In the early days of the web, search engines were fighting to be one-stop shops. Yahoo, Microsoft, Ask, Lycos, and more competed to add more content, more directories, more services, and more portals. The result was a chaotic mess and lack of direction. These additions added features, but didn’t provide solutions to its users. Google appeared on the scene and ditched that model. A sparse white page, the search engine merely asked “where do you wanna go today?” And users responded. Simple, direct, different. Google changed the game.
And they did it again with gmail. So many me-too free webmail clients available, how could the company stand out? While others were offering a paltry 10mb or 100mb, gmail upped the ante. 1gb of space – unheard of at the time. It was shocking and spectacular, and you couldn’t have it. At least not at first. The service was invite-only, an exclusive club. But if you got in, you could maybe bring your friends. And so it spread virally, spawning barter transactions for invites. They changed the game, and won.
Incremental improvements will rarely overcome switching costs.
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Tags: edgecrafting, Improvements, innovation
