Comments on: Why Hath Google Forsaken Us? A Meditation.

By: What Is Search Now? Disjoined. | John Battelle's Search Blog

What Is Search Now? Disjoined. | John Battelle's Search Blog — Fri, 31 Aug 2012 21:46:40 +0000

[...] the most powerful and lasting new company of the past 20 years – Google.* But as I wrote in Why Hath Google Forsaken Us? A Meditation, Google’s core model – built on the open, linked world of the web – is under [...]

By: johnbattelle

johnbattelle — Mon, 06 Aug 2012 18:10:00 +0000

Good point Rick.

By: Rick

Rick — Mon, 06 Aug 2012 18:07:00 +0000

Great article. however RE: Android – those with Gmail accounts/Google accounts already sign in on their Android devices. So Google have a good sense of what apps you use, what music you like (especially with Google music) / what films you like / where you go (they record GPS info and will happily tell you how many hours you spend at work and at home via maps).

By: ANOther

ANOther — Mon, 02 Apr 2012 11:28:00 +0000

I fling shit at google

By: DuckDuckGo Aims To Beat Google With New Search Features | Second Income Education

Sat, 31 Mar 2012 01:12:25 +0000

[...] core product — its web search engine — has been hit with a barrage of criticism for changes Google made in the way it displays search results, putting content from Google’s [...]

By: DuckDuckGo Aims To Beat Google With New Search Features … | Social Media Somerset

Fri, 30 Mar 2012 21:20:59 +0000

[...] 2012, 3:38 PM Google’s core product — its web search engine — has been hit with a barrage of criticism for changes Google made in the way it displays search results, putting content from Google’s [...]

By: Liens vagabonds (22 mars) | Metamedia

Liens vagabonds (22 mars) | Metamedia — Thu, 22 Mar 2012 20:20:52 +0000

[...] Google est en train de perdre face à Apple et Facebook – John Battelle [...]

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Wed, 21 Mar 2012 15:57:00 +0000

They are competitors, but I don’t think they have a similar corp. philosophy

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Wed, 21 Mar 2012 07:08:00 +0000

I’m not sure where you got the idea that Mayer was pretending like business is a small part of Google. Mayer was one of the central early players that helped them get to where they are now. The point was not to not care about revenues but to focus on users and the revenues would come from serving the users. The quote, from Levy’s book, which I think is considered a rather accurate account of the thinking inside the company (and perhaps at this point the definitive book on that subject so far) indicates their priorities rather that business is a small part of their operation. In fact, it is a kind of business strategy. I don’t think that has anything to do with the value of AdWords or AdSense. Thanks for your reply.

By: Michael A. Robson

Michael A. Robson — Wed, 21 Mar 2012 06:50:00 +0000

‘We’ve heard the road map for products, what’s the road map for revenues?’ She almost bit his head off. ‘That’s not the way to think,’ she said. ‘We are focused on our users. If we make them happy, we will have revenues.’”– Levy, Steven (2011-04-12). In The Plex (p. 5)
Bizarre. That sounds like something Steve Jobs might have said back in the 80′s. Then he learned his lesson.

What makes Google great, no doubt, is the developers and great people they have working there. But what makes Google BIG is their ingenious AdSense platform. To not think about Revenues and pretend like business is a ‘small part’ of Google is ridiculous. There are plenty of search engines. AdWords/AdSense was the best idea Google ever had about monetizing them.