After my post last week on the rumours of Apple buying Sony, I thought I’d finally write a post I’ve been thinking about for a while: a comparison between Sony and Google.
This may begin to sound like I hate Sony. Not at all. When it comes to certain products, they’re always the first brand I consider. I’ll probably be buying a new TV some time in the next year, and I’ve already decided I want a Sony. Every camera I’ve owned, both still and video, have been made by Sony too. Sony certainly make some excellent products, and I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend them when it comes to certain products.
But as I said in my previous post, while Sony certainly makes some quality, they also make a lot of crap. In a lot of ways, I see their approach to product focus and product design as being similar to Google’s. Perhaps it’s fitting then that the two companies have worked together to produce the Google TV, a product which really accentuates the companies’ attitudes.
Both companies have their great products. For Sony, it’s mostly TVs and the Playstation; for Google, it’s mostly Search and GMail. Yet both companies also make a bewildering number of other products, some of which are good (but not great), and others that make you wonder why they even bother.
Evidently, both Sony and Google are putting all their best talent into their best products, and keeps them working on those projects alone. While this certainly keeps their best products great, it causes their not so great products to fall behind. Instead, if their best talent were overseeing the product design for their entire range, they would have consistently excellent products. Yet with their massive product ranges, this is certainly an impossibility.
So often with both Sony and Google products have I looked for consistent design or usability between two or more different products and not found it. Little design features I thought were great in my video camera were absent from my still camera for no good reason. Software metaphors between GMail and Google Docs are extremely inconsistent despite looking very similar (in fact, I think these inconsistencies are so bad I may go into them in a later post).
In a way, I guess it makes sense for the two companies to have come together on the Google TV. But have they put their best people on the project? Judging by the questionable interaction choices in the software and the hilariously over-complicated remote control, I’m guessing not.
