The first time I heard “this is a Google for coders” came from my friend, Lestat over at Beginnercode who described it that way in IRC not in his post, where he instead said:

According to their page you can search repositories, pages and resources that offer relevent code. You can even add comments to code, save and share the query’s. It also will deliver basic “basic API information about highlighted portions of code”.

This sounds quite useful. My first thought from Lestat’s initial description was: wow, this must really kick ass, I must see it! This must be the best search engine for programmers on the planet, after all that’s the benchmark Google has set.

And then I looked at Krugle and saw it hadn’t even entered public beta status yet.

I mentioned to Lestat the same thing I’ll say now: something cannot be the next Google of anything until it actually proves itself among the masses. Lestat and I are friends and believe that he didn’t take it personally, and hopefully this post won’t bother him either, but I worry about these kinds of lofty statements. Not from friend to friend in IRC, I wouldn’t even write about something like that. So why am I doing so now?

This morning to my surprise I saw the following story from Wired: Here Comes a Google for Coders.

Now, Lestat will be happy to know that he was the first to make that statement. Wired stole his teaser (I’m joking).

The new service joins other source-code search engines like Koders and Codefetch, but Krugle intends to differentiate itself by allowing developers to annotate code and documentation, create bookmarks and save collections of search results in a tabbed workspace. Saved workspaces have unique URLs, so developers can send an entire collection of annotated code to a co-worker just by e-mailing a link.

At least Koders and Codefetch are publically available so being able to slap a “next Google” monniker on either of them might be at least a little less hyperbolic. Look, I understand hyperbole, I use hyperbole, but a widely-read and respected publication like Wired labeling something the “next Google” when it hasn’t been judged by the public at large is problematic on a number of levels.

Recently Google bought Measure Map and I didn’t write about the acquisition because most of the world hadn’t seen it and couldn’t tell whether this was a smart acquisition or not. My take, if I had written one like countless others did, would have been along the lines of: we’ll have to wait and see if this becomes a smart move or not. This isn’t like Yahoo buying established public services like Flickr and Del.icio.us, this is Google buying something non-public tested.

I’m not going to praise or condemn an acquisition by the paint on the outside of the house, sorry. It seems disingenuous to me to label or hype something that the rest of the world haven’t seen and can’t see.

And when only a very, very small percentage of the population have seen something it’s even more risky writing about these things with any sort of objectivity. Sure, you get the honor of being among the first to see something (I’m not sure curse isn’t a better word), but does this “hey I feel special” cloud the judgement of the writer/reviewer?

Maybe. Maybe not.

This is the ongoing problem I’ve had with the prematurely hyped facial recognition service, Riya. When I wrote that entry calling it Teaseya, I was half-joking, half-serious. The half-joking side was mocking this new trend of some exclusive club gets to see these products in very early mockup stage and starts writing about them like they are the next Google. The rest of us out here then start to think wow, this is going to be life or business changing. And when the products come out they rarely meet or exceed the expectation.

It’s a bad trend. Let’s get back to underhyping and overdelivering. People will lose faith not only in the business but in us if we overhype and underdeliver and there is just way too much of this going on right now.

And BTW, despite Tara Hunt telling me in the comments that she’d hook me up, I haven’t been hooked up with a Riya invite yet. It doesn’t seem to be ready so in my opinions hyping it to any degree is problematic. Scoble muttered something about Riya having problems during one of his presentations at Northern Voice. They aren’t the next Google yet and probably will never be.

I saw a stock market like idea for Web Pooh Point … Oh products/services called Alexadex that measured value by the Alexa ratings. This reminded me of the Yahoo Buzz game. Services like these will help more honestly evaluate the BS meter.

With this in mind I have adopted sort of a semi-policy here that I will primarily only review products/services/acquisitions that the rest of the web can actually look at, compare and contrast. This doesn’t mean I will never review something in private beta or ask to look at things in private beta or share “exclusive screenshots” of products/services coming soon. Of course not, that would be boring, it just means that if I write about something that you, kind readers, cannot see, that I’ll be extremely careful with the hyperbole used. That seems like the responsible and honest thing to do, what do you think?

I think Michael Arrington overall has done a great service to the internet with his TechCrunch publication but sometimes he too is guilty of this premature eGooglation with new products. He gets more excited about things than they truly deserve when the rest of us cannot view/use them and make our own judgement about them. If there is any constructive criticism I could offer him, and I do not mean this at all disrespectfully, it would be to tone down the hype he sometimes uses on products/services that the rest of us can’t see. As Joe Friday would say: just the facts, man, just the facts.

Once the product/service is available for the rest of to see then use all the hyperbole you want. Go hogwild calling it the next Google, the next Microsoft, whatever, because then people actually can compare it to their own experience and pass it off as a difference in opinion. They can’t do that when only you got to see something and worse, they don’t know if you were paid to say that or have some conflict of interest in hyping the product/service.

The vast majority of hyped products/services I’ve read about the last 6-12 months haven’t come anywhere close to standing up to the hype. 30boxes, the calendar app that Thomas Hawk thought would change the game is not even close to exciting or game changing. I wrote a review for it and then shelved it because despite what some might think, I don’t like writing about everything sucking all the time. I enjoy writing about something I like more than I dislike, really I do. I’m just not finding as many things to review lately that I like compared to dislike or think are just so-so.

So that’s where I’m at when I read/hear that something is the “next Google.” Even from people and publications I know, respect and like.

The original Google didn’t start out with hype and was partly constructed from LEGO by the way. Those tempted to overhype something should research how Google really got its start from both publicity and hype standpoint. It was a very non, non, non fancy search engine from two smelly guys (via quote from Marissa Mayer who dated one of them) in a garage. These guys downloaded the internet and turned it inside out. They didn’t care about making the next most popular search engine at the time, or impressing a bunch of tightly connected bloggers, they ardently wanted to make a more relevant search. Their mission in life was better organizing the world’s information.

I know the sexy headlines grab eyeballs and I’m all for eyeball-grabbing headlines, but let’s not do this at the expense of misleading or overhyping things. That Wired piece could have easily disclaimed the headline by starting the piece with something like: “Ok, well, maybe not the next Google yet, but the owner hopes it will be someday …”

Krugle might be a fantastic search engine, a great resource for coders, and maybe someday it will actually be the next Google for coders, of which I am one and would love to see, but please, let’s give it a chance to become public and see it first.

I’d be extremely honored and horrified if I was Ken Krugler — or any other product/service vendor — and realized Wired was using premature eGooglation on my site before the doors had even officially opened.

Did this post make you go hmm?

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