Slashdot Mirror
Why Google's New Products Need Not Succeed
RJS writes "There have been some industry analysts lately who have called into question Google's real success, claiming that while Google's search remains a big winner, it has missed the mark when it comes to generating profitable, secondary products. BusinessWeek has just such an article ("So much fanfare, so few hits") but others argue that success relative to the size of Google's bread-and-butter (search) ultimately doesn't matter because it doesn't cost Google much extra to keep these secondary services — like Gmail — operational: the Google grid is on and growing regardless of what services are being run on top of it."
These are all basic principles of economics. Nothing for you to see here, move along.
--- What
Gmail is by far my favorite web-based email client. Google Calendar has proven to be a very useful tool as well. I use Google Local at least once a week and on and on and on. Maybe Google knows they make enough money on search and that they just want to release good, useful, user-friendly products that are miles better than the competition, even if they aren't profitable. Yahoo's gazillion ads on their email service is one reason I don't use it anymore.
firestream.net
it took google's search engine 3-5 years to overcome inertia in a relatively new arena (web search). Now, it is competing against much longer established business (e-mail has been around for multiple decades). It will not be overnight that Google services will grow, but they will grow.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
I do disagree with TFA in that it treats other services as inconsequential. There is a reason that Yahoo! ranks #1 on lists of most popular websites. Although there are GMail and a customized homepage, Yahoo! still beats them on those fronts. The search market is pretty well defined. In order for Google to become an even bigger success it must become extremely successful in its side businesses. I refuse to accept TFA's arguement that it doesn't matter because they aren't spend that much money on it.
Information wants a fueled airplane waiting at the hangar and no one gets hurt.
These analysts miss the point. The big win for Google is to replace Micro$oft as the default platform. As Google tools, google desktop and of course Google search as the homepage become the default start point for users, the operating system becomes less relevant.
Put another way, once people are Google-centric, they can use a Mac or a "GooglePC" or anything else. Linux anyone?
If Google can't find secondary sources of income and continues to ride on excitement and enthusiasm they will fall prey to the dot-com business model. Eventually someone will build a better mouse-trap (search engine).
One ring to bind them - should probably have more fiber and less rings in their diet.
When Google starts charging for all this free crap, and trust me they will,
/.
Sorry, I'd rather trust Google's established business model of targetted ads than some dvorak like tro^h^h^hpundit on
There are shills on slashdot. Apparently, I'm one of them.
It takes time for new software to catch on. In the meantime I think google is doing the right thing by putting a lot of new products out there. Maybe all of them won't catch on but it seems like the majority of them are building a following.
That's right: Bah! Following the example of my heroes W Buffett and W Gates III, I hereby announce that I'm giving all my savings to the Bill And Melinda Gates Foundation. I don't want any dynasty founded on my $763.84.
Google is building highly usable applications that are not OS-dependent. THAT is what is scaring the traditional software makers. The browser is the interpreter. Firefox is Google's wedge and everything they do is helping to change the way people use computers.
Rich And Stupid is not so bad as Working For Rich And Stupid.
What did you expect? Google started off on searching for things, and they have found ways to incorporate it into their other products. It would seem that Google's main offering is "searching for information". Their secondary products enhance or focus different areas of search. For example, Froogle, or Google Maps. Then you have Ad Sense that provides based on what you're searching for.
Google hasn't made any statements about major secondary products. It doesn't look like they are trying to. They are providing tools that people find useful. The ultimate judge is the consumer, and so far, it looks like Google must be doing something right, because the consumers like most of what they are offering.
To say that Google will remain successful even if it comes up with "useless" products, is not true. Competition will ensure that they think of something new. Sure they have little knicknacks here and there (Google Labs?) but they're not MEANT to be big products.
If Google comes up with another major product, I'm pretty sure we'll know. They have the resources and talent for it.
Everything Google launches is to build their ability to advertise in the future. IE their music tracking thing that launched today (or yesterday). Google pages, it is easy to have the content then find and search, plus putting ads in is easier when you control the template. I conjecture that they are using these services to track trends and usage to use with their advertising. If they can give you a accurate profile of people who search for "lop eared rabbit" (they tend to listen to jazz, write blogs about their kids, send emails to family and friends, they have only a few documents on their computers, etc...) then the advertising can be more complex than key words. The current state of advertising is poor, last time I Googled office supplies I needed the name of the office supply store down the road, I wasn't looking for ads. Generally I know what I am looking for Google is the Easy way to find it. I'm looking for Office Max I'm not concerned about an Office Depot. But if Google knew there was a White Castle between me and Office max and that I also listened to Hard Rock and that Hard Rock fans like White Castle they can show me that ad instead of a Staples ad. They are attempting to build advertising profiles and they use new stuff to build profiles and watch data spread. They are as much sociologists as they are programmers.
Actually, their approach isnt that much different from Microsoft's, at least from an abstract view. They are slowly accumulating more and more useful products, and over time this will bring them to a critical mass. Once they surpass this, then more and more of their "other tools" will be the tools of choice in their specific areas, and then Google will be a monster in the marketplace. The trick will be to not then turn around and be "evil" (i.e. charge for services that were once free because you can, etc).
stuff |
"Windows Live Mail seems like someone tried to take Outlook and GMail and just mash the two of them together. However, Microsoft has still dropped the ball in making it easy to work with. For anyone who is part of the beta just try and delete multiple mails at the same time"
Exactly! I stopped beta-testing it because they made it so difficult to delete the spams. In the regular hotmail, you can tag-check the spams in your inbox quickly and then delete the tagged ones. In "Live", you have to right-click all of them and then left-click the "Delete" button which is too close to the "Print" button so you end up accidentally printing spams instead of deleting them. Of course, if Microsoft/Hotmail were to ever bother to put a spam filter in place, this would be much less of a problem.
Where were you when the voynix came?
But if you own that overpriced stock on the premise that Google is going to keep generating new businesses to complement the only thing they have that makes them money -- then it matters whether GWhatever turns a profit or not.
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
Not as many as they'd like to I think, but then again, they can also advertise that space as being there as long as no one is using it. They may or may not do that, but if you've got enough space for 100k people to use 2gb+ and only 5k or them use that, and the rest use 100mb then you know that you can really offer 2gb+ to 20x more people. It's an airline strategy. They almost always over bok becuase they know that not everone will show up for thier flight. Trust me, google knows what percetage of people will actually use all 2gb.
Whoever wrote this silly blogpost clearly hasn't considered the real reason Google needs their products to succeed. Google's bread and butter is their search product. But here's the problem: search growth is slowing. The only way for Google to keep growing their business at the breakneck speed that they and Wall St have become accustomed to is to find new places besides search pages that they can stick their ads on. Right now Google gets to do that using their Adsense program. Thousands of websites around the world are making Google tons of money. But the margins there will keep slipping as more competitors (Yahoo, MSN etc) come on in and offer to share higher percentages of their revenue with 3rd party publishers. This leaves Google with having to own their own "content" pages where they can stick their ads and book 100% of revenues from them. Unless their other products succeed, Google will truly become a one trick pony as far as their revenues are concerned. No responsible business can afford to become a one trick pony. That way lies death.
Have you ever consider their know-how in data compression and data storage? They have indexed *almost* (ok, ok, maybe just HTML and Images, but whatever) the whole fuckin' world wide web.
And how much of that 2GB isn't actually shared with other users? Do you have some pr0n there? Maybe other thousand users have the same, maybe even with the same filename. So they say "you are using 1.5GB", but of that 1.5GB much is stored in a shared space with other users.
Funny videos, PowerPoint Slides, pr0n... it's the same file stored there for you, or anyone in the world. A few security concerns about it, surely, but nothing THAT critical (think in something like: "if SHA256 and MD5 doesn't match, save in a new shared space").
I think the GP's point is that all these secondary 'misses' are just another way to keep the google brand (and google search and adwords) front in center in Internet culture. One could argue that Coke wastes tons of money developing advertisements and promotions, but they have a very strong brandname and they got it because they continually push it. As soon as Google stops releasing a new beta for everyone to go gaga over once a month, they will no longer hold the spotlight, and people will take them for granted. As long as google uses new products to generate buzz, they will keep generating revenue for their ads.
An analogy would be how Nintendo used to operate... I'm sure they didn't make a ton of money on each game title, but having a good collection of games was critical to get people to buy the console in the first place. This analogy isn't too great though, because nowdays the consoles most likely sell at a loss and the bread and butter are the games and accessories.
Self-referential Sigs are cool on /. these days...
54
Gmail serves another function: Google wants to track users' search behaviour. Gmail is a sweetener to get people to login to Google, so now Google can track searches by individual users across different machines.
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
People will rail against the "spreading thin" of Google as they offer a wider variety of services. Dozens of failed or mediocre offerings, oh my. If we look at certain other fields where the drive is to innovate and create a new and powerful product we find similar, if not significantly worse, failure rates. The medical and pharmaceutical industries are full of failures and high R&D costs. However, when they get their one single success it provides a level of value that will support them to their next great hit.
Google is doing the right thing in two ways here - they are allowing their developers to think and work on their own pet projects, which will ensure retention of some of the best and brightest, and they are understanding that for every brilliant idea there will be a string of failures. If they spend one billion on R&D (made that number up for the sake of argument), drop 999 products that aren't winners and get one single product that becomes a 6-billion-a-year success, they will have done the best thing for their investors, for their developers, and for their own continued growth.
Yes exactly, anyone already had the opportunity to be invited. This invation scheme is not blocking anyone anymore, excepts bots maybe.