Does anyone ese feel that google is making a mistake with the number of services it offers? It currrently lists 23 different tools, and still continues to develop more. Admitadly, they know far more about their market than I do, but it does seem that they are straying from their main strength, their web search. Diversify. What for?
Google is trying to be more like yahoo and msn (portal/services). Msn and yahoo are trying to be like google (adsence rivals/ better search).
Google has said before (sorry can't find link right now) that they have a 70/20/10 philosophy. They spend 70% of their resources on their core business (search), 20% on closely related areas (news), and 10% on oddball projects.
fair enough. Mind you, I'm not criticising them. At least when they launch a service, it's pretty much guaranteed to be useful and a 'job well done'. I use gmail and adore it- same goes for desktop search & picassa!
Because anyone or any organization that put all their eggs in one basket is risking survival. As long as the diversification doesn't detract from the core service that got them to the top, and there's no evidence I can see that it's doing so, it's not a problem.
It's smart of them to diversify. Look at Yahoo. Now that Google has gobbled up all their SE numbers, they have to rely on other fields to survive. If they hadn't diversify all those years ago before Google came onto the scene, they'd be dead in the water right now.
Or maybe they would have improved their core product and might dominate that field right now. The real issue in my mind is as Minstrel points out, if you can diversify while strengthening core competencies, diversification is good. My gut feeling is that G is taking on a bit too much, a bit to quickly. I think the next year or so may be very important for them. It seems they will need to make some decisions, soon. Those decisions would be, "which new business are keepers, and which get tossed?" If they do that, and if they decide correctly, they will prove a great deal to the investment community. /*tom*/
and they hit the jackpot once, I think they can do it again. gmail is not as big as hotmail: ok, it stays in beta. google news hasn't beaten any news-sites, ok, it stays in alpha, but someday, someone will think of a new thing that will be the next rage on the net. and that will be a billion dollar business as well. You have to screw up a few times (money wise; see bottom line) before you make the world spin - and now Google has gone public, money is the bottom line but all beta/alpha/test products google releases are great, they all have a purpose - and even better: the products work! even a google-beta is better than a microsoft v1.0 but costed them more than they can ever make in proffits. I like that 70/20/10 idea. In some local companies we have "friday afternoon hobby time" . No work, just play and fool around with the gadgets you have and see if you can come up with a nice and briliant idea. Most fridays are wasted.. but once in a while you get, well, the Compact Disc (that's a flat memory stick you can't write on) and stuff like that...
You have to take risks with your business becuase things are always changing and you have to change too or get left behind. I don't think the Google people are going to spread themselves too thin, they seem smarter then that!
Ok, they're clearly not stupid eough to spread themselves to thinly and leave their search engine exposed. They point I was making was that some of their diversification was unnecessary. It just seems that they are creating tools like news, groups, scholar etc. for the sake of it.
*shrug* then use the alternatives... in many cases, that has more to do with personal preference than excellence...
Tell that to Microsoft There are always better alternatives out there. Market share isn't always about offering the best product. Diversity can sometimes drive your core product if its related. Look at gMail - You call that starting a new product...I call that another delivery vehicle for AdWords
Actually, if you use the POP option for Gmail you never even see the ads. And even on the web version, to be honest, I never noticed them, tucked off to the right as they were.
Want to venture a guess on what percentage use the POP option? I have never clicked an ad on the web version either but somebody must be. Otherwise they wouldn't be constantly increasing the mailbox size.
It is about diversification, but more importantly it's about growth. When you pretty much own a market, the only way to sustain adequate growth is to branch out into other related services.
While it seems that way to me as well, I doubt that is truly the case. It could very well be that G is going for mind-share. If so, they need to have people using more than just search. Search and mail is a great start. But, you probably need at least 3 services that most people use in order to say you're making progress on capturing mind-share. /*tom*/
23 doesn't seem that many in my eyes for a company the size of Google. I would imagine that several members of this forum offer a similar number of services, albeit on a smaller scale.