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."

Comments

I call BS

[Mike_K]

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