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Google Winning By Losing?
eldavojohn writes "The CEO of a small search company wrote an interesting piece for Search Insider about Google's unique strategy. It notes that Google has yet to become a leader in any technology other than search — but that its mostly unsuccessful attempts to branch out all end up bolstering its brand, and thus its search ad revenue. Is the new recipe for success to do one thing unbelievably well and several other things indifferently? Does this remind you of strategies from any other companies?" From the article, "Some of Google's non-search projects are really extensions of its search monetization, and are likely to succeed. But others projects mean entering areas where Google doesn't have much experience, and is taking a risk. With regard to those riskier areas, the key question for Google's future is whether it can realize that losing is really one of the best assets the company has."
This goes right along with the saying that "Any news is good news". As long has the Google name keeps getting spread around and people keep talking about the new things they are doing, this will drive viewers it its different pages and products.
Search, Gmail, Google Earth, Google Maps, Picasa
Google has several interesting and best of breed web based applications. Not all of their products are going to be the best at what they do. This should hardly be news to anybody.
Google pr0n search!
I'm working off the same principle by intentionally failing my degree.
Does this remind you of strategies from any other companies?
Yahoo for one.
Most companies have some MBA types sitting at the top working out how "the street" is going to respond to their every action and pushing that advice down the tree to tell developers what to do. As such, analysts (like this guy) are always trying to figure out what these MBA types are thinking, and why they are doing certain actions. This isn't how Google works. The developers are basically set free to do whatever the hell they want and they get rewarded when the company does well from it. Is it any surprise to find that the analysts are confused by Google?
How we know is more important than what we know.
My experience of Google's non-search applications so far suggests that they are far from mediocre. It's inevitable that it will take them longer to really come to the fore in fields which are more mature that the search engine market was when they first rose to prominence.
In addition, they have an excellent ability to fill niches in the market that are not being filled adequately (e.g. Picasa, Maps, News), and their products are differentiated by being ad-supported but otherwise free, which is a devastating approach for any competitor relying on a micropayment or subscription model. They seem to have the leverage to do things no other company could do at the moment, such as the book search system they are building and the Scholar academic journal search engine. This means that even if the implementation is 'indifferent' the sheer usefulness of the actual data being delivered still sets them apart.
In other news, why do we really need more Google news? Wake me up when something new actually happens. Some guy writing some vague opinions about some company is not 'news' in any sense.
Read Pynchon.
Does this remind you of strategies from any other companies?
/.ing the links, etcetc)
I was kinda thinking you were talking about Microsoft, but they don't do anything well.
Apple cannot be it because they do everything well.
However, this does remind me of Slashdot
Does one thing well (dupes)
and is bad at everything else (stories, having links work, not
(this post would have been SOO much better if this story was indeed a dupe)
you mean like they did with search?
Stop Computers/Cars Analogies on S
Google is trying to maintain the appearance of being innovative, and doing a good job of it. Every time they release a new product, even if they downgrade its importance or ditch it later, it gets tremendous buzz. Buzz is where it's at, and everytime they generate more buzz they drive more advertisers, searchers, and AdSense publishers to their site.
Another advantage to developing TONS of new products is that it keeps their folks busy on cool/fun new products. Most software engineers want to be able to go home to their families and have something fun to show them as an example of what they do. Showing your kid GoogleMaps or GoogleEarth will impress the heck out of them, and they'll think you're a genius.
If Google didn't have the 70/20/10 development principal, these engineers would be going home and answering their friends' prompts with "Ummm...if you want to know what I do, check out the results of searching for Mexican Pizza now vs. 2 years ago, the results are so much more relevant". Fun.
Crack - Free with every butt and set of boobs
Google has a lot of money to throw around at the moment, perhaps too much to not be trying something new.
On the other hand, I really think it needs to actually make one of those "side projects" into a real win, because I think that as good as Google search is, I don't know that its worth that market cap by itself. I think people invested in Google precisely because they thought they could use their search advantage to create other products that would be successful. To that end, I think Google is doing what it should be doing, but they may want to find something that works really well and maybe not go too far overboard with accepting indifferent projects. Loss leaders are fine, but you can't have every product be one. Even Microsoft has a fair proportion of revenue generators in addition to the indifferent crap that they give away for free. Google has... search.
The YouTube acquisition bothers me in that regard. People would like to think that YouTube could get common carrier protection, or that they can somehow reach a deal with the MPAA/RIAA sharks, but I'm not sure I'd bet the farm on that The acquisition was expensive and dangerous to begin with. Now, the Google ownership makes it worth the effort of having the sharks attack for a score. Google isn't an ISP and there's no reason that just because you have an unfiltered website for posting means that you are now in the same boat as telcos and ISPs in terms of not being liable for what goes over your lines. YouTube isn't infrastructure, its a leaf node.
Google's got a lot of goodwill capital, but eventually, I think someone is going to start asking where the bacon is if the investment money is being used for indifferent projects around plain old search.
...the question as posed suggests issues where none exist.
Second-guessing success does nothing more than reflect the lack of understanding of the questioner. The 'failings' are subjective, reaching no further than the opinions of one person; the process put up for examination are at best simply not known, again, at least to the questioner.
And last, but not least, the questioner hints that perhaps there is some sort of success formula to be captured and applied elsewhere, which is at best similar to pretending that quick-sand is concrete. Even if it were, the playing field to which it applied would have gone subterranean before the ink was dry on any report, requiring a new approach, new analysis, etc.
Best to ponder another research paper topic, Grasshopper.
I can tell you one way they're winning: when Google releases something new, I pay attention, because there's a good chance I'll like it more than what the competition offers. They've got my brand loyalty by not sucking.
- Gmail: I don't know the numbers on whether it's beating Yahoo, Hotmail and AOL (doubt it), but I know it beats all of them in usability. Hotmail? Right, give me some more buggy javascript, annoying hooks into Messenger, and ads that make my brain seize. Yahoo just turns me off because it seems like everything Yahoo runs too slow. I never bothered even trying it. AOL? Heh.
- Chat: Yahoo and Windows chat are ridiculously bloated and annoying pieces of software. Give me one reason that a chat program should suck so much memory and do so many annoying things. AOL chat? Heh. I'm just including AOL as a joke at this point; I wouldn't know, I haven't used it since 1995. Google chat is sleek, simple.
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APIs/development: No surprise here, Google's APIs are the best (speaking as a programmer). Yahoo is actually not too far behind in this area-- I know that at least one of their APIs beats Google, and that's the geocoding API. They give better accuracy-- I've tested this myself as part of my job. That would be great except for one thing... Google's API allows 50,000 requests per day, Yahoo's only 5,000. Therefore, I have to stick with Google for the bulk of work, going to Yahoo only to correct hard to find addresses.
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Mapping: A small subcategory maybe, but Google beats the rest here easily. Google maps are just cooler, faster, easier to use.
I'll stop there because this is starting to sound like a slashvertisement. But in my mind they're winning in every area that counts. If the majority of people stick with Microsoft, Yahoo and AOL, it's their loss, and maybe this is the one place Google is loosing: the constant, unceasing barrage of advertisement that keeps companies like AOL in business by recruiting customers too clueless to know any better.My script don't crash! She crashes, you crashed her!
Google wants to be loved and not reviled like Microsoft. So they don't want their products to succeed.
When Google does it it's an interesting and enigmatic experiment that everybody likes to watch, but when it's Microsoft (and we're talking about exactly the same thing here, except that they started 10 years ago) then they're "stumbling in the dark" and it's just "a matter of time before they fail". XBox, MSN, Encarta, most of their server products, etc. That's just too funny.
Sure, being number one goes back to primeval days. However, various research has shown that while the alpha male chimpanzees slug it out, the next guy down is getting more sex.....
Perhaps Google are just not stupid enough to be pouring their energy into alpha-male business tactics.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
Look everyone!!! ....I failed to get first post....again!
Remember my name! You'll be seeing my name lots more!
1. Do one thing well
2. Suck at everything else tried
3. ?
4. PROFIT!
Table-ized A.I.
Actually, what you want has already been done, to a certain extent. Enter Monzy's "Unsafe Search".
It works by submitting your query to Google twice: once as a regular query, and once with Google's "SafeSearch" enabled. It then subtracts all of the "SafeSearch" results from the regular query, leaving you with only the hits that Google deems "unsafe." Brilliant!
So which which one of you shet eating numbskulls at slashdot has just bought shares in google? Either that or you are trying to emulate google by being great at one thing and sucking at everything else. Although its not working is it chaps, cos you are good for nothing, and the only thing you are bad at is sucking cocks.
http://goatse.cz/
That's the fundamental problem when you measure success by market share. You just don't get the whole picture.
They might not all be 'market share' leaders, but Gmail, Maps, Docs and Spreadsheets, Calendar, Picasa and Sketchup are all arguably best in category products.
And the main point which failed to even score a mention is that what Google does very well (and is improving all the time) is to integrate these diverse offerings in a coherent way. You can't even really talk about market share there, because there is no other company that offers the same breadth of integrated services from a single account.
Gmail? Google Maps? I use those two regularly. I know lots of people who switched all their e-mail to GMail (keeping their old addresses by forwarding and using foreign From:). I use Google Maps pretty exclusively, after I got disappointed with both MapQuest and Yahoo Maps.
Google Calendar is actually also pretty darn good, and new users (who aren't all locked into Outlook/Yahoo/Palm/whatever) like it a lot.
I would say that those two are VERY successful extensions. Certainly not *LOSING* extensions. Calendar is at least on par.
m
Google could do more to drive people to their side products like post ads for them on their search pages, but it could turn off the users and drive them away from Google. Right now those extras that Google develops brings more traffic to the Google website through the various integration features Google has built in them. It's much better to use those other products to drive people to the search then trying to give those secondary products dominance whilst loosing dominance in your primary product.
Ask Vincent Kennedy McMahon how his other business ventures are going.
the key question for Google's future is whether it can realize that losing is really one of the best assets the company has
No.
Does Google shoot itself in the foot every time it scores a win with a new product? Of course not. It is not the losing that is important. That's simply a by-product of taking a lot of shots on goal; most of them miss. But Google doesn't celebrate the failures. It celebrates willingness to take chances and try new things, because it knows that such an attitude will lead to more attemps, less staying in the safe zone, and ultimately more successes.
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
This is what Oracle does. To me, they are a database vendor. Yes they have development tools in java, application servers, soa solutions etc. I have been working with their technology for over two years now, and the products other than the database really sucks. The database sucks too, but it sucks in a stable manner.
Especially the application server is a pain in the a.s, and their development tools make you question your life as a developer. At the moment they have a product portfolio hidden behind their brand constructed by the database. This seems to work though, they somehow reflect the image of a large vendor with many solutions. (not to me, but to managers, market etc.)
Google does well, because... they have a single popular product. The search engine. It makes enough money to fund a lot of failures. Everything else is just them playing around hoping to strike lucky again. At the rate they're going, they'll probably end up with another succesful product through sheer dumb luck. This is probably the idea.
But why do people find this so strange? Microsoft have a similar way of working. A lot of their products lose money. They make all their money from Windows and Office. Like Google search, this is a cash cow. There's little room for growth, so all the money is invested in getting a foothold in other areas.
When TFA said "losing is an asset", all kinds of red flags went up in my head.
Remember when the tech media was all over the idea of giving away free PCs and Internet access just to make money off the adware and spyware? They also loved those Internet pet stores who spent gazillions on Superbowl ads just to increase "mindshare", not to mention the free delivery-by-bike-messenger-service... you could buy a chocolate bar and some rasta dude with a bright orange and green messenger bag shows up at your office a few hours later... they wouldn't even take tips.
The bubble-era was full of companies with bad ideas, which the media ate up and sold. We all know what happened after.
You figure there was a lesson learned. But when the media starts spouting stupid crap like "losing is an asset", I can't help but worry that another bubble is starting to rise.
What will determine Google's business success in the long run is a) the moats it can build around its businesses, and b) whether they can overcome their competitors' moats. (A moat is some advantage that protects the company from competition. In the tech industry this is usually called "stickiness")
In some of the businesses mentioned in the article, such as IM and email, moats exist, but unfortunately Google is on the wrong side of those moats. AIM and Y! Mail are on the inside, and Google is on the outside trying to get in. These moats are not that strong (very few are in technology), but it doesn't look like Google is making too much headway. If anyone should be scaring Yahoo Mail and AIM, it's Facebook and Myspace. Those guys already have a list of your friends, which eliminates a major switching cost, and they have already shown that contextualized communication wins. (Most college kids don't use email anymore -- they use fb.) I'm convinced that only business-related email is saving email as a paradigm in the next 10 years, but who knows what can happen in that time?
I have been trying to identify Google's moats and I can think of a few. The first is the brand name. Google is cool because they release a bunch of cool technology and they win the evangelizers, who are really important when it's only a matter of picking among similar-quality search engines. The second is that they have supposedly assembled a really amazing team. This is not so easy to do, even with a large amount of money, as MSN Search has shown. Finally, the infrastructure has to be given some credit. Not just the hardware farms, but the gigantic databases that have been assembled over time which might make Google a better-informed and therefore better-results-producing search.
The above moats -- both google's and competitors' -- are only fair, not permanant. The upside is that Y! and AIM's moats can be destroyed. So it is conceivable that in the long run, Google chips away and evenutally wins those markets through tough-nosed competition. They'll have to make much better sites before we get to that point.
The downside is that these moats are not as strong as platform lock-ins. Technologies are so interdependent that platforms (something other companies are truly dependent on) naturally form monopolies, and those monopolies naturally give birth to other monopolies. Microsoft is a perfect example. And it is not hard to imagine them using their browser platform to become the winner in search. Unfortunately, google has not yet been able to form a platform (gmaps mashups don't count). I think they are really trying to do this by becoming what we used to call a portal (before 2.0 was cool). The problem is that nobody is dependent on any of their pieces. Web search isn't a dependency or a launching point, except to the extent that people used to use the search engine as their homepage (who needs that when we have search boxes in the browser?).
MS doesn't even need to make MSN as good as Google.. they just have to get it "good enough" such that it isn't worth people's time to switch away from the default search in IE. The whole idea espoused by the article of "winning by losing" is ridiculous. The fact is that Google is winning bigtime in search -- so big that they can afford to lose elsewhere. But they certainly aren't losing on purpose, or solely to promote the google brand. And they have little room for error in search.
Well, then I say FUCK OFF you slimy DOUCHEBAG!
Except it rarely works that way. I have some experience with both chess and Go, and have been the inexperienced player in that scenario more than once. I've yet to see even one single instance where it works like that from beginning to end.
The inexperienced player may pull one or two surprisingly good maneuvers out of sheer dumb luck, maybe even gain a temporary advantage out of those. But in the long run he'll fail to use and consolidate that advantage and the more experienced player will _bury_ him.
The chance to win a match by sheer dumb clueless doing something random that the other isn't expected is negligible because it just needs too many moves in a row where that happens. If the chance to make a surprisingly good and unexpected move is, say, 1 in 1000 (remember, it has to be not just good, but also some radical new strategy that noone tried before and the good player isn't expecting), then the chance to make two in a row is 1 in 1,000,000. And the chance to make 4 in a row is 1 in 1,000,000,000,000. Keeping up like that for a whole game is just not going to happen.
Plus, good players are good because they can adapt and use logic to different situations. He's not going to just give up and run in circles for the next half an hour just because you did one different move. He'll keep reacting and probing and you only need to get out of that lucky streak once or twice for him to fully use it against you.
Basically "beginner's luck" is a myth. It's a crap excuse by people who aren't as good as they think, to not admit that they played badly. Or that maybe they let you win. But if they didn't, then that supposed beginner actually played pretty damn well.
And if Google's secret sauce is "beginner's luck", then maybe all it says is that the big "experienced" players are the ones playing badly in that space. Maybe it's not Google who's clueless there.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
They have a search engine but a majority of their money comes from adsense. Thats about it. Nothing else really generates much revenue at all.
Part of Google's simpicity is that it's contantly evolving and creating itself. I say it rather than them because it's become this thing that all of us are sort of changing.
I've recently been getting into Google Analytics http://tinyurl.com/dc7ts and watching how their site tracking tools are becoming seamlessly integrated with their (or your) ad programs and revenue stream(s). While, still very clunky and lacking a great UI, the potential is obviously great.
Google IS the web now.
oO0Oo
If that happened, 3M would have been out of business ages ago. It's about inventing and innovating. Good ideas, and execution of good ideas is what it is all about. One of these days, search will become much more of a commodity. Google will have to extend its search to utilize it more ways that people want to continually improve its product. But still, change will occur, and Google has to be ready for it. This is one big reason why Google is trying to do so many things. Google would want to invent the YouTubes, the KeyHoles, etc. but in the end, purchased them. They sure would have saved a ton of money not acquiring those companies, and by building all the things that are there. The guys who do one thing extremely well are the ones who want to sell off their company to the highest bidder after a few years. It's that simple.
the strategy is more, do one thing unbelievably well so that you have the freedom to experiment with lots of other things without worrying about how successful they might be economically. you get the benefit of being seen as a free-thinking innovator
For a company that only hire the best from the best schools, it is rather funny they excel in only one area. i believe there is a lot of hot air inside google..
Jesus titty-fucking H Christ on a bike fucking me sideways with a chainsaw THAT WAS A DUMB ARTICLE.
I am stupider for having read it.
As will you be. Don't do it.
Microsoft has been successful on two fronts: Operating systems and Office. On almost everything else, they have failed. (from a profitability point of view)
Maybe it's just that Google has enough money to throw it around, knowing well that most of its projects will never get a positive cash flow, but taking risks is the only way to stumble upon the next big thing.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
Is the new recipe for success to do one thing unbelievably well and several other things indifferently? Does this remind you of strategies from any other companies?"
Pentagon.
There you are, staring at me again.
I haven't seen (with a few expections) Google attempt to make money (and hence "market share") on any of its products except Ads. This is exactly how TV stations work - they make shows (some are funny some not, some boring some OK) in the hope they you will watch their channel and hence improve their ratings in turn improving the amount they can charge advertisers for air time. TV stations make a huge investment making/buying shows in the hope that you will watch their channel over another. With Google's non-core projects they must be investing in them because 1. interest rates are not as good as more Ad hits and 2. because they can. The up shot is they get to maybe in the future sell the fruits for direct money instead of indirect (ad) money. TV stations/producers do this too (but only recently in the life of the TV) - box set anyone? (or should I say Gmail, calendar, docs and spreadsheets, picasa web albums, groups, maps, finance, earth, page creator, talk, video, news.... wow there are a lot aren't there!)
Google is certainly a leader in search, and a legitimate player in other technologies (mail, picture management, and so on). Based on what I've seen from them recently, however, the technology that unifies all these and makes up their core business is the advertising business. Their auction-like system for Adwords is one of the most innovative things they do, and it is wildly profitable. They just bought up a company that does nothing but match up radio ad sellers and buyers. Just ads - no other technology.
Google is an advertising company. It is not a mail company, a picture company, or even a search company. This should be no surprise, as the ads are where the money comes from. The search (and all the other services) are just there as drivers for the ad business.
Think about that carefully. The core business of many companies you know and love isn't what you think it is. Gillette is not a razor company, it's a razor blade company. Starbucks and Barnes and Noble are not coffee and book companies, respectively, they are experience companies. They sell the experience of buying {coffee, a book}.
Finding *without* searching. Just zap through the internet! Just like here: http://www.webjumping.com/
Continuous positive slashdot karma since... uh, maybe next year.
A lot of people here seem to be missing the point about losing...
What Google is doing is VERY different in today's market - they are building things that they know might suck, and they don't care about taking a few hits.
Too many companies respond to failure by never trying anything outside of their core competencies again, and this limits the potential of these companies. The fact that Google are prepared to fail, prepared to lose at some things is definitely a major asset for a company today, and I think that's what the author was referring to.
Google is like Walmart - offering free services (which may or may not be better than competitors services which you may or may not have to pay for) propped up by their ad revenue.
The result of this is the destruction of their competitors.
One day we'll all work for Google.
They're what bring you to Google's product.
Google's product is adsense and adwords.
Deleted
http://maps.yahoo.com/beta
Try it. It is faster and has some amazing features that just trounce google maps into the ground.
the best email service, probably you forgot about google earth as well..
Somehow, I think John Nash (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Forbes_Nash) would be laughing out loud on the topic! Sometimes, if you didn't win, it doesn't mean you lost!
Take Russian Roulette: if you fire the first shot and it is a blank, and then you give up, you did not win, but definitely you did not lose since you are still alive!!!!
"There is always an easy solution to every human problem -- neat, plausible, and wrong."
H. L. Mencken
A trip to Iraq?
It's ok, no-one actually reads the articles.
Interesting real world example of "The Long Tale" effect?
> Is the new recipe for success
> to do one thing unbelievably
> well and several other things
> indifferently?
"Unbelievably well" does not equal success, and "indifferently" does not equal failure. Only marketing leads to success. I'll leave it to you to come up with examples.
First of all, Yahoo! Maps is flash based and doesn't even work properly across all platforms. Only recently has it started working in Linux. 64 bit? Forget it.
Secondly, even on the platforms where it does work, it is HORRENDOUSLY SLOW compared to Google Maps. This is easy to see if you use it in an application that has lots of way points on it, like Frappr. As an example take the Kopete People page. After it *eventually* loads - when I try to zoom in on an area, Frappr pretty much barfs all over itself, leaving the waypoints where they were and not updating them properly at all. This is on an Athlon XP 2800 - not the newest machine but something that should be able to cruise through a web based maps application!
Also, the maps on yahoo! maps are just plain ugly at a lot of zoom levels, and they don't have anywhere near as much sat. imagery at the deep zoom in levels (my city is totally missing, it's all there on Google).
Oh and lastly, the "search this map" function in yahoo! maps is a joke and hardly works at all.
PS if you want traffic maps on Google just go to here
a little company called Cisco. Cisco's main goal is to sell expensive networking hardware. Everything else they do is ultimately designed to put as many bits on the wire as possible so that you need more networking gear. There's a statistic that a company who switches to VOIP ends up spending 4$ to every 1$ for their network. And with video it goes up to 15$. I think Google is much the same. Anything that causes more people to hit web pages with Adsense powered ads brings them back to their core, money-making business.
... on what exactly the Pentagon is doing unbelievably well these days ...
Launch every sig.
Microsoft is proof that you don't have to be the best to win, you just have to be ubiquitous.
Google's out there experimenting and trying things because they might be great.
Microsoft's trying to extend a monopoly with little concern for actual innovation. And they're arrogant bullies as well.
THAT influences how we view them: fun, whacky inventors versus mean, leveraging bullies.
That plus, what GREAT software has MS made?
Goggle is the undisputed leader in contextual advertising. They have at least a two year lead over their competitors. That's their cash cow. That's how they generate their huge profits. How can anyone who wants to be CEO ignore that? I didn't read all the posts, but I think this hasn't been mentioned in any of the replies. People are discussing Google Maps, GMail and what not. That's only the vehicles for contextual advertising.
I, for one, welcome our Google-Search-and-mediocre-everything-else Overlords.
Google's other services haven't caught on because their main website is so tragically empty. Google.com gets all of the traffic, yet when you go there, all you get is a basically blank screen with a place to type in your search terms. The "more" link isn't terribly enlightening. Google needs to have a fully fleshed out web PORTAL if they want to win in any other category. You should be able to go to google.com and have it all layed out there with some very user friendly suggestions and advice. There should be big, helpful links to gmail, froogle (with today's hot buys), maps (today's hot searches??), etc., etc. How about a "Did you know?" section? Or, and "Introducing..." section. They aren't leveraging their search dominance in any way at all.
Many companies launch ``unsuccessful'' ventures as part of their branding efforts because many times those unsuccessful ventures lead to profits in other areas.
/could/ buy one. So even if Wendy's is losing money on keeping advertising around for a product that sells poorly, the make it up from profits on other products that they wouldn't have otherwise sold if they didn't advertise for the poorly selling product.
A good example is IBM's now defunct OS/2 line. In and of itself, it failed fairly spectacularly. Yet it was responsible for helping to bring in billions of dollars to IBM.
Another example are things like the F1 teams of the big automakers. As businesses unto themselves, they lose money (sometimes hand over fist) but the also put the automakers into the international spotlight and help bring in revenue for other divisions.
Another example is the triple decker hamburgers at Wendy's. Almost no one buys them. But surveys have shown that they drive traffic. Many people go to Wendy's just because they
Another example is the help desk I used to work third shift on. I rarely took calls. My wages and operating expenses were significant. On the face of it, it was hard to justify the expense for a service that no one really used. But then the marketing department did a survey and it turned out that having a warm body available to answer phones around the clock was one of the key selling points that brought in new business. Even if clients never used the service, they chose the firm I was at because they offered that service.
So what Google is doing is nothing new. It's a business tactic that has been around for as long as Homo sapiens has been doing business.
There are two reasons the MBAs are confused, including TFA, but not your reason - 1. Google has all its eggs in one basket - adsense/adwords, but no one knows how big the ad market can be when ad views move from TV to the web. 2. Google's death in adsense will be really hard to predict - the dynamic is that if/when their search results start to suck, a consumer will search more to compensate for the poorer results, ironically delivering more ads... That is, as an end nears in adsense, Google will increase in profitability (their last hurrah will be spectacularly profitable).
People seem to want to buy cool stuff when you make it. The majority of the stuff Sun used to make was cool back before they started buying a bunch of other companies and trying to sell their not-as-cool products. Apple makes cool stuff now and look how well they're doing. Making cool stuff seems to be a winning strategy. The problem is that if you lose focus on what makes your company great (The making cool stuff part) you end up like Sun, the drunken hobo of the IT world.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
This is really old strategy.
One very valid marketing strategy states that you company should have 3 products:
1 product to announce
1 product to sell
1 product to make money
And they give some examples. Like McDonald's. Announce the BigMac, sell fries, and make money by selling soda (which is in fact their product with the highest profit margin).
That is pretty much what google is doing. They announce these "new products", sell "seaching", and make money with advertising.
I really don't see what is new on this.
morcego
For an SEM, Did-it isn't small. Used to work there and glad to see we got one of our articles /.ed.
here it is...are you ready?
1.????
2.????
3.????
4.Profit!!!!
they say it is often more relevant then the comment above, all we know is its called the Sig!
In the beginning, "scarcity" ("only xx invites per user") was a great marketing tactic to get people excited and involved. In fact, I remember, Gmail invites were even being sold on eBay for $500 a pop!
:-)
Once past the "scarcity", it is now "exclusivity". You have to be invited to be part of the "club". "Not everyone is allowed, only those with 'friends'".
I doubt if it is a ploy to throw spam bots off, because Google does not employ clueless, newbie developers who don't know how to handle spoof/spam attacks
Ravi
http://www.linkoverload.com/
My blog: RavisRants.com
Q: What is google's product anyway?
A: *shrugs* Search me.
Have you read my journal today?
Thanks for my first harty harr harr of the morning.
A Good Troll is better than a Bad Human.
Their product isn't what they make, their product is what they sell. What they sell is impressions. So it's not the adword itself that they're selling. It's the number of times a listing is "viewed".
Sure, this is a somewhat pedantic distinction. But it's useful to always remember that an ad-supported company is not successful when produces something good, it is successful when it produces something popular. Yes, this also explains TV.
Nope, no sig
There is no such thing as bad publicity (except your own obituary.)
-Brendan Behan, Irish author & dramatist (1923 - 1964)
http://www.collude.biz - Ignore this, it's for Project Honey Pot.
It notes that Google has yet to become a leader in any technology other than search...
Apparently "targeted advertising" isn't a technology.
"Would you like me to give you a formula for...success? It's quite simple, really. Double your rate of failure... You're thinking of failure as the enemy of success. But it isn't at all...You can be discouraged by failure - or you can learn from it. So go ahead and make mistakes. Make all you can. Because, remember that's where you'll find success. On the far side of failure."
-- Thomas J. Watson, Sr.
All this talk of Google's inovation, and MS bashing, made me think they should make an OS.
Who else would like to see Google make an OS?
"To be is to do." --Socrates
"To do is to be." -- Aristotle
"Do-Be-Do-Be-Do..." --Sinatra
Duly noted, but still, I don't think that scenario is applicable directly to business.
1. the "game" isn't yet at a stage where anyone is locked in a losing configuration due to what the players already did. Search engines aren't yet an interlocking monopoly with insane entry barriers. If one strategy doesn't work -- because of social dynamics or anything else -- there's nothing to keep MS or Yahoo or anyone else from trying a different strategy.
2. Unlike Rail Baron, here the "game" is played over years or decades. It's not a case of one freak afternoon where everyone tried the same move by sheer coincidence, and that was that.
If there is some freak configuration where everyone's strategies conflict, these guys have _years_ to realize it and try something else. Yes, freak coincidences exist in the business world too, but the executives of big corporations certainly have the time, the funds and the business intelligence torecognize them and react to them. That's their job. If everyone is playing the mutually-destructive strategy A, it's the management's job -- and legal obligation to shareholders -- to recognize that and fix the problem. Maybe pick the odd-guy-doing-something-else strategy, maybe try to out-spend/out-advertise/whatever the others, maybe something else. But if they're still at it after half a decade, they just don't have the same freak-coincidence excuse any more.
If after all these years they still can't match Google, maybe, just maybe, it's not just some freak social-dynamics coincidence, but maybe Google is just playing a better strategy.
If you look at it, it's even pretty obvious what goes on.
On one hand you have a bunch of people who just, basically, can't get their heads out of their collective arse. Google's strategy of hiring the best of the best, doing the best thing, and _not_ placing the marketeers at the helm is just lost on them. Those just _can't_ exit the non-working strategy, because they just don't comprehend the alternatives.
And on the other hand, you have MS, who again and again proves that they aren't even in it to win as such, but to kill as many (preferrably big) competitors as possible. In your Rail Baron example, their primary goal isn't even to make more money, but to drive the other players bankrupt, even if in a way where they too take a loss. Winning the game or making money is more of a side-effect than the primary goal. And they can't and won't exit a deadlock situation like what you describe, or not until they've killed their intended target. Once chair-throwing Steve Balmer gets in his head, "Fucking Eric Schmidt is a fucking pussy. I'm going to fucking bury that guy, I have done it before, and I will do it again. I'm going to fucking kill Google.", he just can't stop until he's done just that. That is the goal. He'd cheerfully let you get the rest of the board if in the process he gets to squeeze Google out of their zone.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
LAUGH
damn cap filter
it seems google embraced that aspect of design well. no flash, no gifs. Even no clashing colours. People come to the site for information, give it to them and then with respect upsell them on extras. Those kind of customers are more loyal and less likely to look with dismay on their experience, and not come back.
Yeah, point taken. I don't know what I was doing... I forgot where I was.
And don't forget Google Finance, which forced Yahoo! Finance to adopt a new interface.
In other words, you could do the crap shoot trying to choose the company that had the absolutely best "x", or you could just blindly buy HP and know that you're gonna get a really strong contender.
Not an entirely bad business plan, if you ask me.
Sometimes boldness is in fashion. Sometimes only the brave will be bold.
Yeah, it would be a damn shame if Google was #1 in every field they went into, then they'd be nowhere and probably out of busines.
YOU STUPID MORON. TFA sucks, this is the dumbest shit I've heard in a few hours...