Sunday, March 27, 2011

The Evolving Mission of Google By DAVID CARR


I'm not sure what evolution there will be, considering Google's business model and source of profit can't just be changed or even evolved to a different model. Google already gains 96% of its revenue from advertising. This leads Google to sell, and often gives away, their products because our eyeballs are the product they're truly selling. If those free services direct more of our eyeballs to their ads , then they get to make money. I think whatever Google does now or in the future will imply how to increase revenue. The competing ideas of these search engines exemplifies that we live in a form of capitalism and those with the best ideas and products should win.

5 comments:

Scott Bobbitt said...

Making profit in this internet age is a tricky territory for traditional companies. The article points to the fact that companies like Netflix and YouTube have been able to flourish where companies like Pixar have been unable to adapt. Google certainly gets it.

Google has seen that valuable content is what drives the internet. They have provided a clean, easy to use platform on which to deliver various services to millions of different users.

They became international players last year as well when they pulled out of China amid controversies that certain Gmail accounts were being hacked by high level Chinese officials.

Their future growth compared to other emerging companies will be interesting to follow in the years to come.

Eric Livingston said...

Google is in the business of making money just like everyone else. Advertising is how they will make that money. The high quality content, celebrities, negotiations with the NBA and NHL...come on. They have it figured out. Google is on a mission to expand and grow. They set aside $100 million for celebrity advertising, which is nothing really to them. This will only increase their revenues more. Google is in the business of making money whether they admit it or not, and the easiest way to do that is through advertising. It will be interesting to see what they do next.

Aaron Riley said...

Google seems to do well with nearly every venture it gets into. The web browser Google Chrome is growing in popularity, even if Firefox and internet explorer still hold larger shares. Google's search engine is more sophisticated than others of its kind, as the article indicates. With the experience google has and their base of users acquired through chrome and gmail, among other software, they are primed to enter a new market and be successful.

Hairong said...

Google is very successful in its marketing strategies and producing innovative ideas and products. Googled has expanded from a search engine to now various sectors such as the web browser, and its google docs. The company also has a great organizational culture. I'm positive in its future growth and it would be interesting to see what it's next step is.

VB said...

Google was always referred to as one trick pony pointing out that almost all of its revenue comes from ads on search results and AdSense. And most of the new products they release are aimed to drive more people to their search engine. But what if some other company comes in and develops a better search engine? For example IBM with their Watson. Watson is the only system that came close to passing Turing Test, which means Watson can think like a very very intelligent human. So if IBM connects Watson to internet, people could ask any question to Watson and it would give an accurate answer. Hence, the battle of search engine is far from over and if Google wants to survive this battle it needs to come up with more intelligent search engine.