Since the company was founded, Google has exhibited the Midas Touch, allowing the company to practically dominate every single area it chooses to pursue. However, there has been one particular field that remains elusive for the tech giant - social media.
Google has initiated a number of brave attempts at creating a successful social media platform. Indeed, the numerous iterations of Google+ are proof. However, as much as the company has tried, Google+ never really made it, becoming simply an afterthought to much more popular platforms like Facebook or Snapchat.
Last year, Google seemed to have finally called it quits with its Google+ social platform, breaking it up into two products, Google Photos and Stream. Just as it is with the company's previous attempts, however, the two services, despite being innovative, haven't really lived up to their potential. At least not yet.
Google's social media platforms will probably get a much-needed boost soon, with Chris Poole, founder of the internet's most notorious message board, 4Chan, announcing that he now works for Google, under Bradley Horowitz, the V.P. for Google Photos and Stream.
With Poole on the team, Google's social media platforms might very well become the Internet's next big thing. After all, Poole has done it before, transforming a bare-bones online forum that focused on Japanese anime and its subcultures into a leviathan of a message board that was regarded as a place that is just a few steps away from the Dark Web.
Through the 12 years that Poole headed 4Chan, the site gained the reputation of being the place where the good, the bad and the ugly on the World Wide Web are free to roam and express themselves. Notoriety aside, 4Chan was definitely a huge success.
As for Poole, he stated that he always liked Google, adding that he is eager to share his expertise and experience to the search giant's ailing social platform.
"When meeting with current and former Googlers, I continually find myself drawn to their intelligence, passion, and enthusiasm, as well as a universal desire to share it with others. I can't wait to contribute my own experience from a dozen years of building online communities, and to begin the next chapter of my career with such an incredible company," he wrote on his blog.
If there's anything unique about Poole, it is the fact that he has the ability to look and focus on the sociology behind an online community's interactions, especially the reason why people opt to utilize them. For Google, it is this expertise, this capability to look beyond algorithms, that the company truly needs.
