Well, obviously everybody's figured out Google needs a vision for "Social Web Act II," since they so embarrassingly sat out the Act I. Unless they manage to change the game and make it not about "social" in the next 3-5 years, but I find that hard to imagine, since the social phase is not yet over, and the market is too exhausted to absorb another revolution on a different front before it absorbs this one.

But unfortunately this is a mature company with an established culture. A change at the top is not enough, even if it is the casting is correct. You probably need a mass of firings/hirings, a la IBM in the early 90s, like a huge chunk of the existing staff, to make this change. Pivoting a big company is a lot more painful than pivoting a startup.

Here's the problem Page will have to solve. Remember this Chris Anderson piece, "The End of Theory" from 2008?

http://www.wired.com/science/dis...

Speaking at the O'Reilly Emerging Technology Conference this past
March, Peter Norvig, Google's research director, offered an update to
George Box's maxim: "All models are wrong, and increasingly you can
succeed without them."

This is a world where massive amounts of data and applied mathematics
replace every other tool that might be brought to bear. Out with every
theory of human behavior, from linguistics to sociology. Forget
taxonomy, ontology, and psychology. Who knows why people do what they do? The point is they do it, and we can track and measure it with
unprecedented fidelity. With enough data, the numbers speak for
themselves.

(Update: thanks to a reader for pointing out that Norvig has actually refuted this position and claims Anderson misrepresented him. http://norvig.com/fact-check.html)

THIS is the problem, the hubris that psychology was irrelevant, that data crunching could conquer all, along with the arrogant assumption that since they don't know why people do what they do, nobody else does either. Google is not talented at psychology, so they underestimate its importance, and overestimate its intractability.

Google lost Social Act I because they thought like this. These are Chris Anderson's words, but he's channeling what he perceives to be the overall Google culture here, I think.

Google thought "organize the world's information" was a big enough vision to last the company its lifetime. They thought the "people" part could be taken care of with a charmingly clueless little "don't be evil" line.

But here's the problem. Social isn't about organizing the world's information. It's about organizing the world's delusions.

Google is like the geeky kid who's far too logical for his/her own good. To succeed at social, you have to be illogical, insane and delusional in clever ways.

Delusions are the opposite of information. Foursquare appointing you mayor of a coffeeshop is a delusion. Imagining your meaningless crap updates on Twitter matter a damn to anyone is a delusion. Thinking that throwing chickens and raising artificial farms on Facebook constitutes a social life is beyond delusional. Thinking that 100 upvotes is a major achievement on Quora is a delusion.

And yet, it is understanding and organizing these delusions that got Facebook, Twitter and Foursquare to where they are.

This is a very, very scary truth that Larry has to face. To win at social, he has to turn his back on the EXACT vision that has made Google great so far. He has to say, "the hell with the world's information, let's go after the delusions, and beat the others at it."

As Nietzsche said, "how could you wish to become new, unless you had first become ashes?"

This is a phenomenally difficult creative-destruction challenge.

I wouldn't want to be Page right now.