Google: Expanding from Its Core Search Business

For Google, they have been experimenting with a variety of online software that drives travel to their site and provides opportunities for in contextual Sponsored Links related to the content the user is engaged in creating such as in Gmail and Google Groups. By providing ad funded web services, Google could solve one of the fundamental contradictions of its business model, to generate revenue users have to click a sponsored link in a search a search result and leave Google, in other words they want people to leave as possible by dishing up the most relevant ads as possible to the user’s search. But what about the rest of the time people spend on their computers when they’re not searching? By moving people online to use Google’s communication and productivity tools, they are creating numerous new opportunities for ad revenue opportunities. By scanning the content of the users’ mails, messages, documents and to-do’s, Google gains insights about what sort of services or products that their advertisers offer which the user might be interested in. At the same time, this solution to increasing the scope of Google’s business, opens another can of worms in that it does not appear appear to be consistent to the company’s founding mission, “to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful”. In some ways, by channeling people into their own services rather than making other sites more visible, Google could be reducing the democratic nature of the web, something akin to what Yahoo has done by creating an editorial content destination in order to retain users rather than send them out to possibly even more relevant and useful websites or blogs. As I am an avid user of many of Google services such as Gmail, Calendar, Custom Homepage, Google Docs, Sites, Wave and Picassa, I can honestly say I have been generally pleased by these additions and the overall integration to make me more productive and bring me information wherever I am. At the same

Links: in these services, which tells me that the contextual links in Google apps have a much lower CTR compared to search results. Google will have to think further about how to both maximize ad revenue and provide useful experiences that change the way people use computers and mobiles. I also think that as Google gets mature, it needs to be careful about sacrificing its unique idealism for continuing to grow by dominating the web and destroying healthy competition which leads to innovation. By replacing MS Office, an outmoded local software model, they help to usher in a new ubiquitous computing era. At the same time, they are a business and are competitive and have the potential to squash other new innovations before they ever come to light.