A couple of things about Google have been bouncing around in my head lately, and it all came together with something that I read on Slashdot today. Microsoft's CEO Steve Ballmer made slashdot today, with is prediction that Google is a one-trick Pony, and as such will be dead in 5 years. Last week, I read an article by Robert X. Cringely, stating that the Google Web Accelerator is a portent of how Google will become a "platform". Thankfully, I don't think that either point of view is exactly correct.
While, it's probably true that if Google just sticks to search, Microsoft will be able to do to them what they did to Netscape, I don't think that is Google's game. I think that Google is looking to be a repository for accessing data. And the "platform" (if you can call it that), will be their API's, which allow 3rd party applications to interact with and add value to this data in their own ways.
Case in point: this Wired news article that I read the other day. It highlights several new applications that are making use of Google Maps in new and interesting ways. One of the applications that immediately grabbed me is something called HousingMaps, which combines apartment listings from craigslist with mapping information from Google. Go ahead and try it out -- it is super neat. But the reason why this application reached out and grabbed me is because this is something I could have really used the last time that I was looking for an apartment. With one click, I saw all of the current craigslist apartment listings as pushpins on Google's map. This is so awesome! And it is all made possible by the fact that Google's "platform" is eminently hackable and extendable by third parties.
Of course, the one thing that Microsoft touts over and over is that they provide a platform -- i.e. Windows -- which is a rich ecosystem for 3rd party developers to build their own applications, thus allowing the free market to serve customers in a way that no monolithic entity can. Well, guess what kids? Google can play that game too. And while I don't want to over-hype this (because hyping some company as a Microsoft-killer is a sure way to get them killed by Microsoft), I sure am keenly interested to see where this is going.
-Andy.
Posted by andyr at May 19, 2005 11:28 PMunless google comes out with an OS and office suite, MS and google are still in fairly separate parts of the market. Maybe Google can brand, market and sell a flavor of linux like I heard they were going to do with Firefox but I still don't think that idea has legs.
If MS is going to "kill" google, as long as it doesn't break the law in so doing, that's just how it goes. If Google continues to offer the same excellent services (except the accelerator) and leverage that to generate money somehow, I think MS won't be able to do much to them. Revamping MS search for example is just a wise move to keep up with competition, not some evil plot. Bombing Google HQ however would be an evil plot.
I've got to read up on Google's business model. For a company that seems to sell nothing, they've got a lot of money. Can ads and specialized servers generate that much revenue?
Here's how google can kill microsoft.
Take knoppix and customize it. Stamp tons of CDs and put them on grocery store checkout lines for $1.
The customer takes the CD, pops it into the home computer and reboots. Et voila, you're in GoogleOS with a browser, a small but happy productivity suit and connected through google. Include a media player (itunes?) a browser (firefox) office suit (stripped OO.O) and you're set.
The question that bugs me though is not how they can do it but how they will make money off it.
They can make money off of it if they can distribute the CDs for less than $1 which I don't think is unreasonable. Then default the homepage to google.com and maybe the user will use it more than yahoo, thus generating more ad revenue down the line. Plus, have it come with a gmail account which will bootstrap even more ad money.
Of course, if they could have made money off of this, they probably would have already so there must be some good reason why they haven't.
Posted by: Mark at May 23, 2005 04:44 PMDoes Google really need to get into the OS space? My feeling right now is that Linux is going to create enough downward price pressure on the commodity "main stream" OS, that it will cease to have the relevance that it once had.
Call me kooky...
-Andy.
Posted by: Andrew Reitz at May 24, 2005 12:50 AMOh, and the ADs generate "a shitload" of revenue. You should check out both AdWords and AdSense, they both rock, and I think that is how Google is making the lion's share of their money. They also have deals to provide search for a bunch of different web portals, although they have been losing some of those as of late (think Yahoo!).
-Andy.
Posted by: Andrew Reitz at May 24, 2005 12:52 AMAds is a seasonal business. Advertisers pick whoever is "hottest" and their bar to switching is _extremely_ low. They are not a good customer. Besides, they can afford to have their hand in lots of pies (they can advertise on Y!, MSN etc).
Developers are fantastic customers. It takes a bit to write software, APIs are different, its hard to port something from windows to a mac. Don't even think Java. They drive more people adopting your platform, which in turn drives revenues.
My point: while ads might be the lion's share of google's revenues today, its not a sustainable enterprise.