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I don't think Google cares whether its users are "passionate" or not. They've reached market saturation, so further spread of their products through word-of-mou
by TimTheTinker 8y ago
I don't think Google cares whether its users are "passionate" or not. They've reached market saturation, so further spread of their products through word-of-mouth (via passionate users and such) isn't a goal at this time.
With regard to their Internet service products, their goal seem to be to monetize the user base effectively, while avoiding wasting funds on unnecessary developer time. To that end, many of their products seem to exist as short-term bets or "experiments", ostensibly to give users something great/interesting, but internally justified by the extra data or "research" those products will generate. See Google Voice (angle: voicemails help train Google Assistant), Inbox (angle: research on some email ideas for potential incorporation into GMail), etc.
Google's cultural fixation on decision-making based on data and statistics will bite them eventually. It may help them squeeze the market, but it won't help them care about other people.
- joering2 8y agoPrecisely. I can be as pissed at Google as they come, ready to pick up my pitchfork, but at the end of the month when I spent $120,000 on adwords and made $280,000 in profit as a return, I will gladly tattoo Google logo on my chest. The scary part is they will sunset gmail eventually. I know from someone inside “L team” that founders hate how much headache gmail brings for such little return. Initially started at the boom of free email providers with fancy always-updating clock of how many extra megabytes you just got in last few seconds, fastforward today there is no money to be make in providing free email. As they failed to secure sale for a reasonable amount and on fair conditions, expect eventually they will offer to keep paid accounts and auto forward anyone else to another provider for a year or so and then sunset gmail free only leaving gmail enterprise on.
- pinewurst 8y agoThey still scan your Gmails though? I'd think the information they gather this way would still be worth something even if they don't "personalize" their own ads with it.
- komali2 8y agoI thought they "wouldn't go there," hence the hullabaloo when Yahoo "went there?"
- jessety 8y agoLast year they said they were going to suspend the practice of scanning the content of consumer emails https://www.blog.google/products/gmail/g-suite-gains-traction-in-the-enterprise-g-suites-gmail-and-consumer-gmail-to-more-closely-align/ https://www.blog.google/products/gmail/g-suite-gains-tractio...
- outworlder 8y agoEveryone scans emails. Google was just a high profile example and there was some backlash because they used for ads, not for "spam prevention", or "anti-virus".
- saagarjha 8y agoMore than a billion people use Gmail, and it continues to serve as the gateway for many people to the Google ecosystem. I, for one, doubt they would sunset it any time soon.
- jjeaff 8y agoNot a chance. Gmail is the gateway to their cloud storage and office products. There is not way they will get rid of free Gmail. Maybe cut back on the free storage. But even that...
- goatherders 8y agoAgree entirely. They don't launch products with the hope of having a long term product. They launch products to experiment and learn more about ad delivery. The core ad system is the main priority. As such, falling in love with any product that isnt their ad tech means understanding the product may disappear for no decent reason.
- sdrothrock 8y agoI would take it a step further and say that they don't launch products; they launch experiments. It's a giant Mechanical Turk setup.
- elvinyung 8y agoI am not sure if you are using the term "Mechanical Turk" correctly. Would you mind clarifying?
- grzm 8y agoThey're likely referring to Amazon Mechanical Turk: https://www.mturk.com https://www.mturk.com as opposed to the chess-playing variety: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Turk https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Turk
- qbaqbaqba 8y agoBecoming 'a worker' is very eye opening experience.
- elvinyung 8y agoGot it, MTurk defintely makes more sense than the Turk :) Which actually raises an interesting point. The word data comes from Latin dare for "to give". So, as Rob Kitchin observes, while something like MTurk can be properly described as collecting "data", Google and the vast majority of networked platforms should really be more properly described as collecting "capta", from Latin capere, or "to take".
- themagician 8y agoGoogle themselves has actually built very few successful products outside of search. Half of what they build internally they kill and the other half is acquisitions, many of which they also kill. Sometimes I even wonder about things like GSuite. When does the 2-year sunset period start?
- goatherders 8y ago$5/month per user is a pretty good return and it keeps those users/businesses from an expanded Microsoft footprint. I think (hope?) That G suite will be the exception.
- zavi 8y agoGmail, Chrome, Play, Maps seem pretty successful to me.
- fiblye 8y agoThe above poster said few, not zero. Google has killed off dozens upon dozens more officially launched projects.
- colbyh 8y agothe four listed are the biggest products in the world in their space. the first three would be multi billion dollar companies outside of Google. not to mention Search itself, Docs has become a fantastic product as has Photos. of course they have killed hundreds of potentially great projects (RIP Reader) but give the company their due - they know how to build products.
- coldtea 8y ago>the first three would be multi billion dollar companies outside of Google Gmail got popular because it's free (and had large space for a free client). If it wasn't to be outside of Google, it would make an insignificant amount of money through ads, or started to charge (in which case users would flee). Ditto for Chrome. There are 4-5 free browsers, nobody would use a browser that's not free (a required for it to be a multi-billion dollar company). At best they'd sell their search bar default setting, like FF does, which is less than a billion IIRC.
- crunchlibrarian 8y agoI'm so tired of this decision making process in business: well our statistics say <5% of people want feature X so lets just kill X to streamline. Just stop. Please. Analytics != insight. Meetings should stop being won by whoever prints off the the most tables and visualizations, because gasp sometimes that leads to the wrong decision.
- gonyea 8y agoI don’t get this. Features complicate products and require maintenance. By your logic, features would never get built because they’d carry a lifelong burden.
- tboughen 8y agoI think the idea is that the ‘long tail’ of users that such use features can still be 10s of millions for google, and preserving can act as a most preventing these power users from seeking alternatives. And then taking other users with them.
- Moru 8y agoIt's the frustration of people building their workflow on those features that is talking. It's very irritating when you find yourself in the position during your hard earned vacation to (once again) have to find a new option for something that your company needs to function.
- snaky 8y agoIt's not linear. GCD haven't got traction (and billions of revenue) it might have now because of shutdown of some products like Reader. And that's oversimplified example actually. People's minds are not linear, especially when they make decisions. The only market when you can do well with raw numbers only is cheapest 10%, when all competition is about price, and customers have zero loyalty whatsoever.
- dredmorbius 8y agoGCD?
- Buge 8y agoYou're right that passionate users can no longer effectively bring new people to Google. But passionate users can lead people away from Google.
- 8ytecoder 8y agoThis. Google cloud for example is the most technologically advanced. But no one in my company would touch it with a ten foot pole. Google can and will shutdown things is just ingrained - even when we pay, things will change so drastically or be not supported any more that you just can't assume anything.
- roneythomas6 8y agoBut Google Cloud deprecation policies and other SLA's for generally available products.
- Heliosmaster 8y agoYeah, but the perception is that google discontinues things. Even if unfounded, perception is very important...
- tmaly 8y agoThey had an internal search box you could setup to crawl your intranet. They have shut this down and order all companies to turn it off. SLA does not matter
- xeromal 8y agoI remember when they came out with Goog411 where you could could google and search for businesses and such. This was way before smartphones so it was a solid, free option for finding stuff on the go. They canned it after a while, but used all the interaction data to further their voice recognition services.
- tjpnz 8y ago>Google's cultural fixation on decision-making based on data and statistics will bite them eventually. As will their attitude towards the privacy of their users. Everyone keeps the focus on Facebook while failing to realise that Google are probably worse.