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Peak Google: The Company's Time At the Top May Be Nearing Its End
HughPickens.com writes Farhad Manjoo writes at the NYT that at first glance Google looks plenty healthy, but growth in Google's primary business, search advertising, has flattened out at about 20 percent a year for the last few years. Although Google has spent considerable resources inventing technologies for the future, it has failed to turn many of its innovations into new moneymakers. According to Manjoo, as smartphones eclipse laptop and desktop computers to become the planet's most important computing devices, the digital ad business is rapidly changing and Facebook, Google's archrival for advertising dollars, has been quick to profit from the shift. Here's why: The advertising business is split, roughly, into two. On one side are direct-response ads meant to induce an immediate purchase: Think classifieds, the Yellow Pages, catalogs or Google's own text-based ads running alongside its search results. But the bulk of the ad industry is devoted to something called brand ads, the ads you see on television and print magazines that work on your emotions in the belief that, in time, your dollars will follow. "Google doesn't create immersive experiences that you get lost in," says Ben Thompson. "Google creates transactional services. You go to Google to search, or for maps, or with something else in mind. And those are the types of ads they have. But brand advertising isn't about that kind of destination. It's about an experience." According to Thompson the future of online advertising looks increasingly like the business of television and is likely to be dominated by services like Facebook, Snapchat or Pinterest that keep people engaged for long periods of time and whose ads are proving to be massively more effective and engaging than banner advertisements.
In less than five years, Facebook has also built an enviable ad-technology infrastructure, a huge sales team that aims to persuade marketers of the benefits of Facebook ads over TV ads, and new ways for brands to measure how well their ads are doing. These efforts have paid off quickly: In 2014 Facebook sold $11.5 billion in ads, up 65 percent over 2013. Google will still make a lot of money if it doesn't dominate online ads the way it does now. But it will need to find other businesses to keep growing. This is why Google is spending on projects like a self-driving car, Google Glass, fiber-optic lines in American cities, space exploration, and other audacious innovations that have a slim chance of succeeding but might revolutionize the world if they do. But the far-out projects remind Thompson of Microsoft, which has also invested heavily in research and development, and has seen little return on its investments. "To me the Microsoft comparison can't be more clear. This is the price of being so successful — what you're seeing is that when a company becomes dominant, its dominance precludes it from dominating the next thing. It's almost like a natural law of business."
In less than five years, Facebook has also built an enviable ad-technology infrastructure, a huge sales team that aims to persuade marketers of the benefits of Facebook ads over TV ads, and new ways for brands to measure how well their ads are doing. These efforts have paid off quickly: In 2014 Facebook sold $11.5 billion in ads, up 65 percent over 2013. Google will still make a lot of money if it doesn't dominate online ads the way it does now. But it will need to find other businesses to keep growing. This is why Google is spending on projects like a self-driving car, Google Glass, fiber-optic lines in American cities, space exploration, and other audacious innovations that have a slim chance of succeeding but might revolutionize the world if they do. But the far-out projects remind Thompson of Microsoft, which has also invested heavily in research and development, and has seen little return on its investments. "To me the Microsoft comparison can't be more clear. This is the price of being so successful — what you're seeing is that when a company becomes dominant, its dominance precludes it from dominating the next thing. It's almost like a natural law of business."
Maybe I'm crazy, but 20% yearly revenue growth for a company Google's size seems pretty healthy.
From the summary, "growth in Google's primary business, search advertising, has flattened out at about 20 percent a year for the last few years."
And here I thought an annual growth rate of 20 percent for any business would be considered a good thing. Wow! These industry analysts must believe infinite exponential growth is the only way to be profitable and sustainable no less. Maybe Farhad should take his head out of his academic posterior and get a real job digging sewage ditches in his homeland. I will throw in a feminist to keep him warm at night.
"but growth in Google's primary business, search advertising, has flattened out at about 20 percent a year for the last few years"
So if I understand the summary, google only grows with 20% each year and that is a bad thing?
I would start to worry if it was reduced by 20% every year.
Harald
Uh.. Microsoft essentially had a couple of products they thought (the monopoly on which) would last forever. Google (and the other large modern internet companies) are much more aware of the current state of what's going on (because they're responsible for it). Microsoft just panics and throws money at stuff no-one wants. Crappy phone OS, nokia, Zune, silly compromise-heavy tabtops (see what I did there?) etc. They produced an awful OS, held a straight face when everyone else said "meh, no thanks" which cost them a lot. If they've learnt anything it's at the expense of a lot of missed profit. Google have always spent a lot on R doesn't come across as panicking to stay relevant like Microsoft. Now Microsoft is giving away their new OS, open sourcing their dev tools, suffering increasingly against Google Docs (and other free office apps). If I had stock in Microsoft I'd be concerned that they don't have a plan. I don't see Google as being in the same boat as they have a more much stable history in profiting from innovation, even if not every project they attempted turned out 100% positive.
So, it's not that Google stopped growing, it's that it's growth stopped growing. So we're looking at the 2nd derivative now to determine the peak? Or do the MBAs merely like sensationalism just like their fellow journalists?
that must also bring alot of money, why dont they talk about that or add that to the calculations?, that they own ebay, paypal and other companies that they own and doesnt have the google-sticker on them that bring in the cash, play market aswell?
maybe ads will not be their main income in the future? but they will still have enough cash income from ads to roll around in it
i dont use anyting nor need anythng from facebook
gmail and the phone plugin and such i do
Are you serious?
what you're seeing is that when a company becomes dominant, its dominance precludes it from dominating the next thing. It's almost like a natural law of business.
You mean like how Google, after it dominated search, didn't dominate web-based e-mail, and online videos?
If Pandora's box is destined to be opened, *I* want to be the one to open it.
> spent a lot on R
I actually typed something like "R and D and" with the ampersand, but clearly that's asking too much.
If I'm reading the article correctly, the information that says that ads in the Facebook style are far more effective than Google's comes from...a study by Facebook. Gee, that seems totally unbiased and could in no way be slanted by them to help them convince potential advertisers to sign up. All of this seems very bizarre after reading -- for years -- about how the Facebook ad model is so deeply flawed.
Wood Shavings!
- Godai
"Google doesn't create immersive experiences that you get lost in,"
Which is exactly why I actually usually see googles adds at all. All immersive adds will be blocked, as I am usually doing something else and don't want to get immersed in any type of add. If it can't be blocked, the service will be dropped. Sucks to be a business trying to run on add revenue. (or, would suck if everyone were like me). I assume this is how huge majority of slashdot readers see things.
The advertising business is split, roughly, into two. On one side are direct-response ads meant to induce an immediate purchase: Think classifieds, the Yellow Pages, catalogs or Google's own text-based ads running alongside its search results. But the bulk of the ad industry is devoted to something called brand ads, the ads you see on television and print magazines that work on your emotions in the belief that, in time, your dollars will follow.
On one side, you get data that relates the advertising to sales directly. On the other side there is no actual evidence of return for investment. Emotional advertising is bull crap. No one buys Wonder Bread because a car in NASCAR is covered with its logos. Why that kind of advertising is still done is beyond me. Then again, the majority of the population are idiots. BRAWNDO THE THIRST MUTILATOR!
Yes it's an anecdote! Were you expecting original research in a Slashdot comment?
the future of online advertising looks increasingly like the business of television
I seem to remember something called "television" long time ago, but haven't seen that in a decade. Now that I think of it, lately I haven't seen much advertising neither.
Google has a number of products they could be marketing to private cloud providers and large enterprises. Google Translate alone would probably net them conservatively $100m/year in licensing fees if they offered it on private federal networks with a license system that lets federal contractors develop for free on the open internet version and deploy on private federal networks. Yet I doubt it's even occurred to anyone at Google to have their federal consulting team even ask the Director of National Intelligence, DHS and DoJ how much it would be worth to them.
They sell an overpriced search appliance when in reality what they should be doing is going after software licensing like Autonomy, ElasticSearch and Solr. Again, Google doesn't want to deal with this, even though they could go so far as to create separate corporations that do nothing more than make private deployable forks of Google's ad-supported products.
They've left so much money on the table it's not even funny.
I'd wager that Windows and Office *are* 'utilities' in the sense that they will be around almost forever, and generate the usual mountain of cash each quarter (although that mountain will slowly grow smaller over time). MS's success doesn't depend on popularity, it depends on businesses 'having' to have it.
Facebook and Apple both rely on being 'cool', which is a very treacherous business to be in. How many consumer products of any sort survive changing tastes over 20 years?
I'd bet 3:1 that in 20 years, MS will larger than Facebook or Apple - my guess, MS is 2/3rds its size, Apple and Facebook are near non-existent.
Unfortunately, with buyouts, name purchases, etc, the odds are about 10:1 any such wager would actually be handing the money back to both bettors as 'technically unresolveable', so I'm not making any actual bets here.
About how Google doesn't try to do better than break even with Gmail and Android and Google fiber, etc., because these things put more eyes into Google's advertising. Now I read about how Google has seen "little return on its investments" but is maintaining 20% growth in advertising.
"...Facebook has also built an enviable ad-technology infrastructure, a huge sales team that aims to persuade marketers of the benefits of Facebook ads over TV ad..."
I, for one, am cheering for the Facebook ads sales team. Businesses should use all their ad revenue solely on facebook ads.
Yes the article says "growth in Google's primary business, search advertising, has flattened out at about 20 percent a year" But a constant growth RATE year after year is not flat. It is exponential growth. It is compounded growth where each 20% increase is an increase over and above the 20% increase of the previous year. Where else can you get a 20% compounded interest rate on your savings?
"He took a duck in the face at 250 knots." -- William Gibson, Pattern Recognition
... then it must be true.
Personally I think that Microsoft has been doing quite well lately, but no matter what they do, people seem to find something wrong with it. I haven't heard anything particularly bad about their current iteration of their phone OS, other than the anemic app selection, but the OS itself is top notch. Everybody I know who has a Surface Pro seems to think they are amazing, the only general complaint being that they are too expensive. But I guess that you have to pay a lot of money if you want a proper digitizer built into the lightest laptop on the market. Microsoft has started to give away their OS on cheap devices because it's really the only option that works. You can't charge $50 or even $25 for a Windows license that sells to the end consumer for under $250. It just doesn't make the product competitive. This is a market that didn't exist 5 years ago, so of course they are going to have to make adjustments.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
These wondrous 'immersive' Ad experiences I'm getting on Facebook. What a pile of shit. lol
I do not want your cheap brainburning drugs. They are useless for work. And I am a working man today.
20% growth is not flattening out, it is pretty much as much as you would hope for a big established player. It probably represents far more about how fast the economy is growing as a whole than actually effort by Google to grow bigger.
Secondly, Google can play the long game. FB itself did not add any ads to its site for a long time, instead focusing on growing its user base and making them dependant. The article mentions the move to tablets like it is a knock against Google, but they have most of the table marketshare with Android. They own most of our OSes now, and an even bigger percentage of us use their browser to browse the internet. Yet they are not Microsoft, they have yet to leverage this position for trillions of dollars in licensing fees, or more ubiquitous ads that they probably could, because like FB they are more interested in gaining even more users. FB is one site on the internet, one site that 99% of the people who visit use at least Google OS or Google Browser to do so.
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
"According to Thompson the future of online advertising looks increasingly like the business of television"
Wishfull thinking by the television advertisers. They would like to turn the Internet into television but that's not going to happen and surely facebook is the one trick pony.
Burson-Marsteller: PR firm at centre of Facebook row
I want to see how long Apple can keep on charging $700 for a cell phone. I really don't see how that can be maintained another decade. In an era where a $200 Moto G or similar is enough for most people, I can't see Apple being able to maintain their allure much longer. Same goes for the iPad. Why pay $500 for a tablet that is so limited when you can get a Surface Pro that does so much more for only a little bit more. Give them a couple more iterations and I'm sure they'll have something at the same price as the iPad, but as a full computer, and not a crippled tablet that can only show a single app at a time. I can see how the iPad appeals to some people who never wanted a computer in the first place. But for people who actually want to get work done, or create something, it's a useless device.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
microsoft is on a slow fade
nothing more, nothing less
everyone should enjoy such a slow steady comfortable decline
"OMFG! MICROSOFT IS DYING!" is just as drama queen useless as this "OMFG! GOOGLE IS DYING!" crap story we're commenting under
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
A lot of self-important verbiage to describe regression to the mean, the same phenomenon that explains what the careers of those who appear in the front page of Sports Illustrated tend to go on the wane afterwards.
> spent a lot on R
I actually typed something like "R and D and" with the ampersand, but clearly that's asking too much.
i assumed you meant lobbying republicans, which is also true.
Same goes for the iPad. Why pay $500 for a tablet that is so limited when you can get a Surface Pro that does so much more for only a little bit more.
i priced out a surface a couple months ago. with the felt keyboard thing it was $1200 out the door, more than double an ipad.
As much as I dislike them and would love to see them fade into irrelevance, that's just not going to happen any time soon. They're still king of the hill when it comes to search, and since they've pretty much built their business model around that, I guess they're in no danger of being surpassed by FB or MS. Also, this pseudo-article is just like those "OMG Apple is doomed" types; pure clickbaite.
and I don't respond well to it at all. I dislike the notion of someone telling me/inferring/suggesting/coercing -- whatever you wish to label it -- that I purchase their product or purchase a product.
Having common sense, I know what I need. I don't want or need someone telling me what I "want". I'm fairly old school in the way I see life and how I see money. I have never purchased a product based on advertising. Never.
I'm consistent and don't want change (much):
I wear only Levi's 501 because I wore them as a boy, as a teen, now as an adult closing in on 50. I wear only Clark's Desert Boots, because I love the styling from WWII movies and they fit like slippers and are as comfortable. I wear slim fit button up shirts only because I dislike clinging t-shirts. I buy the same brands that my family has always bought and I don't need or want anything different. I like predictable and consistency as well as functionality. I'm pragmatic above all else. Ads try and dictate a course of action. I don't like being "suggested to" be someone else.
Having said all this, I do like rapid tech changes and I'm open to foods and beer/wine options, but I like self-discovery. For me ads ruin the journey of self discovery. Being a man who values his independence, I value only making my own way or perhaps taking the advice of a trusted friend, which is not advertising, as much as some may argue in that vein. My friends know I'm a pain the in rear when it comes to minimalist functionality, and unless a product is nigh on bulletproof, they won't even suggest it.
Personally I think that Microsoft has been doing quite well lately, but no matter what they do, people seem to find something wrong with it.
Microsoft has gotten themselves in trouble.
One of the big things they did wrong was kill binary compatibility for software running on XP at the same time they killed XP.
This effectively forces a re-buy of all your hardware, because any new hardware you buy can no longer run the old software.
Totally ignoring the fact that for all middleware-based vertical market software (which is, in effect, "all of it", mostly written in dialects of VB to glue a bunch of Microsoft and third party DLLs together) it's an added "rewrite everything from scratch" overhead, it ignores buying cycle.
Typical accounting for computer hardware is an accelerated depreciation schedule, which is a 3 year schedule. This effectively means that every year, you intend to replace 1/3 of your computer systems (without an accelerated depreciation, as allowed by the IRS, this turns into a 5 year schedule, which means 1/5th or 20% get replaced).
The changes in binary compatibility at the same time the OS changed means that you have to do a full re-buy to handle adding people, or simple because old systems need replaced.
While this is great for Microsoft (they get a 3X - or 5X - bump in the number of licenses the y get to sell for everything), and it's great for computer vendors (same bump, in order to sell hardware capable of running the new OS), and it's great for vertical market consulting developers ("hey, we get to do the same job we did ~10 years ago over again for more $$$, and it's an emergency, so we can charge usurious rates!") ... it's a pretty big hit.
Larger businesses can pretty much stomach this hit, because they have reserve.
Small and medium businesses, however, are cash flow-based, and have to have money on hand. Which is why they were still using XP in the first place: they needed to be able to do incremental replacement a a survival requirement, since they pretty much can only afford to replace a machine every month or so, rather than fully re-buying, or even replacing the 1/3 or 1/5 of their machines all at the same time.
Sadly, you can't glue things together to make a vertical market app with all the software living on the back end (as it does with Office365), which makes that a completely unsuitable alternative.
So:
(1) Microsoft missed the boat on Office365 because that's not actually how 50% of the people use their products: they don't use them stand-alone, or at least, they *also* use them as components in vertical market systems, if they use them standalone too.
(2) Microsoft missed the boat on bringing people forward onto the new OS, due to inability to use a new OS system as a fungible replacement for a Windows XP system; they really needed this to keep working as they EOL'ed XP.
(3) They assumed their primary market was education/corporate, rather than SMB (Small and Medium Businesses); most estimates put the Microsoft market at 72%+ SMB, since bigger businesses have options, which are generally corporate mandates. These include Lotus's suite, Google Docs, and other options, up to and including in-house supported OpenOffice, among others.
So you're really quite wrong about them doing well.
They've been trying to reinvent themselves on a lot of fronts (tablet OS company, Phone OS company, SAS company, Cloud provider company, etc., but they lack a really coherent vision for their existing base market which they could then leverage to enter and successfully compete in their new frontiers (either via "whole product" offerings, or via "Halo effect" offerings).
So, I think Microsoft must turn their ship, or they're in for some really rough times ahead.
It's one thing to shoot yourself in the foot once, perhaps even twice; it's another thing entirely to reload and continue firing.
I'll agree that Google's ads don't work on my emotions. Other advertising on the web, the kind that load up giant flash videos that cause my browser to hang for 30 seconds, play unwanted audio, obscure the content I'm trying to read, and otherwise ruin my browsing experience - those types of advertising definitely do hit me at an emotional level, but I'm not sure it's the type of emotion the advertiser wants from me. It's the kind of emotion that makes me run adblock so I don't have to deal with them anymore. I think I prefer Google's far less emotional ads.
For every post, there is an equal and opposite re-post.
But I guess that you have to pay a lot of money if you want a proper digitizer built into the lightest laptop on the market.
The EEE Slate series proves beyond any question that this is not true.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
This is yet another example that exponential growth cannot continue indefinitely. At some point, some limiting factor will cap growth. Between the economic crises in the world and actual inflation (as opposed to the cooked-up false numbers) impacting the world, the total size of the pie simply can't grow any more even if the percentage of the pie as a function of Google's slice does, up or down.
Why pay $500 for a tablet that is so limited when you can get a Surface Pro that does so much more for only a little bit more.
What 'so much more' does a Surface Pro do that iPad owners want to do?
Hint: nothing, which is why they use iPads. Microsoft have been pushing tablets that run desktop Windows apps since at least 2001, and hardly anyone bought them because hardly anyone wants to do that. It's a brain-dead idea, but when the only profit centres you have are Windows and Office, every piece of hardware you produce looks like it should run Windows and Office.
>. has failed to turn many of its innovations into new moneymakers.
It doesn't matter how many don't end up bringing major revenue. It only matters that a few do. Of Google+ is a complete failure and Android has 75% of the market, Google wins big. Their newsgroup site shuts down while Gmail huge is a huge success, Google does quite well.
They can well afford to invest $10 million each into trying ten different things if just one those goes on to make $250 million.
If Google becomes THE autonomous car company, it doesn't matter that they also experimented with ten other things that didn't bdo great - and even the ones that don't do great sometimes make a little money.
This made me laugh. "Microsoft essentially had a couple of products they thought (the monopoly on which) would last forever." No company every things one product will last forever.
The Zune was awesome. I still use mine. The best part is the friends that have iPods. Have played with my Zune and then say they think the Zune is better in a lot of ways over the iPod.
It is Microsoft marketing that sucks not all the products. The crazy thing is a few anti-Microsoft people post something and what they say is true. It's on the internet it must be true.
Google having a stable history? Google is known for having ok to great products. But they have also been known to just shut stuff down. And no it not always stuff people don't use. Google Reader one of the bigest RSS readers shutdown.
The great thing about both Microsoft and Google is they are both willing to take chances and experiments. They both are not afraid to fail.
>i priced out a surface a couple months ago. with the felt keyboard thing it was $1200 out the door, more than double an iPad.
Wow, a full-onl x86 laptop with a high-resolution digitizer and a keyboard (which isn't included with an iPad) is more expensive? Real insightful, dude.
I see no better money maker for accident lawyers in the future than that project.
Will dwarf even the Repetitive Stress Disorder lawsuits for a generation of tiny keyboard texting addicts.
While it does match the marketing lingo, the word "exponential" has specific mathematical meaning which does not even come close to your advertising driven use of the word. I fully realize that advertising and marketing regularly abuses definitions and often use words exactly contrary to their real meaning (I am thinking specifically of the word "literally" recently.). It is really a shame that people on the "News for Nerds" site use the same incorrect terminology and buzz words. One could at least qualify their use of marketing terms so that us real math/science oriented people are not left wondering if anything else stated is truthful enough to read.
So in the spirit of my personal crusade for accuracy and desire for the use of correct terminology how about using "20% growth" instead of abusing the definition of "exponential"? If you really need to use the word "exponential" can you say "exponential over 5+N years"? Hell, I'll compromise and agree with "doubling every 5+N years" which sounds pretty good as well.
Unfortunately, there is always someone the marketing soap box abusing our languages which makes it easy to fall into their ways. My soap box is pretty short lived, and I'm hopping off now.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
why does everyone care about some ad company so much? they're just a subsidiary of doubleclick
You can get the lowest end Surface Pro for $849 plus $130 for the keyboard. You can often find deals if you wait for a sale and get the lowest end version for $800 or less. So less than $1000. Still about double the iPad, but if you count it as a tablet and a laptop (which it basically is) you save money as a laptop with similar specs, plus buying the iPad. Even compared to buying a laptop and a cheap but good $200 Android tablet, the price is pretty reasonable. Like I said, wait a few more iterations until they can bring the price down. Apple won't be able to last long when their tablets and phones are asking a premium price and delivering the same experience as devices at half their price. It's interesting that you add in the price of the keyboard when the iPad doesn't come with one either. And even the lowest end Surface comes with 64 GB of storage, plus room for an SD Card (Or use USB3 Storage). The iPad base unit only comes with 16 GB of storage, and has no option for expansion. If you want more, you're going to be paying at least $100 more just for the privilege.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
I think a more apt comparison is the MacBook air, which is why the surface commercials compare against the air not the ipad. it's an interesting discussion which is a greater value; they both cost about the same and serve similar purposes. the comparison to ipad isn't as apt.
What I am wondering is WHY all the articles (not just about Google) on how "businesses are ""failing"" " when all these businesses are posting 10-20% growth, yet some analyst says it's "bad" and so stocks get hit on that. Everything from Cheesecake Factory or Chipotle failing (while people are lined up to say "shut up and take my money") to a list of other businesses are getting these same "analyst reports" which are saying businesses are failing. Are these stock analysts trying to push some narrative to make stocks go down???
Google shot themselves in the foot, angered a lot of people, no nobody trust them.
"growth in Google's primary business, search advertising, has flattened out at about 20 percent a year for the last few years."
Gee... Most businesses would be overjoyed to have an annual growth of 20% in their main business. Google is doing extraordinarily well. There is always some pundit who writes gloom and doom on the off chance they might be right and then can look back and say, "See! I said it!" totally ignoring all their own fails at prediction. Standard quackery with a broad baseline like fortune telling through the ages.
Not for me.
Closed F-book and blocked both F-book and Pinterest from my google search results. Pin can take its sign-in nag whitebox when I hit the site and fuck off.
And WTF is snapchat? I've heard the name, but nothing else.
>. has failed to turn many of its innovations into new moneymakers.
It doesn't matter how many don't end up bringing major revenue. It only matters that a few do. Of Google+ is a complete failure and Android has 75% of the market, Google wins big. Their newsgroup site shuts down while Gmail huge is a huge success, Google does quite well.
They can well afford to invest $10 million each into trying ten different things if just one those goes on to make $250 million.
If Google becomes THE autonomous car company, it doesn't matter that they also experimented with ten other things that didn't bdo great - and even the ones that don't do great sometimes make a little money.
Google will not be the autonomous car company. all the major car companies have but researching self given cars since before Google existed, they are not going to use Google's system so they can data mine their customers. They will do that them selves.
Besides which the Google car is to limited, 25 MPH max (so far), not tested in heavy rain or snow, the need to map the roads down to the inch will slow down adoption too.
Google is fine.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
We also seem to have reached peak McConaughey:
http://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=mcconaughey
According to Thompson the future of online advertising looks increasingly like the business of television
God help us all. As annoying as "transactional" ads are, those stupid "immersive" ads are even worse.
and is likely to be dominated by services like Facebook, Snapchat or Pinterest
I would be absolutely thrilled by this. If the bulk of advertising takes place there, then I won't ever have to see the bulk of advertising. That's a win/win.
>. has failed to turn many of its innovations into new moneymakers.
It doesn't matter how many don't end up bringing major revenue. It only matters that a few do. Of Google+ is a complete failure and Android has 75% of the market, Google wins big. Their newsgroup site shuts down while Gmail huge is a huge success, Google does quite well.
They can well afford to invest $10 million each into trying ten different things if just one those goes on to make $250 million.
If Google becomes THE autonomous car company, it doesn't matter that they also experimented with ten other things that didn't bdo great - and even the ones that don't do great sometimes make a little money.
Google will not be the autonomous car company. all the major car companies have but researching self given cars since before Google existed, they are not going to use Google's system so they can data mine their customers. They will do that them selves.
Besides which the Google car is to limited, 25 MPH max (so far), not tested in heavy rain or snow, the need to map the roads down to the inch will slow down adoption too.
The same could be said of Tesla Motors.
Established car companies have a brand in that market to maintain. Google has no such burden, consumers have far lower expectations of a Google car and if it does fail it doesn't really affect Google's other offerings.
I stole this Sig
Facebook doesn't have self-driving cars. Google will win the advertising war by subsidizing the cost of self-driving cars with advertising and product placement.
Remember kids, if you're not paying for the service, YOU ARE THE PRODUCT THAT IS BEING SOLD.
Apple won't be able to last long when their tablets and phones are asking a premium price and delivering the same experience as devices at half their price.
You mean, like an Android tablet? As much as I hate to admit it, iPads provide a better experience than both Android and Windows, but you can buy a perfectly capable Android tablet for half the price of an iPad right now if you don't mind a clunkier UI.
It's interesting that you add in the price of the keyboard when the iPad doesn't come with one either.
You don't need a keyboard with an iPad, because it's not designed to run desktop apps. The whole 'killer feature' of the Surface is supposed to be that it can run desktop Windows apps... for which you need a keyboard. No-one buys a Windows tablet to run Metro apps, because if they want to run apps, they buy Android or iPad, because no-one in their right mind writes Metro apps.
And even the lowest end Surface comes with 64 GB of storage, plus room for an SD Card (Or use USB3 Storage).
And needs it, for Windows and all those desktop Windows apps you're going to install on it.
If Google becomes THE autonomous car company, it doesn't matter that they also experimented with ten other things that didn't bdo great - and even the ones that don't do great sometimes make a little money.
Meanwhile, back in the real world, we won't wake up one morning and find Google autonomous cars driving everyone around, the technology will start out with hands-free cruise control and similar relatively simple systems, probably progress to self-driving trucks on the highways, and evolve over the years in new models until, one day, your new Ford can drive itself.
If memory serves in the early days Novell was considered Better than Microsoft, but not a poster child by any means. In the anti-trust cases we favored Novell over Microsoft, but really didn't have "pro NDS" conversations that I remember. Maybe some pro NDS over Netscape LDAP conversations, and things I'd still say today like "IPX is more secure than TCP/IP". Hell, we complimented a few things SGI did right too, but that does not make either a poster child.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
There might be "2 basic types of advertising" but there are also two basic types of investors. The short-term people are just chasing after a quick return. A given company doesn't produce double digit percentage increases in profits or sales in a given quarter or year, and they're complaining and predicting it's time to get out and invest elsewhere. The long-term investor, by contrast. invests in what he/she believes in. Does the company generally build good things... come up with great ideas? Are they taking steps that show they'll be a contender for many years to come? If so, good. That's where to park some of your money!
So Google wants to expand its reach, getting away from a business model that loses money on everything it does except for advertising? Good for them! If they can pull it off, they stand to be FAR more useful to society with self-driving cars than with delivering "immersive marketing" to people about brand-names of products.
The comparison to Microsoft is uncalled for too, IMO. Microsoft always had an agenda of tying everything back to the Windows platform in some way. While Google was hooking homes up with the fastest Internet connections anyone in American ever had, Microsoft was still trying to find ways to get you to accept a cellphone with their OS on top of it, instead of the competition's.
Last year google sold around $49 billion is ads, vs Facebooks $11.5. Will facebook continue to grow at 65%? no. How long will it take them to catch google? At current rates, 5 years, but not if facebook growth slows. Google doesn't actually break down search ads vs the rest of their properties, they only report overall ad sales for Google Properties, including Youtube and Gmail.
-- these are only opinions and they might not be mine.
You can get the lowest end Surface Pro for $849 plus $130 for the keyboard. You can often find deals if you wait for a sale and get the lowest end version for $800 or less. So less than $1000. Still about double the iPad, ...
You're looking at it all wrong.
The iPad Air weighs about a pound. The Surface Pro 3 weighs about two pounds. So, on a pound by pound basis, the Surface Pro 3 is priced competitively versus the iPad!
It's been about five years since I've noticed google going downhill - more and more, rather than signal, I get noise in the search results, and that is what it's all about.
1. The companies who pay for sponsored ads are clearly wasting money, when I search for one thing, and explicitly try to filter out
some of the alternatives that they put in... and get, both in search results and sponsored ads the thing I'm filtering. For example,
I look for, linux parted -windows, and the third or fourth hit, in the visible paragraph, is talking explicitly about windows. Or the
time, about a year and a half ago, I was looking for men's high leather boots -womens -ladies, and saw a sponsored ad where
the text read real leather women's boots....
2. They've taken away some of the search tools - I assume you have to be logged in just to use them? - and still ignore
things I say I don't want. Why, for example, if I want English results, do I see *anything* that is, presumably, either
Asian or Hindi?
3. Finally, when I add quotes - and they respect them (which is not always the case), I simply don't believe that I get no results
for some searches
mark, trying to find something as good as google was five years ago
I agree with your statement about businesses having to have MS Office, but much future revenue will be predicated on developing countries' respecting intellectual property, which everything I've heard about China, the Philippines, and other places suggests is not the case.
I have noticed that too. More and more I get results that simply have nothing to do with what I'm searching, even when I use quotation marks and the minus sign to make it clear what I want.
Religion: The greatest weapon of mass destruction of all time
Apple: Continuing losing our allure since 1999.....
Is that why they like killing projects like Google Reader, and now latest Google Talk?
They really want people to stop using Google products?
If I didn't know better, I'd say Google has been sabotaged from the inside for a few years.
"Google doesn't create immersive experiences that you get lost in,"
thank god. this is at least one of the reasons why google beat out every competitor. while yahoo! was giving you seizures with massive full screen flash ads, google shows you text based ads related to your search.
i'm sure they are right, immersive ads do work, but that's only if you have a captive audience that can't get away and are essentially forced to watch. think old-school TV ads pre-DVR. people have tried to make the web captive, and failed. if i load a news site that has popops / overs i just close the page. not because i'm anti-ad, but because it's too much.
trying to find something as good as google was five years ago
look for a startup that isn't held responsible to investors.
I don't believe that you understand psychology and propaganda, which is my complaint. Perhaps you do see it but are simply attempting to ignore it.
I'll take at least partial blame, because I provided technical details showing the addition of qualifiers to add truth to the terminology, and not the simple view. I did not call out a key piece of information so that my complaint was clear. Like all people, I can forget the audiences vision does not match my own. So let me provide the very simple version of my post.
There is a bunch of terminology like "growth", "income", and "profits" that is qualified, in this case we have "20% annual growth". See that annual qualifier right?
Now we toss in the word "exponential" without qualification.
Without trying, your brain _will_ qualify exponential as annual as well. (hold that thought) Guys like Bernays were masters of this, and used it to effectively brainwash many generations of smokers, over purchasing, overeating, and war.
While surely this is not so nefarious, the same psychological trickery is present. Just like with Bernays' famous campaigns "if" you stop and think about the message you will have a correct view. "If" you don't, you have a distorted view of the world. That you have to stop and fix your brain is the issue. Unfortunately this happens all the time, and as inundated as we are with messages we often have an uncorrected view.
If you believe this is not to be manipulative, tell me why it's only things like growth and profit that get the "exponential" adjective? Over time, anything could show exponential changes but the word is only used on one specific way and for a specific effect.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
This should make things more clear.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
"Google doesn't create immersive experiences that you get lost in," says Ben Thompson." Let's see, Facebook and Pinterest will take over because of their 'immersive experiences' such as video news feeds,etc. Wow, I guess reading Google news and/or viewing You Tube won't have the qualities that are involved in the immersive experience one will surely enjoy at Facebook? "According to Thompson the future of online advertising looks increasingly like the business of television." I'm confused because I read a couple of reader comments that suggested Mr. Thompson is a deep thinker. Here's the thing to remember. Mr. Thompson repeatedly suggests that the advertising model used on TV is a highly successful one with a proven track record. This suggests to me that he firmly believes that most TV viewers pay attention to ads. I'll tell you what Mr Thompson. Why don't you launch a channel of your own(May i suggest calling it 'Reality check) and offer two ways to watch it. One with no ads, one with ads. That should feed you enough information to clearly show you something i think you already know. The effectiveness of TV advertising is a myth generated by the people gettting the ad money. I actually pay attention to ads once a year. Yep, Superbowl Sunday. Finally another quote from Mr Thompson to support the poster idea about Google peak; "To me the Microsoft comparison can't be more clear. This is the price of being so successful — what you're seeing is that when a company becomes dominant, its dominance precludes it from dominating the next thing. It's almost like a natural law of business." Yet the poster and Mr Thompson are both certain that Facebook could become the dominant player in the digital advertising world that they see forming up. Which begs the question; Isn't Facebook already a dominant fixture in a certain category? Google dominates search. Who is king of the social network? If the poster or any of the people cited by him believe that an equivalent of a full page magazine ad placed in a news blog or a 60 second ad placed in the middle of a video feed are going to be met with different reactions than the same ads in the print and televison world I can only say no, no they won't. They won't be welcomed, they won't be watched or read. Sure, the ad agencies can and already are painting a rosy picture. Who cares? The real world of advertising bears little resemblance to reality. It's quite interesting that Google is the one that has the 'real' numbers. Yet they are portrayed as almost stumbling to their massive profits, with little insight or knowledge about advertising. No, they just got lucky. In one of the articles the poster linked to the author states, ; "Relatedly, and as hinted above, both IBM and Microsoft were found to have abused their monopolies in an attempt to dominate application software and browsers respectively; it’s increasingly plausible to argue, as The Information has reported, that Google is doing the same with Android and its increasingly onerous requirements around the inclusion of Google’s services." Uh, except that in the case of Google there is one SLIGHT variation. Google isn't trying to force you to take their browser as Microsoft did. Just the opposite. They are simply saying if you are an OEM and want the Play Store or Google apps on the phone you are selling, you must abide by the terms we dictate. It seems pretty reasonable to me. After all, I don't believe this is any way inhibits an OEM from running Android.
Every year I go to a cabin next to a lake, and during my annual visit I fish for an annual fish. I catch my annual fish which seem to get bigger each year by 20%, and I eat my exponentially large fish.
Oh, I was talking about the fish I have today compared to the fish I had 5 years ago, so I'm not wrong.. I just failed to qualify.
Is my use of "exponential" above fine too, or is the misleading use of the word only okay when talking business? I am really curious. And I did write a better simpler view of my complaint here.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
Ads inside Google Maps and Google Earth could be their next step to get $$$.
Not ad banners, but useful landmarks on maps and virtual ads on virtual buildings in Google Earth - for example, they could make the virtual buildings representing paid customers larger and brighter, and prettier as well. Imagine a regular coffee drinker visit a virtual city in the morning and all of Starbucks' shops instantly pop up like the Empire State Building! Or during lunch time restaurants near your location stand taller than others to tell you where to find them (or hospitals in case of emergency, etc). It'd look awesome and probably quite useful as well.
They had to make quite a few compromises to get it to that price point. Most notably is the thickness and the low battery life of only 3 hours. I guess it depends on what your use case is, but 3 hours is not enough for me. 5 would be a lot more acceptable.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
How about in a VM?
VirtualBox is free for personal/educational use, and I recommend it for people who still have a few legacy XP needs around. Heck, for one family member I setup her laptop with triple-boot: Windows 7, Linux, and XP (technically Linux with a command-line parameter that tells it to launch the XP VM in full-screen mode at boot).
I think that Ads on FB may be more useful if they can fix some of the context-sensing (right now they're crap).
Last time I was on a PC vendor's site that had google ads. The ads of course work on what I was searching for, so of course they were displaying ads for heatsinks and CPU's AT COMPETING VENDORS (as well as a "you're the 1,000,000 visit, win an iDevice" shit).
Of course, why a decent online retailer (Tigerdirect) needs non-in-house banner ads is beyond me anyhow.
They can keep on charging $700 for a cell phone as long as people will pay it, which is to say as long as they continue offering better user experiences than cheaper competitors. It doesn't matter whether a $200 phone is "good enough", it matters whether it's better.
Assuming you buy a new phone every two years (I buy about every three), and not with a carrier discount (which makes the prices closer), and we go with your prices, that's significantly less than $1/day extra for the iPhone. People tend to use smart phones all the time, and having something nicer for that price can be an excellent deal. Lots of people buy coffee at Starbuck's and other expensive coffee shops, and an iPhone is cheap compared to that habit.
The iPad is not only considerably cheaper than a Surface Pro, but for most people appears to offer a better tablet experience. The Surface Pro is also usable as a laptop, but I can get an iPad and a halfway decent laptop for about as much as a Surface Pro. The iPad is not a crippled tablet. It is a tablet, and is better at that than the Surface Pro (better battery life and lighter weight, for starters). It is possible to do work on it, especially with a Bluetooth keyboard. A lot of managers around here have been carrying their iPads around, presumably because they serve a useful purpose. They have better office software than you can get on a Surface.
People don't always want to buy the cheapest thing they can get by with. If you offer them something better, maybe a little luxurious, they will often be fine with paying a little extra. The people at Apple understand that, and that's why it's so insanely profitable.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
"Would you like to see 3 more versions of the same article you just read?"
The problem with Microsoft is they're reactive, not proactive, ... followers, not leaders. I can't think of a lot of things Microsoft has done in the past decade where they were the innovators and leaders. Except for Visual Studio, which is by far the best IDE. However, I think that's changing. They are doing some really cool research. Like their stitching technology Photosynth and Image Composite Editor, and their cool touchscreen technology. I think they feel their fire burning under their asses.
People don't want Microsoft stuff at home. It's a toxic brand. It's Office..it's white and upper case..it's "please reboot now"...it's "your hard drive light never stops flashing"...internet explorer needs an update....pay to update your virus checker....we've removed the start button...enter your password...change your password....your password is incorrect.
Fuck that.
Pick up tablet. Press power button. Use device. Install software from a single place. Receive updates immediately from the same place.
You're confused. "I don't know....I can't see...Just pay a bit more...Couple more iterations...jam tomorrow.". You're going about it all wrong. Couple more iterations and Apple/Android will be that much further ahead. Microsoft needs to produce something cheaper and better than Apple, not hack together a half tablet, half laptop, heavy, poor battery life thing and hope people buy it. Look at the surface. Look at the iPad or Android tablet (Nexus 10, Samsung tab pro 8.4).
"But for people who actually want to get work done, or create something, it's a useless device." Apple's just made more money in a quarter than any other company in history. People must love useless devices. Microsoft has entered that arena now, in a manner of speaking, with the surface, but they've sort of missed the point, which is why it's selling so very badly.
It seems you've stated two facts, then managed to draw the exact opposite conclusion than the one the facts point to.
Fact 1: The big auto makers have been messing up automated systems for many years, decades in fact.
Fact 2: After decades, they haven't managed to get very far.
Let me add fact 3: In just a few years, Google has driven the state of the art forward at least as much as Detroit had in the previous 20 years.
Your conclusion: Detroit is better at this kind of R&D than Google, and will beat Google (rather than licensing Google's software and other technologies.)
It seems to me that if Detroit hasn't achieved much progress in the last 30 years, that suggests they'll probably continue that trend. Whereas Google has became a major player, perhaps the leader, in just a few years, we'd expect them to continue with the same successful approach to R&D.
LOL! You're 100% right, except in the eyes of the shareholders, and consumers. They're (almost) literally printing money:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/busi...
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US technology giant Apple has reported the biggest quarterly profit ever made by a public company.
Apple reported a net profit of $18bn (£11.8bn) in its fiscal first quarter, which tops the $15.9bn made by ExxonMobil in the second quarter of 2012, according to Standard and Poor's.
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You're saying that they were making more money before 1999, and that's when they started going downhill? Perhaps you're just talking about your own opinion?
> but you can buy a perfectly capable Android tablet for half the price of an iPad right now if you
> don't mind a clunkier UI.
I've got the (now retired) Nexus 10, running lollipop. Before that, kitkat. What's clunky about either of them. I find it much easier to use than an iPad.
Sarcasm ------
O /|\ ----- Threni
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Google has for some time been going in seemingly random directions with their investments/acquisitions and research. They do this likely because it keeps them sustainable in the far future. If you look at their investment into something so random like Android that exploded in growth you can see why they want to invest in technologies while still in their infancy. I'd be surprised if their automated driving technology doesn't also do the same in 10-20 years, but unfortunately investors are much more interested in day to day stock valuations.
They have so many long games over there. I'll believe it when I see it. Just because Bing and Yahoo have scored some strategic alliances eating at some of their core business? Please. This is not another Atari, where phalanxes of clueless idiots are pissing away the business. A lot of Silicon Valley businesses, like Google and even Facebook (yes, I said Facebook) have a lot going on that most are completely unaware of. Big, smart things going on.
Hands?
But seriously, I will miss the Google ecosystem, which even Apple has not been able to duplicate.
I can click on a restaurant in my Chromebook and walk out to the car, and by the time I'm there I can see the driving instructions in google map.
and (sometimes) it keeps tabs on where I've parked for when I leave the restaurant.
and so on.
With the proposed 1 Gbps connectivity it's desirable/possible your build your own Google type search engine. http://www.nagaiah.com/google....
"Bla bla ... Google not interested in investors ... bla bla ... not sustainable ... bla bla ... too little monetarization ... bla bla ... I'm a money-hungry creep."