How low can Google go ?
By “low” I am not referring to the stock price, which is now down $100 since my blog entry predicting their miss :) , rather I am referring to sacrificing good user experience on their SERP for making more cash.
Google is now testing longer abstracts for the ads above the web results, these abstracts go as long as 200 characters (2 to 4 lines on some screens). This is opposite to what Yahoo is doing, in mid January Yahoo moved towards shorter abstracts. The only reason to do longer abstracts for ads is to make more money by pushing the good web results further below the fold. The first time I heard about these longer abstract tests, I said to my self Google must be doing this for the adsense network, and then I was blown away to see them actually testing them on the main Google SERP.
It will really be interesting to see how the Google SERP evolves this year. It seems that Google ran out of innovations for the algorithms matching ads to queries, so now the main way to create more growth is to change their SERP. Currently Google shows up to 3 ads above the web results in the north section of the page, will we see 4 soon ?
Finally, did you see today’s WSJ article about Google paying Dell $1B (yes, billion) so that new machines Dell sells will have Google as the default search in IE! This is an insane payment, as much as $10 per machine. Do they really expect to make that search money back over the life time of the user ? Possibly if it’s a new user who never leaves them, but how many of those are left ?
– amr
Keep the blog posts comming, Amr. Your fans want more
Comment by joe laz — February 7, 2006 @ 10:28 pmJoe, my motto is quality not quantity
Comment by amr — February 7, 2006 @ 10:40 pmDoes anyone remember the HUGE hullaballo when Yahoo and a few other search engines did this very thing several years ago? Those search results, if I remember, weren’t clearly marked as “paid” as these are, but still … How long before the top five results returned are paid?
Comment by Rebort — February 8, 2006 @ 12:10 amDude, what’s up with all this Google hatred?!? I don’t say Google is all good, but come on, seek professional help. Were you turned down at an interview with them or something?
Its just a company, chill out, there are better ways to occuppy yourlife.
Comment by x — February 8, 2006 @ 7:10 amDoes all this negate the fact that Google is taking market share? Would users really
be bothered by a clearly distinguishable Ad vs search result? (i know i’m not)
thank you for ur thoughts, as u have allowed me to have more insight into the biz.
and to comment on the ‘earnings miss’… when doing the numbers Google’s expenses
Comment by Joe — February 8, 2006 @ 7:16 amhave clearly increased, however when u take out Stock Compensation the growth of the
earnings expense from 3rd Q to 4rth Q is reduced. The one thing that does worry me
is the increased level of stock diluting the shares outstanding from the Stock Comp.
(I think this dilution factor is the real problem w/the stock price, because if u
take out stock compensation, and apply a normalized tax rate, they would of beat estimates.)
Classic 1999 stock analyst reasoning. “If we just rationalize away everything negative on their balance sheet, they beat expectations!”
Comment by Fabio — February 8, 2006 @ 1:44 pmTo Mr. X, you can gleam some insight on why I “dislike” Google
at this posting titled “Biting the Hands that Fed you”:
http://www.awadallah.com/blog/2005/10/07/11/
Comment by amr — February 8, 2006 @ 2:51 pmIn my experience, shorter abstracts monetize the same as longer ones … so all G is doing by lengthening the abstracts is reducing the presence of algo results above the fold. I mean, they might as well just add blank vertical space to the North AdWords if that’s their goal
Or heck, do 4 North with short abstracts, it would probably take up the same amount of space.
Yes, it’s just a test, but indicates that they are under a lot of pressure to hit their numbers.
For what it’s worth, I have a lot of respect for G, they are a formidable competitor. But they are not immune from the reality of being a public company–despite what the founders’ letter in their S-1 says
Comment by gerster — February 9, 2006 @ 12:34 pmThe argument against the DOJ was nothing but a PR stunt to hopefully maintain and expand user base (smells like money here!) “Do no evil unless it pays well!” Do I hear: “To hell with human rights, freedom and democracy as long as we make lots of money”?
Other companies may continue to do business with communist and totalarian countries such as China, but at least they don’t hide under a nice motto or pretend to be nice guys.
Your article “Biting the Hands the Fed you” hits the nail right on the head. No wonder Gates thinks this company resembles his own’s the most — the big difference is Mr. Softie has never vowed to “not do evil.”
The only thing that’s worse than evil is evil masked under a nice face, because you’re not prepared, and therefore, can’t defend yourself from getting backstabbed by a supposedly “nice guy”.
BTW, do you notice that the most evil people/organizations in human history always try to hide under nice mottos or propagandas while proceed to commit the most heinous acts? History also has shown that, their real, despicable characters and intentions will be revealed and despised/condemned, sooner or later.
Comment by anon — February 10, 2006 @ 7:23 pmHi Amr,
Great post once again.
It is amazing how this company is literally doing anything in its power to make more money. They are least interested in the user experience. The quality of their SERPs has exponentially decreased over the last 18 months and I see no signs of it improving.
Joe surfer is lead to believe that there may not be any good web sites left online once they see the SERPs of Google.
I would love to see your remarks on Google Desktop Search 3. I believe they are trying to better predict user behaviors to increase click through rates by monitoring a user’s disk contents.
Does Yahoo! have any “evil” plans like this? I hope not. Please do address these when you can.
Thanks
Comment by FrankMash — February 11, 2006 @ 10:34 pmFrank
Mr X,
People don’t hate Google because they were denied jobs (Heck I created my resume for them and decided not to send it).
People hate Google because like others I believe that if there was one word to describe Google, it would be “parasite.”
My five years of experience dealing with Google tells me that dealing with Google in any capacity is basically equal to shooting yourself in the foot. I would rather get a straight bullet rather than be left off dying over the years.
Look at the services Google provides:
1. Google Analytics: so we can spy on your traffic, referrals, surfing habits and eventually take over your market.
2. Google Mail: so we can know everything there is to know about your email usage patterns, including the conversation and chat history.
3. Google Mail for business: so we can get to know all your business secrets and eventually drive you off your own business.
4. Google Adsense: so we can give you a bait and then make your web site vanish from the SERPs.
5. Google Toolbar: so we can spy on you from the moment you open your web browser.
If you still don’t get it, wait, and like others your eyes will be opened.
I mean come on. My worst decision in the last five years was to trust this company. All I got in return was regret.
Frank
Comment by FrankMash — February 11, 2006 @ 10:50 pmOh and one more thing:
6. Google Desktop Search: so we can just have your hard drive. It’s too painful to know about you in pieces, why don’t you just hand us over the hard drive.
Frank
Comment by FrankMash — February 11, 2006 @ 10:56 pmAmr, All I would say is that you need to accept the reality — reality being that amr’ has $100M while amr is happy with his priceless family. More to the point, I have no bias against google or yahoo! and as an end user I think google has done a fantastic job of improving the state of things. Had they not come up with GMail or Google Maps, yahoo! would be still stuck with the age old really sucking mail interface (is the new ajax based really coming?) or yahoo maps beta would not have come out as beta so fast. And as for “biting the hand that fed you” goes, please grow up…
Comment by anon — March 4, 2006 @ 11:31 pmFrank: Dont you get it…you can choose not to use Google or anyone’s services. They are not being forced down your throat like the gas prices or war-on-terror expenses. Feel free to come up with your own mail servers, toolbars, adsense network, desktop search, mapping and make sure you put that hard disk right in the safe.
Comment by Harry — March 4, 2006 @ 11:35 pm