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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 fu

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.

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.