Slashdot Mirror
Tepid Results from Google's New Product Process
bart_scriv writes "BusinessWeek digs into Google's new products, first interviewing Marissa Mayer on the process behind the recent flurry of product launches; the essential process: 'try a bunch of new ideas, refine them and see what survives'. How successful is the process? Despite lots of fanfare, a close look at the products reveals that Google still hasn't produced a huge winner: 'An analysis of some two dozen new ventures launched over the past four years shows that Google has yet to establish a single market leader outside its core search business, where it continues to chew up Microsoft and Yahoo.'"
Google is an amazing search-engine success, spearheading some of the greatest technology, especially internet, innovation and competition in the last twenty years. That's as it should be. And Google has pulled off so far what noone else has, a head start, salvo across Microsoft's bow from which Microsoft still has not recovered.
Each additional degree of Microsoft's ship's list translates into that much more level of a playing field. Google more than any other single company has been the greatest contributor to that.
And, as it should be on a more level field, Google isn't going to get a free pass on their other work. That's great! Google has had some false starts with their other products. That's great! Google may even fail completely with some of their work. That's great!
At least Google (and now others) are all on point together, sweating out the competition, working on that next great internet killer app, and they're all having to compete publicly for a change.
I'll take three-year Betas any day over "announced" but yet un-priced future products from other large software companies. I'll try less-than-great first efforts any day over products tied to my architecture, leaving me no choices.
Google's going to fail with some of their efforts, but they've changed the landscape of the internet, and internet applications, software competition, and user choices. Hopefully, forever.
(A worrisome problem: the stockholders' pressure on these companies keeps pushing on these companies to produce and show profit now. I applaud Microsoft, in one example, in their snubbing of shareholders by announcing huge investments in R&D, rather than upping their dividends. In the long run, companies that stay focused will be the winners, for themselves, for the consumers, and for the shareholders (though, I still hold Microsoft in high suspicion for their motivation for pouring huge resources into R&D, aka... working on cutting off someone else's air supply.))
Everyone I know or meet in a business context these days has two addresses: work and gmail. Sometimes they have another (like my home servers), but everyone has those two.
I haven't heard anyone use a Yahoo, MSN or Hotmail address in months.
Not a leader?! Please.
It has gotten to the point where they release new products so often that I can't even keep track. I think they also spend way too much time on ideas that are aimed to hurt Microsoft (Such as the online spreadsheet idea) - these things are cool, but will anyone really pay for them? I think google executives know that the money train will stop someday soon, since they are selling their shares like crazy.
USB Drive disabler - works remotely
If I had mod points you'd get +1 Insightful from me. There's too much "M$ sux0rz" and "Google are the one true God" from some people here, nice to see a thoughtful post of an opinion for a change.
I would argue that gmail is pretty successful. It's forced Yahoo, Hotmail to offer much larger mailboxes to keep their clients.
Heck, even my local ISP, after 15 years of a 10MB mailbox (with a float to 15MB) suddenly offer 200MB on all 5 email addresses their service lets you use.
In addition, every user of Hotmail or Yahoo that I've brought over to gmail hasn't looked back. They all love it.
I call that a winner.
Michael Coyne
http://turthalion.blogspot.com
Its like the scene in UHF where a blind man trying to solve the Rubriks cube with the help of a seeing guy.
....
"Is this it ?"
"No!"
"Is this it ?"
"No!"
Do gmail, the calendar, local searching, satelite mapping, their ads and innumerable other good stuff need to be a market leader to be considered a success? With the hit or miss nature of pretty much every other single company in the world, isn't the fact that pretty much everything google puts out doesn't suck a sign that the process works well?
Whether or not Google is becoming more or less evil aside, they are growing too big too fast. Any company that tries to expand its market too quickly is in danger of callapsing under its own weight. Innovation is rare in todays society and I applaud it, but Google as a company should look inward and perfect its current product line before expanding into others. I for one would prefer a few great products than too many bad ones to name.
Gmail, the e-mail service that was lauded at its 2004 launch for offering 500 times as much storage space as some rivals (they quickly closed the gap), today is the system of choice for only about one-quarter the number of people who use MSN and Yahoo e-mail.
So in an article about the success of Google products, the only way they gauge the success of Gmail is if someone also maintains an account with a competing service? What about Gmail users who use it exclusively (like me)?
"I'm a leaf on the wind. Watch how I soar."
-Hoban Washburn
Google does not need that one killer app that will destroy the status quo. I find myself using Google products for quite a few things. They have a knack for taking something that everyone already uses and improving it enough to make the transition worthwhile. The author might deride GMail for not being a new invention, but at the time of its release (and I would argue even now) it offered the most features and free storage. Instead of e-mail papers back and forth, I have been using Writely for months. Again, nothing too groundbreaking, but it just plan works and saves me some aggravation.
My point is that Google provides resources that we all actually use, not some next big thing that will change the paradigm for good.
Information wants a fueled airplane waiting at the hangar and no one gets hurt.
1. Buy struggling company.
2. Rebrand their product.
3. Make free version and "professional" version.
4. Add web stuff, anything to tie it to Google servers, typically search or collaboration features.
5. Put it into "Beta".
6. ???
7. Profit!
How we know is more important than what we know.
Does Google need these side-projects to be profitable for them to be considered a success? I would posit that these are just things added to keep up the Google mystique and the perception of their innovation and coolness. Further, even if these projects are not profitable in and of themselves, is it not a success if they have managed to distract Microsoft, Yahoo, et al from their own core business? The more they pressure with Gmail the more everyone else has to scramble to keep up.
"...Google has yet to establish a single market leader outside its core search business, where it continues to chew up Microsoft and Yahoo."
Is it me or has anyone else noticed the decline in quality search results from Google? Maybe this flurry of product launches continues to chew up its core search business. I'm not a big fan of the "throw-shit-on-the-wall-and-see-what-sticks" business model. Focusing on quality over quantity seems less evil.
A strong #2 doesn't sound like miserable failure to me.
--
Carnage Blender : Meet interesting people. Kill them.
The thing with Yahoo email is, they partnered up with other big players, so they host more email than you might at first realize.
EG. I've been a Southwestern Bell DSL Internet customer for years. At one point, SBC partnered up with Yahoo, and migrated email over to Yahoo's servers. I still got to keep my "@swbell.net" address, however. It just runs through Yahoo POP and SMTP servers instead of SBC's own mail server.
Many other users of SBC/AT&T DSL services are doing similar things with addresses ending in "@sbcglobal.net".
I think the author of this article is far too focused on the idea that Google should be trying to expand its core business, when I believe that Google is focused on finding new places for its core business to operate. Most of the "new" services Google is offering are nothing more then ways to extend the reach of their core business. Take for example Gmail, an amazing free mail service that has allowed Google another outlet for its advertisers to place ads. Through the beta we have seen more advertising, and better ad targeting due to information being collected about you through Gmail. Another example of this strategy is Google Video which is now placing targeted advertising in videos in order to provide their advertisers with yet another venue to attract consumers. To me it just seems that Google has been looking for ways to increase how much money it can make from its core business, which of course is advertising. These "new" services that Google releases, in my opinion, are just extensions of this core business model. So in the end isn't Google doing a great job?
I love to deploy my packages
3M has been doing something similar forever. (More here too...)
Is Google doing this as managed innovation or is Google throwing "it" against the wall to see what sticks?
How to Download YouTube Videos
Google Analytics in particular gives them better and more accurate information to improve the results of their core business search. Also Google's flurry of product launches has increased competition across the board. That sounds good not evil to me.
Always be polite.
Of course, it's nice to get all the free stuff, but there are times that I wish that I could pay Google directly for some of their products. Why? Because I want to clearly signal to them that I want them to keep the product around and keep working on it. When the means for the consumer to signal the producer is absent (for example, in Picasa) or indirect (for example, in gmail), there's a larger risk that the producer will discontinue the product (or stop active development of it).
For example, I use gmail all the time. But I have never, not once ever, clicked on an ad in gmail. So from my input, a bean-counter at gmail could conclude that I don't care about gmail.
Sure, I could click on ads from time to time even though I have no interest in the products in the ads, but there are times that I wish I could just give Google a few bucks a year to give them a direct incentive to keep gmail going.
No pics in the article, but Marissa Meyer is pretty hot, in case you didn't know.
pic 1
pic 2
Oh no... it's the future.
Google does not need to be market leader in any particular fields. They just need to be good enough. Their business is presenting advertising that is targeted to an audience. Whatever they can do that keeps your eyes focused on their ads is a success. MS Maps may be a better product than Google Maps, but if I can click on a on a google search result and from that one click I'm able to find the vendor, call them, schedule an appointment and put it on my calendar, tranfer funds to them, and record the transaction on a spreadsheet I'd say Google just kicked the snot out of any of their competitors...they just managed to get me to look at about 10 times more ads than their competitors, and the ads are better targeted as well because they now know that I'm willing to spend money on product x and live near location z. This information only further refines their marketing tools.
Why doesn't anything interesting happen when I have mod points?
I think that people are too focused on Google being a search company. You have to follow the money. Google is an advertising company, not a search company.
How to Download YouTube Videos
I think the author of that article, and many of the /. posters are missing the point. Advertising is a numbers game. Google doesn't need 50%+1 market share on their calendar app in order for it to be a success. What they need is page loads. Every time a user reads an e-mail, Google makes money. Every time a user gets driving directions from Google maps, Google makes money. Google doesn't need a killer anything app. They need tons and tons of traffic. The best way of doing that is to make as many good solid apps as they can now while their wallets are still fat from their IPO. Of COURSE their stock is over priced right now. It's going to go down. How much? Who knows. This is not a 'throw ideas at the wall and see what sticks' market strategy. This is a 'do every thing we can to increase page loads' strategy. It's working, and it's going to keep working.
Check out my lame java blog at www.javachopshop.com
As for Picassa, I think that ordering prints and using the blogger and emailing pictures signals them plenty whether it's working or not so in effect, you are buying it (I order prints through Picassa all the time - since I get to choose my vendor).
www.wildpad.com
From TFA: Gmail, the e-mail service that was lauded at its 2004 launch for offering 500 times as much storage space as some rivals (they quickly closed the gap), today is the system of choice for only about one-quarter the number of people who use MSN and Yahoo e-mail.
I too like gmail, and use it more than my hotmail, yahoo, or other personal accounts. However this has not been a new killer app. Its caused the others to lift their game a bit, but has not been a huge change in the market place.
The thing with Google is that its good at its core product, searching well and targeted ads, but has a large number of products that it also supports now, eg sketch, that aren't killer apps and aren't racking in the cash.
Let's get this straight: they are a company, I'm a customer. There are certain well-accepted rules that define who should do the begging. If Google thinks they can become a business leader by catering only to their own definition of who is "133t", they need a big revamping of their marketing department.
By using gmail, you are signaling to Google that you want to keep using it. You don't need to click on their ads to provide value to them. In fact, the direct beneficiary of the click is probably not even Google, but the company advertising. The bean-counters at Google aren't counting ad revenue. They are counting how often you email whom, what your most common email topics are, and who you email what to whom. That is the value you are providing to them.
If you want to give a direct incentive to Google, start exposing more and more of your private life to them through plaintext gmail.
My main complaint about Google's product releases is not their scattershot approach -- I'm happy to see them try to find ways to improve existing product niches.
But they rarely seem to update their online products:
* Gmail, despite its strong launch and obvious success, has seen little development since. By now, we would expect to see much stronger import/export features, more filtering and junk mail controls...
* Google Video was pretty weak at launch, and amazingly, hasn't improved much since. Details on the videos shown is weak, and 3rd-party review links, imdb links, etc. are nonexistent. Methods for transferring and showing the video on portable devices and Tivo are... completely absent.
* Froogle, News, Maps, and more have stagnated since their beta launch (except that Google's purchase of new imagery for Earth has benefited Maps), despite much improvement from the competition (seen Yahoo Maps lately?).
In fact, pretty much the only products they regularly update are the native apps they purchased from startups, like Earth, Picasa, and Sketchup. These appear to have kept their development teams from pre-acquisition days, and continue to make small but regular improvements.
It's amazing to me that a company with as many employees as Google can make so many online services appear to be the work of one or two developers in their spare time -- strong on concept, but weak on follow-through.
--kirby
Almost everything google does has been done before and done better. web-based spreadsheet? web-based calendar? web-based maps? web-based e-mail? With the exception of e-mail, everything has been done before and done better than google did it.
Bean was smarter than Ender (smart to an unholy / scary degree if you read the Bean quartet). However, in battle school, Beans record as a team leader was 0 - 10 compared to Enders perfect record.
Bean's failure rate was so high because he was trying to find out what strategies worked and which ones did not, and he did so by examining strategies that no one in thier right mind would try, just to see why they failed, and what things about them potentially worked. He did this because he did not care about the win / loss record, and he was using the school environment to find out what worked and what didn't.
And when he got out of the battle school, he never failed once.
Getting back to Google, they are trying products that may or may not work. Not everything needs to be a screaming huge success, and if gmail turned into a huge disaster, its not like it would invalidate their business model for Google Search.
END COMMUNICATION
>In the seventies, there was a huge study care to provide a reference? This sounds remarkably like you pulled it out of the air. People have known since before Rockefeller cornered the oil market that being a "market leader" allowed you to set prices above marginal cost to a degree dependent on your market power, which has nothing whatsoever to do with economies of scale. To say that producing a larger slice of the market breakdown, i.e. producing more, allows you to capture more economies of scale is equivalent to saying economies of scale may exist. It's near tautological. You might check yourself next time you choose to go into clueless pedant mode.
I think Gmail has done a pretty good job of establishing itself outside the search realm.
The war with islam is a war on the beast
The war on terror is a war for peace
The problem with being a leader in the "internet search" market is that there's no such market, actually. Nobody pays to search the Internet. Much as you probably like Google, if they started requiring a paid-for account to use their search engine, you'd probably just say "fuck you very much" and go use Yahoo instead. Charging sites to be listed on your search engine would probably go even worse, and not leave you with much of a search engine if most sites refuse to be indexed.
There is no _money_ in being the leading internet search company, and there is no money in just changing the landscape and enabling people just for the hell of it. If that's all that Google were about, trust me, MS would have a hearty laugh and leave them to it.
Google makes its money out of serving ads. _That_ is its real market. The search engine is partially just a way to get people to see those ads, and partially about getting brand recognition.
And a lot of the other ventures actually follow the same pattern: getting even more people and page hits for those ads they serve. E.g., Gmail isn't there just because Google is kind and wants to donate large email accounts to the people, it's there because someone figured out, "wait, wait... people receive all these billions of emails each day... what if we could show an ad for each of those emails?" Insert cash register sounds. E.g., they come up with all these ideas for holding your data for you, not because they have too much HDD space, not because they're Big Brother and want your secrets, but because it sounds like a free ticket to show you ads each time you want to do anything with your own data.
Now I'm not saying that that's bad. It isn't. That's how capitalism works, and it certainly worked well so far. But just putting it in perspective. And saying why it's actually _not_ ok to be just a search engine: because that's not where the money is.
And conversely, for MS it's the exact same thing. They don't just want Google's internet search market, because there is no such market. What they want is you coming to MSN instead and seing _their_ ads.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
As I understand it, Google is employing the free-beta now, paid-service later strategy for their new products. They're entering into markets with established competitors and what better way to gain market share than to offer their products free of charge? If you want people to migrate their desktop environment onto the web via email & appointment schedules (MS Outlook -> Google Calendar/Gmail) and office tools (MS Excel/Word -> Google Spreadsheets/Notes) in innovative ways, you sure aren't going to get many people trying it out if they have to pay for it. And what about Adsense? Google is generating so much income from their advertising models they can afford to start up dozens of new ventures and takes bigger risks. It took time to get from command prompts to GUIs. It took time to get people to buy products online via credit card. It took time to develop the web into the social networking monster it's becoming. And it will take time for Google to eventually become the overlord of all web desktop environments. I may not like some of their practices, but I can't knock them for trying hard to bring us new technologies.
What Google is doing IMO is brilliant, by allowing employees to have pet projects and explore and push the boundaries using their expertise, Google is tapping directly into the "garage developer/inventor" projects of employees that might otherwise be developed outside of Google.
It's cost effective in many ways, employees may tend to stay on target for their standard job and/or projects (that might otherwise be a bit dull) because they CAN flex their muscles and try new things. Google gets R&D on a budget from the people on their front lines, and then take what ever might come out of that, throw it up and see if it sticks. What a great and less expensive way to find the next killer app, while possibly defining the direction of the Internet & search, and keeping employees satisfied and 'on the team'.
Get your tagline off my lawn.
gmail makes you jump through hoops to sign up. AOL makes you jump through hoops to cancel. They could form a partnership. AOL could offer a service to make it easy to sign up for a gmail account. gmail could offer a service to make it easy to cancel your AOL account.
>Gmail is a silo: you visit the site, and you check and write email, and then you
>leave.
Huh? Like when there's an address in the email, and Google offers to map it for me? Like when there's a time in the email, and Google offers to put it on my calendar?
I have a GMail tab open at all times.
Google has barely started. They're simply positioning their pieces right now. Their strategy is obviously a sneaky one: tiptoe up behind your opponents without drawing too much attention to yourself by openly beta-testing a variety of services, and then at the perfect moment, deliver the killing blow with the "kernel" of your plan that suddenly brings all these disparate services together into a nuke of integration. That kernel, for them, of course, is search.
What is search? It can be a lot of things, but in its finest form, it resembles what is popularly termed "AI". Can you imagine what Google could achieve by using search to suddenly unify all of its services? You get an email in Gmail about a picnic on the 23rd, and it's hyperlinked to a command that will put it in your Google Calendar. That's a simple scenario. Few seem to imagine search as an integration platform, like the GUI, but it is; it's not just for finding things.
I imagine the future of search to be a lot like how the ever-present computer voice in Star Trek could do almost anything for you. When computers are this sophisticated, what's the point of most GUIs? Just tell your computer what you want. GUIs can then be minimal and non-intrusive.
Now, the biggest complaint I hear about Google's services is that they have to be accessed online via a browser. Well, did you know that Firefox 3 is going to support the ability to run web applications offline?
-- random_blankspace attica ya-know-hoo dottius commius
random underscore blankspace at ya know hoo dot comedy.
Google's business methodology might not be the strongest, but it's because they can afford to be. I get the impression that they are just big kids with a huge monetary playground. They love tinkering and they love catering to other tinkerers.
I adore many of Google's new services - especially because I don't have to pay for them. I use Suggest, Gmail, Calendar, Video, Talk (with VOIP), and Maps all the time, and I occasionally find uses for Earth, Sets, and Froogle. Most of all, I love playing with all this new stuff they keep throwing at me!
No, it's not just semantics, it's actually an important distinction for understanding what's really going on. So what I'm saying is:
1. Focusing on where the money is actually makes one hell of a sense for a company.
2. All those attempts at getting into other "markets" are a bit more related than it looks, because they're tied 1-to-1 to the same source of revenue. One ad served on Gmail or Orkut or whatever brings in exactly as much money as one ad served on their search engine. And they use the same keyword matching too, as a bonus. I.e., attitudes like "well, Google is a search engine, it can just be happy to stay a search engine" are missing the real point. The money is in serving the ads, so from a business perspective anything that allows them to serve extra ads isn't really much of a shift of attention, but rather just expanding what they were already doing.
3. That shiny-hippy... err... shiny happy "well, they forced innovation, changed the landscape of the Internet, and forced MS and Yahoo to improve their act anyway" attitudes are missing the point even more. Noone sets their goal to just change landscapes for change sake, or to force their competitors to innovate. Forcing MS to improve their search engine may be good for society as a whole, but bad for Google, if it just means less people to serve ads to.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
True, to me GMail is their best product and I love it more than Google.com itself. But they also have the best map/directions site. The best image search. The most useful features into their search engine (do a search for "movie: movies" without the quotes... much more convenient than any other showtime listings).
The one thing they make that I can't live without now though is Google Calendar. The ability to access it anywhere, and have alerts sent to my cellphone is just something I've come to rely upon now. The only thing I wish they would improve on, is the fact that times can only be scheduled in 30 minute increments. So if I had a class that begins at something like 9:15 and ends at 10:40, I would have to say it runs from 9:00 to 10:30 in Google Calendar.
Where is the marketing? The big launches and endless press about how they are making our lives better & easier?
The truly great innovation of Google is their faith in their software. Rather than release half-arsed products, and expecting people to pay for the R & D to complete those products, they rely on consumers' innate desire to improve the products they use. Here's a good, free tool, with a handy set of APIs... now let's see what happens. Nobody can really complain because there was no marketing hype for it to live up to, and no sale. So the only critics are constructive critics - just what any software producer wants.
We all live in a state of ambitious poverty. -- Decimus Junius Juvenalis
This article misses the point of what Google is doing. Google isn't launching standalone web applications and having them fizzle. They are allowing us to beta-test their web application suite. Right now, you can use Sketchup to create a model of your house, and push it to Google Maps/Earth, then, when you email a perspective buyer about your house, they can (from their GMail) easily access the model of your house, and quickly add the appointment to their calendar. While this is a rather mundane example, compare it to the same process 5 years ago. Create a website, post a picture of your house. Email someone the website address, and directions to the house. Then that someone has to open their calendar, and mark the appointment.
Google's various apps do have a ways to go, but that's part of the plan. Do you think that it particularily bothers Google if not many people are using their spreadsheet at the moment? I doubt it.
Finally, regarding the GMail statistics, I have to wonder if the MSN/hotmail numbers are inflated. I would be very interested to compare usage numbers, such as the amount of non-spam mail received by the users of each service.
http://digg.com/tech_news/A_Visit_to_GooglePlex_Ir vine_and_an_inside_look_at_AdSense_Audio_with_pics !
Google maps is a huge winner. Its ajax interface allowing you to drag your map whichever way you want is still the best on the market, not to mention the satellite and hybrid overlays which, although MS also does on MapPoint, they don't do nearly as well. A similar product, google earth, is hands-down better than MS's TerraServer. And what about google utilities such as google toolbar? That alone has made my online life substantially better. Being able to highlight all the addresses on a page and link directly to google maps is something I use all the time. So, I completely disagree with the article's premise that google hasn't produced a huge winner other than their search engine. They've produced several.
Google is doing the same thing that most companies (or individuals) do when they get a lot of money for doing one thing well: they try a million other things. Like the moviestar who decides to make an album or write a children's book, the Google brain has decided that since it solved the search problem it can solve most other problems--and better than their competition.
The good news is that the farm for ideas internally rather than have ideas come from the top down. But you don't have to be smart to have a good idea, and just getting a bunch of smart people in the same place doesn't guarantee good ideas. And what's more, good ideas do not guarantee profit. You can go on and on about how cool Google Earth is or how many of your friends use Gmail, but are these neat products profitable? It doesn't sound like it.
The bad news is that they have started off like so many other arrogant tech companies, and they may end that way.
1. Become an overnight success with one product (which, by the way, was not profitable until 2000 I think)
2. Hire people as fast as you can
3. Start a boatload of other little products
4. Profits wane because competitors catch up and attack your core business
5. Save money by killing the projects that don't or can't generate revenue
6. Lay people off
7. Now you have a bunch of dead product lines, users stop using them and find something else that's interesting, now you're irrelevant
Just because your business succeeds doesn't mean you have to do steps 2 and 3 above. If Google is losing focus on its core competency and overinvesting in non-profitable products they are on their way down already. Their product line is "cool", but that only buys mindshare which doesn't necessarily translate into money.
Maybe this "process" is still just in beta? You know, like all their other stuff?
-2 "Dirty Little Troll"
I use yahoo. Did before. Do now.
I started using gmail in the early days, and the UI was too sparse. They wanted to force me to search. I didn't want to search. Additionally, they made the compose button look different from the rest, making it difficult for me to find (call me retarded, I don't care).
I went back to yahoo. I use my gmail account for almost nothing. I go there about once a month.
I just wish I could get onto the Yahoo beta. Will they ever finish that?
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
And free, just like google.
http://domains.live.com/
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
Bingo!
Finally someone is speaking truth to the Google Love-Fest masses.
Google may or may not succeed in the long run but it's not because they have some yet-unknown-secret-business-strategy-that-will-cha nge-the-world-forever. You'd think from some of these posts that they've cured cancer or something (Google-cillin?)
Good grief people! Didn't any of you learn from the bubble?
being first in a product space matters. google literally reinvented search a few years back and they were as a result, "first" into a reborn market. this has given them a huge advantage. likewise, yahoo mail and hotmail were on the scene much earlier than gmail, and have copied most of gmail's key advances (namely, huge diskspace), so many users don't care to switch.
but therein lies the point: most users don't care. if something works, they will use it until it disappoints them. this is why being first matters. look at maps - mapquest is still by far the dominant player, yet has the lamest tools. but for most people, it is good enough. you have to take yourself outside of the tech mindset to see how most users think. consider motor oil. you use it every day. do you think that much about the brand you use? are you really sure it is the best? do you even know what is the best? this is how most users see web services.
in any case, the take-away here is that most of these services have become low-margin commodities anyway. its not clear how much money is to be made for any new entrant.
See, I don't get this. You can measure gmail's usage by the number of emails going in and out of their servers, it's not that hard. You want to show Google that you use gmail... great.. then use it!
The google people don't need you to pay them directly to see how useful and popular it is. Google has decided to stake it's money on advertising, and it has to be understood that most people don't click on ads. It's about getting maximum exposure, and you are one of the 99 out of 100 people (or whatever he ratio is) that don't click ads; Google expects that (I believe they are smart enough to see that).
Now, being worried that the advertising market would crash and Google forced to shut down services is a real concern, but at this point I don't think it is not a big concern. Fearing that Google doesn't know how to track the use of services that they have full control over is illogical.
"All great wisdom is contained in .signature files"
and it's something companies rarely invest in any more. Today you need a battery of consultants and MBAs to do market research and decide whether or not a product is worth making. Google is investing here in R&D. They are amassing a ton of experience even with those products that aren't "hits". This sounds like Wall Street crying again because they don't like the way Google does business.
I saw one Google story here this past week I haven't read yet about Google starting a service to compete with PayPal. This has got to be a winner for them because nobody really trusts PayPal, PayPal is pretty sleazy in its little unregulated niche and they NEED some competition desperately. I'd trust Google (for the most part) any day of the week over PayPal. This is a service to keep an eye on.
That's exactly the myth that TFA explodes. Google hasn't in fact been particularly sucessful in it's various secondary markets. They only reason their various ventures haven't gone dark (fizzled), is that Google can throw cash at keeping them running. (But, they don't throw any cash at marketing, very little cash at integration, and very little engineering talent or cash at completing the apps and making them competitive.)
This hits the nail on the head. I checked out Google Finance pretty early and it wasn't as good as Yahoo so I stayed with Yahoo. (For instance, it had no stocks from the Toronto exchange.) I just checked it again today because of this article, and it has improved substantially. (The search box is especially impressive.)
I'm switching right now, but if this article hadn't appeared, I wouldn't.
Patrick Doyle
I mod down every jackass who puts his moderation policy in his sig. Oh, wait a sec....
Does Gmail not qualify as a market leader? Everyone I know has switched to gmail from hotmail and yahoo.
It just seems that when google enters an app space, it raises interest and awareness and utilization of the app space (tho not necessarily google's version of the app).
Before gmail, webmail existed, but was klunky, slow and not too useful. gmail starts and everyone is paying attention to their webmail service in terms of performance, disk space, and UI.
Before gmail, ajax existed, but no one cared. after gmail, it's the hottest thing since baked bread.
Before gmaps, mapping was starting to fall off charts of desktop app and only for gps. with gmaps and the various mash-ups, the application is limitless
Before gEarth, satellite imagery was a classified thing given only to the rich and priviliged. with gEarth, satellite integration into mapping became almost required and more people have access to it
Before gSpreadsheet. MS was pretty much the only game in town. OOo was there, but just offers nothing that MS doesn't. There was just no incentive to use it. but since gSpreadsheet allowed for on-line spreadsheet edit on reliable/fast servers. I've started using it to keep lists (DVD collection, anime, game high scores, etc)
Similar things can be said of just about any app space they entered. As opposed to MS, when they enter an app space, they crush the competition, and let it fester and interest in the app dies because (such as what happened to spreadsheet, document editors, browsers) there is no more innovation because MS is not willing to invest and no one else dares invest because there is no way to compete against MS, and the users lose out because functions they may want is never created. Google changes that and breathes life or new life into the app space
This has been done, it's what Fast-food does, and it's what starbucks does. They push out products (or stores in SB's case) and see what thrives and what dies. SB opens stores near each other to see what location works best; the initial idea was to kill the lower performing stores (because you are all coffee gluttons there are no lower performing stores). It is unusual that a tech company would use this model but why not. As I always say Google is about tracking data and trends to watch things spread. These tools help that and are fun. Each launch they get to watch were, how and with whom the word spreads. They are building their eventual data business sales up, they will sell this information to companies who can use it.
All I know is that Google blew it when they got rid of Google Deskbar and replaced it with Google Desktop. The former was awesome, the later is a bloated turd. Google, why can't we download Deskbar anymore?! Surely it's not because of a lack of an ad delivery system ... surely not. Do no "evil" ... as long as "good" takes a back-seat to commerce.
It's not always about selling something. How many ads in traditional media do you follow up immediately? Ever go right to the store and buy something right after looking at a newspaper ad, or pull over at the next exit after you saw a sign for beer on the freeway? Not likely. It's as much about product recognition as anything else, and that happens whether you click through or not.
TCP: Why the Internet is full of SYN.
Maybe if they actually released their stuff from Beta and tried some marketing besides techie/early-adopter word-of-mouth, they'd pick up some more market share.
Flying is easy, just throw yourself at the ground and miss. -Douglas Adams
Maybe Google doesn't need one killer app to draw people in. Maybe that's a brain-dead idea, and one that has a really short half-life. Maybe the fact that with so many apps, each app can pull in maybe 5% of people. All of them together bring in more people not only to the apps but of course to the search. No competitor integrates search into its side apps as reliably as Google.
My personal favorites right now are IG, Maps, and to a lesser extent Gmail, Groups, Calc and Froogle. I don't use Desktop, Base, Picasa, or Blogger much at all. So what? The ones I do like are enough to keep me coming to Google branded pages and the ubiquitously useful search box. Divide, attract, and conquer.
Terrorists can attack freedom, but only Congress can destroy it.
Wrong. What, you think that everybody has the money for a nav system? Mapquest is one of the Web's most popular sites, and still, in my opinion, still has a better interface than Google's. (although they should damn well get rid of that top text-entry box, above the address entry)
Sure. Microsoft's Terraserver never existed years before Google even got its own domain.
That's nice. If I want to use Google Spreadsheet, then I'll need it to have a LOT more features. It's nice for simple things, and access-anywhere and multiuser edit are very useful features, but it's not going to be going toe-to-toe with Excel for a long time.
That's it. I'm no longer part of Team Sanity.
Their PayPal equivalent checkout will be their killer app.
Everybody hates PayPal.. PayPal has no serious competition.
Google's Checkout will gain traction.. why? Because everybody wants to try things made by Google.
Unless it flops in usability and customer support, it will easily eat a big chunk of PayPal's market.
And that's some good cash for Google.
Like the fist of an angry god.
What he can't kill, he has sex on. Trent.
Some might call those projects failures. I call it 'learning'. They have the money. They want to expand. But instead of pouring billions into an area they know nothing about, they spend a fraction of that on some experimental probes into a lot of different areas. One of those sortees might discover something interesting. Another might find something that is useless by itself, but when combined with other information they've just found becomes much more viable. They're evolving at the edges and growing into new niches, slowly at first. It's even possible that they might find something more profitable than search, and the Google of the future might have different connotations for the average punter. If nothing else, they're not betting the farm on one cash cow. If the bottom falls out of search, they have GMail. If webmail services fall into disrepute, they have Google Earth. If that dies, I'm betting they'll have something else by then.