This BusinessWeek article makes several excellent points about all the recent Google products that have been launched recently by the Internet search giant. Too few of these products have received lasting warm welcomes from potential customers after the media hype wore off, leaving these products to sit on a virtual dusty shelf waiting for an audience.In actuality, many of these products -- like Google Finance and Google Talk -- are fine offerings. They have just not gained any traction against the competition since being released. Google Talk, for example, is about as simplistic as instant messaging can get, and those fed up with bloated IM programs would find Google Talk a refreshing change.
However, there are audiences in some form for many of Google's services like Google News, which is very popular. While Google likes to aggregate content in categories and display it in simple form to the audience, this strategy is sometimes successful and sometimes now.
Google News has worked since many customers can go there and receive categorized news from around the world in one place. Google Finance, on the other hand, also aggregates content, but does not seem to have much of a value-add for many. Yahoo! Finance, of course, was on the scene long before Google, and at this time Yahoo! Finance is still the most popular finance web destination for many. Why? In part, it's due to the personal touch many of the columnists give (like Ben Stein, Jeremy Siegel and Suze Orman), which is ahead of simply collecting data from multiple sources in a central location like Google Finance does.
This argument applies to the old media vs. new media tussle as well -- newspapers seem to be leeching customers to online news, and one of the few chances newspapers have to survive for up-n-coming generations is to produce custom, compelling and insightful content instead of just filling pages with wire stories, which adds zero value to many savvy consumers.
Web news can do this for free and can be constantly updated in real-time -- something newspapers cannot match. So, just like newspapers, Google can start to win consumers to its products by keeping things simple (a good thing) and also by customizing the experience on top of that. Parrots belong on the shoulders of pirates only.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
7-07-2006 @ 10:12PM
mitch said...
google would be better served if in addition to releasing its oroducts ,some of which hopefully will eventually bring in revenue; to concentrate on its industry leading search instrument..as i mentioned on previous blog...coca cola made wonderful living at having essentially one product for many years and its stock made many people millionaires...i feel same with google ....time will tell......best mitch