What Would Google Do? And What Should You Build?
Indie hackers don't need Google's scale, just its mindset: give users control, build platforms not products, stay open, and ship ugly but fast. Jeff Jarvis's framework reframed through the lens of solo founders who want to build things that last.
The question isn’t meant to worship the tech giant. It’s meant to reverse-engineer its strategic mindset.
Jeff Jarvis’s framework—written through APIs and user behaviors—matters for indie builders. Not the Google of today, but the Google of first principles: give things away to gain something more valuable, trust users more than gatekeepers do, and build infrastructure others can build on.
Give Up Control, or Lose It Anyway
Successful products grant users agency. Google succeeded by making tools that worked without demanding attention. Figma and Notion exemplify this: designers and power users extended these tools in ways creators didn’t anticipate, turning them into cultural phenomena through organic adoption.
The question for every feature you’re building: does this give users more control, or less?
Platforms, Not Products
Rather than owning user experiences, great companies empower others. Stripe’s documentation and API design created a foundation for possibility, not just payments processing.
Ask whether your creation is a closed tool or a platform others can build upon. The closed tool is easier to build and harder to scale. The platform requires restraint—and compounds differently.
Default to Open
Transparency builds leverage and trust. Google shows what it indexes; Buffer’s founder blogged about security breaches in real time. Shipping publicly, sharing failures honestly—these practices retain users beyond novelty.
Openness is a moat. Not the obvious kind. The kind that makes users trust you before they have any reason to, because you’ve been honest about the parts that weren’t working.
Small Is the New Big
Google’s power emerges from serving countless niche searches. Substack and Gumroad thrive by empowering edge cases: artists, creators, people with devoted audiences. Strengthening systems through the long tail creates resilience at scale.
The counterintuitive truth: the more specific you are, the more people feel seen.
Life Is Beta
Perfection delays launch. Google ships incomplete features regularly. Superhuman’s strategy—launching to individual users, iterating—demonstrates that waiting to be “ready” guarantees being late.
Let the Users Build It
Google didn’t create Stack Overflow or Wikipedia but directed traffic toward them. Your role involves lighting the initial spark, then stepping back. Community plugins, documentation, API wrappers—let users invent what your product becomes.
The Indie Litmus Test
Before publishing, ask:
- Do you give users keys or manuals?
- Is yours a tool or a foundation?
- Are you building alone or with your community?
- When problems arise, do you hide or reveal?
Google’s imperfect principles still hold: trust your users. Build small, open, unfinished. Invite others in. Let them stretch the idea.
That’s how things that last get started.