The Google Anarchy
Fortune magazine has a lengthy cover story on the chaotic way Google runs. What's clear from the piece is that Google is desperately working hard to find its next hit because it's really only had one - search. Even Eric Schmidt notes that Google's most die-hard fans can't remember all of their products. Most folks I know use one, Google.com.
The article also zeroes in on Google's three-pronged strategy to court advertisers. To me it all sounds like a tough climb. They include: focusing on big customers who will deliver multimillion-dollar orders, helping newspapers sell ads online and pitching radio time to its advertisers. (Google is a competitor of Microsoft, an Edelman client.)
Surely AdWords was the brilliant invention, rather than search.
Posted by: David Tebbutt | Saturday, September 23, 2006 at 03:44 PM
I'm with David on this one. AdWords made Google profitable and has become the biggest name in pay per click. And AdSense is probably the largest source of income for bloggers in the world.
Posted by: Ed Kohler | Saturday, September 23, 2006 at 11:18 PM
Integration, integration, integration!
Posted by: Mike Abundo | Sunday, September 24, 2006 at 12:27 AM
The Forture article reveals Google's strategy for the future - it's Web 2.0 applications running in Super Powerful Datacenters that only Google has enough money to build enough of to outpower and out invent any competitor.
Posted by: Webmetricsguru | Sunday, September 24, 2006 at 12:47 AM
Search drove all the traffic, that made them credible, Adwords would be nothing without the initial credibilty that huge amount of traffic gave it.
Posted by: Greg Leventeris | Sunday, September 24, 2006 at 10:31 PM
I was going to say it, but I see Greg Leventeris already said it. Google hit the jackpot with its web search. They created a superior service. They attracted the masses and that became their distribution mechnism. Anything that they create now can instantly gain LOADS of attention/users/data, because they have this distribution mechanism. They haven't really made any visible improvements to their search in the recent years, although there was a lot of good work put in the backend/scalability aspect of the service (MapReduce, Bigtable, etc.).
Posted by: Otis Gospodnetic | Sunday, September 24, 2006 at 11:47 PM
Aside from Adwords, surely Adsense, Gmail, and Blogspot qualify as hits too?
Posted by: Friedbeef | Monday, September 25, 2006 at 05:00 AM
Where's my comment?
I posted a good one, but it hasn't appeared.
Was it not nerdy enough for your blog, Steve?
Posted by: Owen Lystrup | Tuesday, September 26, 2006 at 06:50 PM