Google Wants To Create Another TikTok, But Its Track Record Says It Won’t Happen
The short video service TikTok is about the hottest thing on social media these days when it comes to music. The 15 second lip-syncs uploaded by users can turn a song into a hit (which is what happened to “Old Town Road”), and every major record label has noticed. So has Google, who reportedly in in talks to acquire a similar platform called Firework.
TikTok has been a runaway success with over 1 billion downloads so far. It’s made tons of money for its Chinese owner Bytedance, so its natural that any major tech company would want in on the action. While that makes sense, the problem is that Google, while great at being a search engine, has not been good at much else.
Let’s look at some of its failed projects. How about Google Buzz, Google+ and Google Waves, social networks that never took off. Then there’s Google Reader, Project Ara, Google Nexus, Google Talk, iGoogle, Bump!, Google Gear, Google Now, Panoramio, Urchin, Orkut, Google Allo, Latitude, Google Spaces, Dodgeball, and Picasa.
Believe it or not, there are 30 more failures, some in house, and many acquisitions, that either never got off the ground, or were launched only to die a quiet death.
The point here is that it’s almost laughable for the company to now think that it compete with a global service that’s hot as a pistol right now. Even if Firework (Google Firework?) does gain traction, it’s likely that it will happen too late to actually cash in, as the world moves on to something new.
Yes, TikTok is hot now, but the next generation of kids may not be as enamored with lip-synching memes and the current ones will have moved on. That’s how social networks work.
Besides, TikTok has its own share of problems with the music business, with the major labels complaining about not making enough money, and songwriters and publishers not making any at all, in some cases.
So let’s enjoy TikTok for what it is at the moment, and don’t give too much thought to its rival that Google wants to create. Not gonna happen.
