4 ms·

From a business WHY are they doing this? The vast majority of their revenue comes from selling advertising on Google OWNED sites eg google.com: http://www.bus

by aresant 16y ago

From a business WHY are they doing this? The vast majority of their revenue comes from selling advertising on Google OWNED sites eg google.com: http://www.businessinsider.com/chart-of-the-day-in-case-you-had-any-doubts-about-where-googles-revenue-comes-from-2010-2 http://www.businessinsider.com/chart-of-the-day-in-case-you-... Google is the industry leader at monetizing search, but nothing else they do comes close. I am truly curious - is the reason that Google keeps investing time and money in "line-extension" businesses to distract competitors, keep the antitrust police away, what?

smiler 16y ago
Because I guess they see 'cloud computing' in their future and generating money from that. I guess they need some kind of beefier storage service as they start making more ground with their Google App product line.
run4yourlives 16y ago
Google is the industry leader at monetizing search Google's stated mission is to "organize the world's information". There is tremendous power in information. Not so much in your own, but on the correlation of your data to everyone else's; the collective statistics about anything is where the power lies. In gmail, google reading my email tells them to sell me product x and we think that's the end of it. But there is so much more available in terms of how the aggregate masses behave with regards to product x and its correlated points. This extends right into file storage. Yes I am saying that Google will "read" your data. Even better, I'm saying that Amazon more than likely is already doing this. They're doing it not because they give a damn about you, but because they want the data points that come from the analysis of many separate instances of unrelated bits and bytes. That analysis is worth a fortune. It's a modern day gold rush. This makes perfect sense for Google.
- jim-greer 16y ago
  They've already got a ton of storage for end users - I imagine Gmail attachments alone are a pretty massive corpus. What this adds is information about site traffic - who's using what from where. Between Google Analytics, search trends, and toolbar, they've already got a lot of that. But I imagine that's part of the rationale for this.
- deleted 16y ago
  [deleted]
- panacea 16y ago
  "In gmail, google reading my email tells them to sell me product x and we think that's the end of it." I don't want to put on a tin-foil beret, but how much revenue do they actually make from ad-words on the side of GMail? I can't imagine it's much, but then I'm probably biased in that I don't even notice they're there. The pragmatic part of me realizes GMail is a service that improves 'lock-in' to the 'Google Ecosystem'... the paranoid part of me thinks about how valuable a "search everyone's inbox" rather than a "search my inbox" feature would be.
  - inerte 16y ago
    It's not about getting clicks while you're reading gmail (the adwords on the side), it's about mass gathering data about you and others. Re-read run4yourlives message. He does not say gmail tries to sell you product X, but gmail tells Google you might be in a buying mood for product X.
- mleonhard 16y ago
  Yes I am saying that Google will "read" your data. Even better, I'm saying that Amazon more than likely is already doing this. It would be an unforgivable breach of trust for Amazon to steal customer data that is stored in AWS. Amazon is possibly the world's most customer-oriented company. I'm sure that such behavior would not be tolerated inside the company.
bdickason 16y ago
Amazon is the industry leader at moving product. They built an infrastructure to scale their site and made it publicly available when they realized that people would pay for it. This is what good businesses do, Google is no different.
antirez 16y ago
well actually I think this is the right direction for them, they lost a lot of time trying to catch up in things were they can't win, like buzz or alike. Apart from the business perspective, at least this is one thing where they can be strong, and able to match the expectation of users. Also I can't see how this is different from Amazon, business side: they got an infrastructure in order to run their other business. But there is no point in using this just internally, if this can be provided as an high quality service. Looks sane to me.
- stanleydrew 16y ago
  Next up: a direct api for interfacing with BigTable?
jfager 16y ago
They've already developed the vast majority of the infrastructure needed for this product in the course of working on their own projects. Why not start selling it? It's pure gravy for them, and it eventually means even greater economies of scale for innovations in power consumption, horizontal scalability, etc.
ssp 16y ago
From a business WHY are they doing this? There are at least two good reasons. The first is that it commoditizes the Internet further, which means more people will use it to look at Google ads. The second is, as other people have said, that they can potentially get valuable data out of it. It's actually rather scary how few web sites Google is not able to keep track of, if you consider both ads, analytics and search traffic.
- vsiva68 16y ago
  That is very true. Google's interests are very simple to fathom: They want more people on the internet. Anything that helps (in this case making it easier to develop internet oriented products) towards that is a worthy product to develop.
nostromo 16y ago
Google has gotten so big on the web, anything they can do that will increase the usability, adoption and speed of the web may help their bottom line. In this sense, it may be the same strategic initiative as getting into the ISP space and offering Chrome.
ShabbyDoo 16y ago
I think AppEngine and storage are developer bait. What's notable in the TechCrunch article is bit about authentication via GoogleID. Let's say Google entices 100K developers to provide applications of some sort which rely on a Google ID for auth. A huge segment of internet users would acquire a Google ID _AND_ recognize that they have one. So, Google becomes a de facto record of the world's identity (much like Facebook?). What sorts of services could be built on top of this? How much is that worth?
aresant 16y ago
Why was this downvoted to zero? Asking to improve in the future. My point was that line extension has been shown time and time again to be toxic for businesses and Google's bevy of marginal non-search projects seem only to reinforce that this is accurate. Al Ries has dedicated an influential book to the subject called "Focus" and I've seen the damage line-extension can cause first hand in businesses I've worked in and invested in. Considering the variety of points of view this comment spurred, I was suprised to see it = 0 which tells me that HN doesn't want this type of comment in the future?
- robryan 16y ago
  There will be a point in time where they either don't have the same dominance in search or that it will become increasingly irrelevant. Given the money that they are making they can afford to stick an arm into everything just to see if there is a big business there, all the while helping the core business with more data. Much better strategy I thing rather than the exploiting cash cows until they dry up, which a lot of business does.

by aresant 16y ago

smiler 16y ago

Because I guess they see 'cloud computing' in their future and generating money from that. I guess they need some kind of beefier storage service as they start making more ground with their Google App product line.

run4yourlives 16y ago

Google is the industry leader at monetizing search Google's stated mission is to "organize the world's information". There is tremendous power in information. Not so much in your own, but on the correlation of your data to everyone else's; the collective statistics about anything is where the power lies. In gmail, google reading my email tells them to sell me product x and we think that's the end of it. But there is so much more available in terms of how the aggregate masses behave with regards to product x and its correlated points. This extends right into file storage. Yes I am saying that Google will "read" your data. Even better, I'm saying that Amazon more than likely is already doing this. They're doing it not because they give a damn about you, but because they want the data points that come from the analysis of many separate instances of unrelated bits and bytes. That analysis is worth a fortune. It's a modern day gold rush. This makes perfect sense for Google.

jim-greer 16y ago
They've already got a ton of storage for end users - I imagine Gmail attachments alone are a pretty massive corpus. What this adds is information about site traffic - who's using what from where. Between Google Analytics, search trends, and toolbar, they've already got a lot of that. But I imagine that's part of the rationale for this.
deleted 16y ago
[deleted]
panacea 16y ago
"In gmail, google reading my email tells them to sell me product x and we think that's the end of it." I don't want to put on a tin-foil beret, but how much revenue do they actually make from ad-words on the side of GMail? I can't imagine it's much, but then I'm probably biased in that I don't even notice they're there. The pragmatic part of me realizes GMail is a service that improves 'lock-in' to the 'Google Ecosystem'... the paranoid part of me thinks about how valuable a "search everyone's inbox" rather than a "search my inbox" feature would be.
- inerte 16y ago
  It's not about getting clicks while you're reading gmail (the adwords on the side), it's about mass gathering data about you and others. Re-read run4yourlives message. He does not say gmail tries to sell you product X, but gmail tells Google you might be in a buying mood for product X.
mleonhard 16y ago
Yes I am saying that Google will "read" your data. Even better, I'm saying that Amazon more than likely is already doing this. It would be an unforgivable breach of trust for Amazon to steal customer data that is stored in AWS. Amazon is possibly the world's most customer-oriented company. I'm sure that such behavior would not be tolerated inside the company.

bdickason 16y ago

Amazon is the industry leader at moving product. They built an infrastructure to scale their site and made it publicly available when they realized that people would pay for it. This is what good businesses do, Google is no different.

antirez 16y ago

well actually I think this is the right direction for them, they lost a lot of time trying to catch up in things were they can't win, like buzz or alike. Apart from the business perspective, at least this is one thing where they can be strong, and able to match the expectation of users. Also I can't see how this is different from Amazon, business side: they got an infrastructure in order to run their other business. But there is no point in using this just internally, if this can be provided as an high quality service. Looks sane to me.

stanleydrew 16y ago
Next up: a direct api for interfacing with BigTable?

jfager 16y ago

They've already developed the vast majority of the infrastructure needed for this product in the course of working on their own projects. Why not start selling it? It's pure gravy for them, and it eventually means even greater economies of scale for innovations in power consumption, horizontal scalability, etc.

ssp 16y ago

From a business WHY are they doing this? There are at least two good reasons. The first is that it commoditizes the Internet further, which means more people will use it to look at Google ads. The second is, as other people have said, that they can potentially get valuable data out of it. It's actually rather scary how few web sites Google is not able to keep track of, if you consider both ads, analytics and search traffic.

vsiva68 16y ago
That is very true. Google's interests are very simple to fathom: They want more people on the internet. Anything that helps (in this case making it easier to develop internet oriented products) towards that is a worthy product to develop.

nostromo 16y ago

Google has gotten so big on the web, anything they can do that will increase the usability, adoption and speed of the web may help their bottom line. In this sense, it may be the same strategic initiative as getting into the ISP space and offering Chrome.

ShabbyDoo 16y ago

I think AppEngine and storage are developer bait. What's notable in the TechCrunch article is bit about authentication via GoogleID. Let's say Google entices 100K developers to provide applications of some sort which rely on a Google ID for auth. A huge segment of internet users would acquire a Google ID _AND_ recognize that they have one. So, Google becomes a de facto record of the world's identity (much like Facebook?). What sorts of services could be built on top of this? How much is that worth?

aresant 16y ago

Why was this downvoted to zero? Asking to improve in the future. My point was that line extension has been shown time and time again to be toxic for businesses and Google's bevy of marginal non-search projects seem only to reinforce that this is accurate. Al Ries has dedicated an influential book to the subject called "Focus" and I've seen the damage line-extension can cause first hand in businesses I've worked in and invested in. Considering the variety of points of view this comment spurred, I was suprised to see it = 0 which tells me that HN doesn't want this type of comment in the future?

robryan 16y ago
There will be a point in time where they either don't have the same dominance in search or that it will become increasingly irrelevant. Given the money that they are making they can afford to stick an arm into everything just to see if there is a big business there, all the while helping the core business with more data. Much better strategy I thing rather than the exploiting cash cows until they dry up, which a lot of business does.