4 ms·

Hardly. These are distant problems in my opinion and even if they were to become critical in addressing, their scope is not so large that they would affect Goog

Hardly. These are distant problems in my opinion and even if they were to become critical in addressing, their scope is not so large that they would affect Google as a company in any noticeable way (IMHO).

berkes 12y ago
> their scope is not so large that they would affect Google as a company in any noticeable way. To be fair, the author said `could hurt Google`, expressing reservations. The two points he makes, however, are directly influencing Googles actual customers. We must not forget that Google is first and foremost an advertising agency., or ad-broker. All their "consumerproducts" are there to leverage their actual product: ad-space. And the customers, the ones advertising, are rather directly hurt by both issues (for the sake of the argument, let's presume these statements are correct): > Google’s disconnect from the outside world keeps growing. The threat being that their customerbase moves on; either by moving to new platforms and systems to sell their goods and create attention. Or by offending their customers, probably unintentional. The case at point, offering in-site-search on third-party-sites could be that: hurting the companies that normally buy the ads to drive the follow-up traffic to their products now see Google taking that traffic to their own site. > Google has a chronic communication problem. Google's customers are also the ones who need to know the ins and outs of changes to their products. If you are buying ad-space on a somewhat professional base, you care deeply about the efficiency of these ads. This is not some "pay and forget" product, it is something you have to keep tuning, or else your ads effectiveness wear off. For that, you need data: information about the ins- and outs of Google's products and the changes therein. You have to keep on top of the changes and tune your portfolio of ads to make use of, or counteract the effects these changes.
- cromwellian 12y ago
  Chrome itself has long offered in-site search. As much as people keep repeating the "google is an ad agency" claim, they're still wrong about how the company functions internally. The non-ads teams are focused on making the services better for the consumer. Things that Search, Apps, or Android does can hurt the ads business, but actually make the product better for the user. When Google Instant was launched, people thought it could hurt the ads business. Google Now and Google direct-answers searches, which turn up knowledge graph boxes result in less ads shown. In the old days if you asked "how long is the golden gate bridge", you'd get ads on the side for San Francisco tourism, now you get a Knowledge Graph box. The biggest threat to Google is that mobile erodes search ads faster that Play store revenue replaces it (if ever). The most of the Web moves to native apps or even mobile web sites, ad inventory and clicks will go down, and will have to be made up by other products (YouTube display ads? Play store revenue?)
  - fidotron 12y ago
    You're dead right on your last point, and I think Play Store revenues ever getting substantial is amazingly unlikely. The thing is this is why the Chrome development strategy is backwards: by going on about "apps" all the time the Chrome team is encouraging data walled garden style web app development which if successful would be equally dangerous to Google as mobile native apps are. How they convinced the higher ups that this was strategically sound is beyond me, and anyone would be tempted to think it was just a corporate turf war.
  - millstone 12y ago
    I don't think Chrome's behavior of enabling 3rd party cookies by default, burying Do Not Track under "Advanced", and having no Reader Mode functionality make it "better for the consumer." It's easy to guess that someone searching for "how long is the golden gate bridge" is more likely to be idly curious than in the market for hotels. This is a small loss. But when it comes to choices that affect their core business model, ads rule. Of course this isn't surprising or even particularly damning. Apple still charges for iPhones, even though free ones are surely better for the consumer. Still, the settings and defaults for Chrome vs (say) Safari speak to the priorities of their authors. I think you're right about the biggest threat to Google.
- warfangle 12y ago
  Google has made many decisions in the past that have made the advertising product worse while making the search / adwords product better for actual users. They've made these decisions knowing that advertisers would be annoyed, and went ahead with them anyways -- because in their culture, all revenue originates at the user, not the advertiser. Yeah, the advertisers are the ones paying the bills... but if there aren't any users, there won't be any advertisers either.

berkes 12y ago

> their scope is not so large that they would affect Google as a company in any noticeable way. To be fair, the author said `could hurt Google`, expressing reservations. The two points he makes, however, are directly influencing Googles actual customers. We must not forget that Google is first and foremost an advertising agency., or ad-broker. All their "consumerproducts" are there to leverage their actual product: ad-space. And the customers, the ones advertising, are rather directly hurt by both issues (for the sake of the argument, let's presume these statements are correct): > Google’s disconnect from the outside world keeps growing. The threat being that their customerbase moves on; either by moving to new platforms and systems to sell their goods and create attention. Or by offending their customers, probably unintentional. The case at point, offering in-site-search on third-party-sites could be that: hurting the companies that normally buy the ads to drive the follow-up traffic to their products now see Google taking that traffic to their own site. > Google has a chronic communication problem. Google's customers are also the ones who need to know the ins and outs of changes to their products. If you are buying ad-space on a somewhat professional base, you care deeply about the efficiency of these ads. This is not some "pay and forget" product, it is something you have to keep tuning, or else your ads effectiveness wear off. For that, you need data: information about the ins- and outs of Google's products and the changes therein. You have to keep on top of the changes and tune your portfolio of ads to make use of, or counteract the effects these changes.

cromwellian 12y ago
Chrome itself has long offered in-site search. As much as people keep repeating the "google is an ad agency" claim, they're still wrong about how the company functions internally. The non-ads teams are focused on making the services better for the consumer. Things that Search, Apps, or Android does can hurt the ads business, but actually make the product better for the user. When Google Instant was launched, people thought it could hurt the ads business. Google Now and Google direct-answers searches, which turn up knowledge graph boxes result in less ads shown. In the old days if you asked "how long is the golden gate bridge", you'd get ads on the side for San Francisco tourism, now you get a Knowledge Graph box. The biggest threat to Google is that mobile erodes search ads faster that Play store revenue replaces it (if ever). The most of the Web moves to native apps or even mobile web sites, ad inventory and clicks will go down, and will have to be made up by other products (YouTube display ads? Play store revenue?)
- fidotron 12y ago
  You're dead right on your last point, and I think Play Store revenues ever getting substantial is amazingly unlikely. The thing is this is why the Chrome development strategy is backwards: by going on about "apps" all the time the Chrome team is encouraging data walled garden style web app development which if successful would be equally dangerous to Google as mobile native apps are. How they convinced the higher ups that this was strategically sound is beyond me, and anyone would be tempted to think it was just a corporate turf war.
- millstone 12y ago
  I don't think Chrome's behavior of enabling 3rd party cookies by default, burying Do Not Track under "Advanced", and having no Reader Mode functionality make it "better for the consumer." It's easy to guess that someone searching for "how long is the golden gate bridge" is more likely to be idly curious than in the market for hotels. This is a small loss. But when it comes to choices that affect their core business model, ads rule. Of course this isn't surprising or even particularly damning. Apple still charges for iPhones, even though free ones are surely better for the consumer. Still, the settings and defaults for Chrome vs (say) Safari speak to the priorities of their authors. I think you're right about the biggest threat to Google.
warfangle 12y ago
Google has made many decisions in the past that have made the advertising product worse while making the search / adwords product better for actual users. They've made these decisions knowing that advertisers would be annoyed, and went ahead with them anyways -- because in their culture, all revenue originates at the user, not the advertiser. Yeah, the advertisers are the ones paying the bills... but if there aren't any users, there won't be any advertisers either.