Edge Perspectives with John Hagel

Edge Perspectives with John Hagel: " Amazon and Google
Chris says that these new brands probably won�t be held by companies at all, but rather by people, but then goes on to mention Amazon and Google as providers of filters that helped them become trusted aggregators. There�s a lot to be learned by contrasting the two.
Google is extraordinarily helpful in navigating through the Long Tail of the Web. Yet it is still a very traditional product-centric brand. Its brand promise? �Trust us because we have a great algorithm to help you find what you need.� Google doesn�t even pretend to know me as an individual � it treats me as a transaction. Each time I come, it is like they have never seen me before. They do not use any persistent profiles of me that will enable them to be even more helpful to me. They are a tool company. As soon as someone comes along with a significantly better tool, people will switch rapidly.
Contrast that with Amazon. Amazon strives to get to know me and then, based on that knowledge, seeks to connect me not only with books that I might like, but also with experts (in the form of lists) that can also help me. Again, this is far from perfect at this stage (Amazon recommends that I buy the book that I just wrote, not realizing that I�ve been there, done that, don�t need to read it again). But Amazon is on its way to building a customer centric brand. It is becoming my expert friend on steroids. Question for Chris: why won�t Amazon become a viable customer-centric brand? Why won�t its value ultimately far exceed the value of an individual tastemaker or expert friend?"