re just not important enough.
Why do I smell ‘troll’?
[whoops; do not feed the troll. Do not feed the troll. Do not feed the troll. Too late.]
Lemi4 aka. fERDI:), maybe you should learn that people can respectfully disagree without being trolls. Grow up.
Andreas - Re: your comment to Russell - “I think reformatting for mobile devices is fine and nowhere near as serious as described by you.”
Fine you say? Nowhere near as serious as described? Let me explain how NOT “fine” it is.
Paraphrased from my blog (http://harper.wirelessink.com/?p=81):
From my perspective, the issue is not that Google unilaterally strips away eye candy only to deliver a hodgepodge of text on mobile devices. It is that they remove user access to mobile-specific services on which ours and many other businesses are based. By default, their actions censor those of us who provide a unique and/or useful mobile experience.
Individuals, small development teams, and companies that respect and value the mobile audience provide mobile sites and services designed for that audience. With a bit of browser detection, many of us send these visitors to either mobile optimized versions of our sites or even mobile phone-specific services. Google mobile web search intercepts and overrides that detection, context, and delivery.
Google’s actions cripple every truly mobile web site that its search uncovers, violating the copyright of each and reducing all of them to a lowest common denominator that sets the mobile web back ten years. “Do No Evil” requires that they stop now.
I think Google didn’t mean evil here — they just tried to bring existing content to mobility…
But guess what, they have encountered the *BASIC* issue with *content transformation.* This is not a new problem, and many of us have dealt with/researched this issue for a long time.
With Google’s transformation not only the layout is changed, but advertising may get dropped (interesting they don’t have a transformation for their own ads from desktop to mobile).
I agree that the decision to change content layout and drop content from a website is (should be) the content’s *owner* decision ONLY…
For people that read content, such transformation may be just fine, but obviously for content owners & producers, such transformation is not…. not to mention advertising is at the center of many business models.
All this mess could just be the result of a decision made based on pure “technical” merits (i.e. bandwidth, screen real-estate, etc) — good intentions, but nevertheless a bad decision.
Google owns ReqWireless - those folks know very well about bringing websites to mobile and about transformation - Google should leverage that!
ceo
Why Google Should Rethink Their Content Transformation…
On his website, MobHappy, Russell Buckely wrote about Google changing the way content is displayed on people’s phones, without permission. Below is a modified, expanded version of the comment that I left at MobHappy, in response to Russell’s blog ent…
CEO - Re: “…change content layout and drop content from a website”
I’d like to include to that list what was “harmful” to us - the default blocking of our mobile specific site & community and replacing it with the transcoded version of our desktop site.
I agree, recent weeks have seen Google taken a few beatings regarding content from content owners like Top 10 girls something, cencorship in China and so on.
Take a look at the Google News now who gave google the rights to take content from CNN, BBC, CNBC and so on…and make it availible on Google News. The online content from those websites are there for a reason, to get people online…not on Google news but on the website in question. There is also the case on bookss where google want to make content from books availible on Google. Al the hype about Google is a joke…by the end of the day….what is comes down to is that Google shows other sites content…that is it. Google mail…your content…Google video is other peoples content stolen by Google users and send to Google video, Google pictures…other sites content…and so on. If want to see more info when searching don’t use the Google for your mobile, use Opera Mini instead.
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