Google CEO Larry Page Just Made His First Big Mistake

Even before In the Plex author Steve Levy’s cogent post on Thursday about this week’s uproar over Google‘s new social search moves, which nodded to Google CEO Larry Page‘s possible role in the affair, I was already beginning to think it had Page written all over it. If so–and how could he not have been deeply involved in such a huge change to Google’s core service?–we could be looking at the first evidence of a significant downside to the Google cofounder’s management style.

Up to now, Page has gotten mostly kudos during his nine-month reign. Investor‘s Business Daily, in fact, named him the CEO of the Year. And while that pick drew some objections (and some support), it has been clear for some time that Page has remade the company to be more nimble. Not long after Page took over, for example, Google announced plans to buy Motorola Mobility for more than $12 billion, its biggest acquisition yet by a factor of four. The deal, which is under government scrutiny, was hailed by some and criticized by others, but no one disagreed that it was unusually bold.

But what if Page is too bold for Google’s own good? We won’t know that, most likely, for at least a couple more years, depending on how Google navigates through treacherous competitive and regulatory waters. But with the latest kerfuffle, it’s time to ask if Page is not just bold but, in some cases, rash. In that Investor’s Business Daily article, it’s telling that Alan Eustace, Google’s senior vice president of search, said of Page, ”His view is that speed is everything.”

This week, that penchant for swiftness hit a speed bump when Google introduced the awkwardly named Search, plus Your World. Now, Google’s search results not only highlight Google+ postings for those signed into Google, but the search results page also has a box at upper right with suggestions on “People and Pages” to follow on Google+ related to the search terms. Although Google offers a prominent button at the top of the page to allow users to switch to non-personalized results, the socially infused results are the default.

Immediately, many people, even some such as search expert Danny Sullivan who generally believe Google’s a good steward of search, swooped in to cry foul. Some worried about privacy (though no one sees anything they couldn’t see before), but most critics believed it was unfair of Google not to include Facebook and Twitter in that box of Google+ suggestions. Others thought the appearance of Google+ links in the search results, sometimes pushing Twitter and other links down, went too far.

A lot of people, including me, thought the criticism of Google’s attempt to promote its social network was overblown (Google helpfully listed many of these positive comments in a post today), especially given that Facebook is close to as dominant in social as Google is in search. It seems even more doubtful that this will inevitably lead in a Microsoft-level antitrust case, as some folks suggest, especially because it’s so easy to find examples in nearly every search of links to Twitter (if not to Facebook, which more tightly protects its corner of the Web).

Nonetheless, the furor almost by definition proves that Google handled this clumsily, probably by moving too quickly and forcefully. And that’s the mistake that makes me think of Larry Page. By many accounts, he has reenergized Google, so I don’t mean this as a blanket criticism. But his social sense (ironically) has never seemed finely tuned, at least when it comes to anticipating public reaction to Google’s actions. (To be fair, that’s not just a Larry problem historically; Google has often misgauged likely responses to its actions.) But in this case in particular, he and Google should have known that this radically new and Google+-slanted search would set off especially loud alarms, and no doubt some people inside Google did. But the company went ahead anyway.

The thing is, Google could have handled all this better. It could have labeled that Google+ box on the right as a promo; who could object to a clearly labeled house ad? It could have made the new social search results opt-in, rather than making them the default, while still promoting the social search enough to get a lot of people to try it. After all, it has previously hawked Google+ on its famously spartan home page, to little criticism. It could have done the standup thing and included publicly available Facebook and Twitter profiles in the righthand box.

But I have a feeling–sheer speculation, I warn you–that Page wanted to make a bold statement, and damn the consequences.

And who knows? Maybe it will work out great. Maybe antitrust and privacy concerns go nowhere. Maybe Twitter or Facebook gets elbowed into doing a deal with Google that would make those social results far more useful and less controversial. Maybe. In basketball, they say, if you don’t get any fouls, you aren’t trying hard enough. But I’m not sure it always works that way in business.

I don’t think Google’s mistake is as big as many people make out. It needed to incorporate social signals into search. But in the way Search, plus Your World was implemented, a mistake it certainly was. And it’s one that Google will be dealing with for a long time to come.