> Google Search and Maps are two inventions that are so insanely useful, they may standalone be responsible for decades of faster progress.
I don't know about this. Google Search was a great improvement in ranking by relevance, but an important invention itself?
As for maps: as far as I'm aware, Google Maps was "just" a combination of two existing technologies - online maps and car navigation systems. They launched Maps in 2005, even Germany had online maps by 2000. Granted, they didn't look as good as Google's and the UX was inferior, but it wasn't a horses vs cars situation imho.
And the iPhone is "just" a more expensive version of its predecessors with a slightly better touchscreen and UX, and Dropbox is "just" a ftp mount with svn on top of it.
Also cars are just faster horses so that works too :)
Honestly I find it hard to argue that Maps and Search haven't been some of the internet's biggest worldwide productivity boosts.
> ...but the wave of full-screen smartphones had already started.
I’ve heard it argued that someone would have gotten there eventually, but my suspicion is that without a big player committing all their resources to marketing and selling it a similar device would have failed to make headway. Phone manufacturers would never have pushed like Apple did against the headwinds of physical keyboards and flash and operator-managed app distribution (and phone crippling).
But I’ve never heard someone argue that the design was already established and going to become a tidal wave. There were a few devices which vaguely resembled a few superficial elements. What examples can you provide to illustrate a wave was already underway?
The first of its kind was the LG Prada, which came out slightly before the iPhone and sold a million units. The technology had all come together just enough to make devices like this possible, and they were starting out at barely good enough.
Batteries, screens, CPUs, all of those were advancing rapidly whether phones used them or not. And 3G was spreading rapidly. Even if it took two more iterations of moore's law, the market was growing more and more feasible every month. Even half-baked attempts 2-3 years down the line could easily have been more compelling than the original iPhone.
I guess a chunk depends on how critical the operator-independent apps were, but let's not forget that the iPhone was ATT-only for years.
> Maps... had much better scrolling than competitors? Being pretty isn't revolutionary.
It's a combination of being always immediately available and having so much useful information about every place, all presented in a UI that is accessible.
The digital maps we had in our country pale in comparison to current day Google Maps. It even has graphs showing working hours and crowding level and reviews, and picture-perfect 3D simulation. That surely wasn't possible for any GPS or phone maps of that period.
Started by who? Early pre-iPhone Android prototypes were modeled after the BlackBerry and RIM was preaching the need for keyboards long after the iPhone was introduced. Microsoft was also aiming phones at businesses.
I agree with you insofar that "inventions" seem to imply that they invented the concept of Search Engines and Mapping Software from scratch, which is obviously not true (both existed for a long time before Google entered the market) but in both cases Google managed to offer a superior service for free (for the end user at least). I wouldn't call them inventions, but they're better implementations of an existing concept.
Compare Google maps to the mapping and GPS services of yore, you'd have to pay a fortune to get the same feature set. I remember when you had to pay to add regions to your GPS and then pay again to update them later.
The word "disruption" is quite a buzzword these days but in this case Google truly disrupted both these markets. Everybody had to play catch-up after that. I remember how all other search engines started copying Google's slick interface when they realized they were losing badly.
I do agree that they were vastly superior, but I believe that the new and disruptive thing that Google brought to the table in those markets was the monetization model. They offer valuable services without any visible price tag because the data those services generate are driving the profits from ads. I don't know if they were the first to do this, but that's an invention in my book..
The big innovation with Google Maps was the interactive zooming/panning interface, and it was a huge improvement over any other mapping site of the time. The popular map service of the time, MapQuest, had clunky scroll and zoom buttons around the sides of the map image, and moving around or zooming would reload the entire page. The GMaps interface wasn't just a marginal improvement over the existing pages, it was a completely new way of doing it that was 100x easier to use.
That's a gross misrepresentation of what I'm saying.
My point is: the technology was there. Better UX, nicer integration into other services etc, those are valuable and good, and they alone can be enough to win a huge market share, but they are not innovations as in "introducing new concepts". A smartphone capable of using GPS to show your position on a map is great and way more accessible than a Magellen NAV 1000, but it's the GPS itself that is the actual breakthrough, the big innovation.
I don't know about this. Google Search was a great improvement in ranking by relevance, but an important invention itself? As for maps: as far as I'm aware, Google Maps was "just" a combination of two existing technologies - online maps and car navigation systems. They launched Maps in 2005, even Germany had online maps by 2000. Granted, they didn't look as good as Google's and the UX was inferior, but it wasn't a horses vs cars situation imho.