Google's Bait and Switch
Ok, so Google is the darling child of investors and users alike. Or so I read.I'm going to use up some of this space to explain why I don't think they're quite the darling child that they appear to be. In fact, I think they're more subversive than anything else, and are using a cash-funded bait-and-switch tactic to hook users with freebie items, and then slam them with advertisements.
One thing to remember ... I do use Google. I'm writing this on Blogger, I use Google as my search engine, and when I feel like earning an income, I use Google AdWords to advertise for my clients. I run Picasa (amongst others) on my laptop. But, I also use MapQuest (not Google Maps), and AIM (not Google Talk).
Google emerged on the scene in a rather slow (and well documented elsewhere) way. I'm told they had some difficulties getting VC Investments. However, they very quietly managed to steal users away from AltaVista, Yahoo, and other darlings of the early days of search. They made sure there were no advertisements, and that the results were blazing fast -- and very accurate. And guess what? Users loved this. I loved this. Everyone I knew used Google, every day. It helped that their mantra, "Do no evil" was right in line with the "Microsoft is evil" of the time. And, for a long time, Google Search was flagged as "Beta" -- which usually means "Cutting edge software, may flake out for no explainable reason".
Once Google got the ball rolling (using cash investments of others, and cash / time investments of their own), they started adding some other services. They grabbed up and started Froogle, a very neat catalog search engine. They went at it with a similar gusto that they attacked web search with. And still, little or no advertising. How were they possibly profitable? What next?
[I realize some of these may be out of order ... I'm flexing my aging cranium ... the point still remains]
Google Groups. An interesting acquisition, since DejaNews was where I spent a lot of time doing research on various technical issues. This grabbed them, I would guess, hundreds-of-thousands of consumers / readers / viewers instantly.
Google Images. They had all the web content ... why not search image names (which is about all it does)?
Gmail. Yahoo had email, why couldn't they? Google took on this task, and provided un-heard of limits on email. Of course, this was released as "Beta" -- and still is. Almost a year later.
Picasa. A fledgling company which edits / crops / brightens and otherwise enhances, sorts, and searches your images from a digital camera. No fee to use. Really.
But ... about this time, I have a feeling that their investors started getting a bit antsy. How were we going to make money with this beast of a service ... which has thousands / millions of users, and we don't make a dime off of any of them? I would stipulate that with the considerable brainpower some of their PhD's have, that this wasn't some fluke ... this has been planned.
They leveraged their customer base, just like any other company would. I have an insurance company that we pay for health insurance. About once a quarter they decide to offer me life insurance also. Why? Because it's cheaper than sending out a mailing to an un-qualified lead. I'm qualified. I read their information, because it MIGHT be something related to a bill.
Google did exactly this -- with their "free" services. They slowly and quietly introduced advertising, but only on Google Search. The other products, of course, were in Beta. Users searching on Google suddenly had three "top" searches on the top of the screen, and about 6 on the right hand side. Google spun this as "unobtrusive" advertising, therefore it's more "consumer oriented", unlike what Yahoo! was doing at the time. What a crock.
Let's pretend you have some mortal enemy, and want them dead. Pick one -- that guy who cheated off your exams, some elementary school bully, or your favorite politician. Whomever. You get involved in chemical-gas tossing competition. They lob something your way, which explodes, is colorful, makes a very loud "bomb"-like noise when it hits, and generally alerts you it's there. It's giving you every signal of "stay away from this, it's different than the air you are breathing". And different is bad.
So, you lob your canister at them. Your canister doesn't explode. It has no color. It has no odor. Maybe a very small "pop" -- sounding a bit like a dud. Would your opponent run from it? I doubt it. They'd probably wander over to it and try and figure out if it's safe to throw it back at you. Your opponent goes into some long monologue about your soon to be pulverized body. And suddenly, they drop dead. Reminds me of every bad-guy / good-guy movie ever made.
... Which is exactly how advertising got onto the scene, and is still treated, by Google. Let's run through their services which have blatant advertising .... none. Which ones are truly "free"? None.
Google Groups, GMail, and Search all have AdWords advertising on them. Maps either already does, or it's coming soon (if I owned a cab company, I'd probably pay to have visitors see my cabs in their locations too). Picasa is "free" -- if you don't mind the "Order Prints Now!" icons and menu items. Blogger doesn't have any advertising ... yet. But most of the users can easily add Adwords feeds. It's a well documented process. Talk debuted this week, no advertising yet, and there's whispers of about umpteen million other services Google is looking at offering.
I will postulate that the upcoming services will all have the same model going forward. Google buys / creates new service / product. Google offers product for free for about 12 - 24 months. Users flock to it because it's "less evil" than anything produced elsewhere. Google "tests" advertising in the product for another 6 months. Google then slides in advertising into the product. Users are already using the product, and would face some pain to switch. Google scores again.
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