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Book Excerpt January 29, 2009, 5:00PM EST

Detroit Should Get Cracking on its Googlemobile

Carmakers need to let go of their musty business models and start thinking like 21st century companies—like Google

By Jeff Jarvis

Alex Ostroy

If Google (GOOG) ran a car company, what would it look like? What lessons of Google's singular success in the Internet age might apply to remaking this, among other failing industries? Would the Googlemobile be the product of stealth and secrecy or openness and collaboration? Could Detroit release cars in beta? Could cars be ad-supported and free? Is there any hope for an industry that traffics in atoms instead of digits? Would a Googley car company even make cars?

A few years ago, it might have been absurd to look to Google for ideas about the auto industry. But not now. American automakers are in crisis. General Motors (GM) and Chrysler needed a $13 billion bailout from the federal government in December to keep them out of bankruptcy, and, with a new Administration in Washington, the Big Three are likely to head back to the well for billions more. They're suffering from more than the economic crisis. The huge declines in sales reflect a fundamental disconnect between drivers and Detroit. It's time for a radical rethinking of the way U.S. automakers do business.

I sat in Detroit some time ago and suggested heresy: I urged the car people to open up their design process and make it both transparent and collaborative. Car companies have no good way to listen to customers' ideas. If they had opened up, years before, I would have been among the legions who'd have gladly told them to invest 39 cents for a plug-in car radio so we could connect our iPods. Every time I try to listen to my music or podcasts in the car via various kludges—FM transmitters that can't transmit to a radio an inch away and cassette-tape gizmos—I curse car companies and their suppliers. At least let us help design the radios you install, I urged.

THE BIG THREE DON'T WANT TO HEAR IT

My suggestion was sacrilegious because automakers have long been secretive about design. Design and surprise, they think, are their special sauce. That's why they cloak new models like classified weapons, setting off games of cat-and-car with photographers who try to scoop the secrets. Apart from the most fanatical car fan, do the rest of us still care? The excitement I remember about a new year's cars—like a new season's TV shows—is gone. Cars have lost their season. They rarely engender excitement or passion. An Oldsmobile is no Apple (AAPL) iPhone, after all. How could a car company again win our affection for its products and brands? By opening up, by making the process of producing cars transparent so it could involve customers, by turning out cars customers want because they had a chance to say what they want.

Google listens to us and trusts us when it releases unfinished products as "betas" so we can tell them what to do next. That's the approach behind Google News, Gmail, and the new Chrome browser. The company also lets us tailor searches so we turn up only images or book excerpts. And Google pays attention to us by using our clicks and links to determine rank in search results. The more people who connect to a blog post on the best recipe for lamb tagine, the more prominent Google will make that Web site when people hunt for dinner ideas.

Google wants us involved in the creative process; Detroit doesn't. On Peter Day's BBC program In Business, Richard Florida, author of Who's Your City?, said Detroit's car companies were "destroyed" by "a management mind set that said, 'We know it all, we don't need anyone other's ideas, and we can do anything we want with our companies.' "

Car companies have let customers make emblems for cars and create their own ads for certain models, as General Motors did with the Chevy Tahoe in 2006. GM Vice-Chairman Bob Lutz has blogged.

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