Comments on: Google’s Achilles Heel http://gigaom.com/2008/01/15/google%e2%80%99s-achilles-heel/ Thu, 23 May 2013 18:21:58 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.com/ By: SEO Daily Reading - Issue 15 « Internet Marketing Blog http://gigaom.com/2008/01/15/google%e2%80%99s-achilles-heel/#comment-191029 Wed, 23 Sep 2009 20:19:58 +0000 http://gigaom.com/2008/01/15/google%e2%80%99s-achilles-heel/#comment-191029 [...] Google’s Achilles Heel — Does Google Have an Achilles Heel? Gigaom Seem to Think So [...]

]]> By: Saad Fazil http://gigaom.com/2008/01/15/google%e2%80%99s-achilles-heel/#comment-191028 Wed, 20 May 2009 16:58:23 +0000 http://gigaom.com/2008/01/15/google%e2%80%99s-achilles-heel/#comment-191028 In Q1 2009, Google’s revenue was as follows:

(99% from ads)
3.7B Google.com
1.6B Network
~100m licensing

Following are the top Google properties:

1 http://www.google.com 134M
2 maps.google.com 51M
3 images.google.com 48M
4 mail.google.com 32M
5 video.google.com 14M
6 news.google.com 13M
7 clients1.google.com 12M
8 books.google.com 8M
—
Total monthly unique users ~ 500M

Google Books makes money from ads just as most other Google properties do.

If we were to make a very rough guess from the traffic numbers above =>

Google Books ~ 2% of 3.7B = 74M

Note that I have assumed that eCPM of all Google properties is the same.. a highly inaccurate assumption. However, since Google Books is a “vertical”, we should expect its CPM to be higher than other Google properties. So 74M a quarter (or $300m) seems like a conservative estimate.

Now let’s take Kayak – top travel search engine.

Kayak’s monthly unique users = ~6mm

Annual revenue ~ $150mm
~50% comes from ads.. => $75mm

Two conclusions from the numbers above.

(i) Apparently Google is doing pretty OK on its own. Google Books being an average product at best is getting higher CPM than Kayak, a specialist in travel search.

If Google buys Kayak, it could actually drive up their CPM?

(ii) Online jobs market was ~6B in 2007 ( http://www.sramanamitra.com/2007/07/25/facebooks-monetization-strategy-part-1/ ) . But most of the pie is coming from subscriptions etc. and not just from ads. So even if Google were to enter a vertical, it would be taking only part of the slice as its expertise is really in search and advertising and not transaction handling.. of course unless it changes it focus.

]]> By: Deal Radar 2009: Enquisite | Sramana Mitra on Strategy http://gigaom.com/2008/01/15/google%e2%80%99s-achilles-heel/#comment-191027 Tue, 19 May 2009 20:11:43 +0000 http://gigaom.com/2008/01/15/google%e2%80%99s-achilles-heel/#comment-191027 [...] Forbes Column 2008: The Gap In Google’s Defenses Yahoo, Please Put Up A Fight (My guest article at GigaOm) Google’s Achilles Heel (Another of my guest posts on GigaOm) [...]

]]> By: Andres http://gigaom.com/2008/01/15/google%e2%80%99s-achilles-heel/#comment-191026 Mon, 08 Sep 2008 18:27:37 +0000 http://gigaom.com/2008/01/15/google%e2%80%99s-achilles-heel/#comment-191026 Coexistence of vertical and horizontal search is fully sustainable on the long term. I hardly believe people would one day cease to use generalist Search Engines like Google to adopt a Vertical Search Engine (VSE) for each one of their daily search purposes (jobs,cooking,music).
People will always keep on using booth and the best.

Horizontal SEs will always have one leap ahead as they remain the main jump points to any VSEs. Even if share of useful VSE propositions will continue to rise, their usage is doomed to be in most cases occasional. Financially, VSEs revenue models are very precarious until critical mass is reachable while Google on the other hand is becoming more and more context sensitive,vertical and profitable.

Ultimately, no VSE could ever pose a serious threat to Google simply because if this was the case Google would diligently buy this contender right way. Missing the opportunity to be powered by Google innovation and financial engine is an offer no VSE could ever refuse!

]]> By: Espectativas de evolución en los búscadores : La Cofa - Blog de Vigilancia Tecnológica http://gigaom.com/2008/01/15/google%e2%80%99s-achilles-heel/#comment-191025 Wed, 14 May 2008 13:45:53 +0000 http://gigaom.com/2008/01/15/google%e2%80%99s-achilles-heel/#comment-191025 [...] Gigaom (”Google’s Achilles Heel“) [...]

]]> By: Surinder Puri http://gigaom.com/2008/01/15/google%e2%80%99s-achilles-heel/#comment-191024 Sat, 08 Mar 2008 19:43:50 +0000 http://gigaom.com/2008/01/15/google%e2%80%99s-achilles-heel/#comment-191024 Too much sensational reporting/blogging… If I take the thought to its logical conclusion then simple picture appears… If these vertical searches are successful in the future then there is a good chance they’ll be bought by google. Author likes to sensationalize just about everything without grasping deeper understandings of such issues. We’ve all heard before how IBM was supposed to be dead becuase Microsoft was on the rise. How Microsoft was supposed to bite the dust becuase google ruled the internet etc. etc. They all missed one key detail – CASH. These companies had/have more cash sitting on their balance sheets than many countries. IBM is fine (btw, they are second largest software company in the world, or is it third, annual software revenues app. $18 Billion), they are still selling a lot of mainframes though, Microsoft is doing well, and Google will continue to do well for a very long time to come. What is likely to happen is emergence of a new technology beyond search on the internet, that we haven’t thought of yet…

]]> By: MyStrands Blog » Web 3.0 is about recommendation and personalisation http://gigaom.com/2008/01/15/google%e2%80%99s-achilles-heel/#comment-191023 Thu, 07 Feb 2008 01:05:53 +0000 http://gigaom.com/2008/01/15/google%e2%80%99s-achilles-heel/#comment-191023 [...] Mitra has also covered the topic several times, and she recently described Web 3.0 as a summation of context, community, commerce, content, vertical search and [...]

]]> By: Alt Search Engines » Blog Archive » Zvents makes Local Search pop! http://gigaom.com/2008/01/15/google%e2%80%99s-achilles-heel/#comment-191022 Thu, 31 Jan 2008 01:40:39 +0000 http://gigaom.com/2008/01/15/google%e2%80%99s-achilles-heel/#comment-191022 [...] course, about Vertical Search engines – the writer and tech strategist Sramana Mitra considers them Google’s Achilles heel and Profy.com’s Cyndy Aleo-Carreira seems to agree. This blog also has long held the position [...]

]]> By: Google Tutor http://gigaom.com/2008/01/15/google%e2%80%99s-achilles-heel/#comment-191021 Sat, 19 Jan 2008 18:52:33 +0000 http://gigaom.com/2008/01/15/google%e2%80%99s-achilles-heel/#comment-191021 great post, but I can’t help but think Google can knock off a lot of these players with a ‘good enough’ automated solution to many of these verticals.

]]> By: Girija http://gigaom.com/2008/01/15/google%e2%80%99s-achilles-heel/#comment-191020 Thu, 17 Jan 2008 23:51:36 +0000 http://gigaom.com/2008/01/15/google%e2%80%99s-achilles-heel/#comment-191020 Of all the companies, only Indeed.com is worth mentioning.Jobster will make its way to the deadpool soon. I also ran into an interesting site the other day- Odinjobs(www.odinjobs.com). They claim to be even more specialized for IT jobs. Interesting about them is their match engine that reverse matches your resume to all the jobs based on content.

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