What is Digg?Sponsored by Dragon Age: Origins
Join the Dragon Age: Origins development team on Facebook view!
facebook.com/DragonAgeOrigins - EA presents BioWare's new dark fantasy epic Dragon Age: Origins. '9/10' from Game Informer.
108 Comments
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -10/+61I think the reason rivals get the jitters is because all these things Google are building is leading toward a cohesive platform that's going to tie itself all together eventually. They're building for the future, and competitors are worried about getting knocked out someday.
- SaberWolf, on 10/12/2007, -6/+45Not only does it seem that all of these services and products all tie together, they are a whole lot simpler and easier to use than all of the rest. That is what I like most about them. Ease of use, integration with one another, and simplicity. Can't get much better than that.
- jramos, on 10/12/2007, -6/+29Amen to that. The author of this article doesn't seem to understand the long-tail ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_tail )... that is, not everything Google creates has to be the super-number-1-product-extraordinaire. They're offering a wealth of functionality that's all tied together. For me, that's plenty.
- crawf061, on 10/12/2007, -4/+27Great Googley Moogley
- dmron, on 10/12/2007, -2/+21I think this article is a bit too negative. They briefly mention Google's strategy: create a ton of products, expect 20-40% of them to be successful and there for the long run. Then they go on and bash Google anyways for not being a hit 100% of the time.
Gmail and G maps are two good examples of Google kicking ass. Yah maybe they don't dominate the market in them, but when they release things as cool as those they really shake up the market and get their competitors off their fat lazy asses, and that's a good thing.
Do you remember how before Gmail came out, hotmail and yahoo both had a measly 4 MEGABYTES of storage??? (I think hotmail was actually only 2 - not sure anymore). I mean, think about how pathetic that is. Then Google rolls into town, hey guys, free 1 gigabyte for everyone! This changed the face of free web mail forever. While some people dont like Gmails interface, you cannot deny the impact made in this department. Webmail had completely stagnated and nothing had changed at all for easily 5 years.
This is why Google matters. - dodgingcars, on 10/12/2007, -3/+19Isn't Picasa an iLife like offering?
- jhuynh, on 10/12/2007, -1/+13"Actually gmail only has less than 6% of the market and calendar only has 0.01% of the market: "
That is the ranking of google's domains ONLY. ie: their search does 79.98 % of all their traffic at google. It doesn't compare the actual market share of each google domain to other services. - duniyadnd, on 10/12/2007, -8/+20@jramos: While I agree with the Long Tail theory (thanks, I hadn't heard of that before), its not fair to critisize the author on what he said. For one, he talks about major competitors, such as Microsoft and Yahoo. Yahoo is probably the top online producer of multiple products that was meant to work cohesively - Yahoo Financial merged with News merged with mail merged with maps and travel. Google is merely trying to duplicate that, and as Google is in the same market as Yahoo - they needs to get closer to the #1 position to make any waves. Microsoft are obviously getting into the game with their "live.com" site and trying to keep Google as a #3 online competitor, but they need to push themselves up as well. eBay are right now fixed in their buying and selling, but don't be surprised that they will get more services (rumours of Skype anyone?). Add into the mix, Amazon.com which bought Alexa, started their own search engine, working on other new services.. with all these major players the author has every right to question Google's effectiveness in breaching market control.
- Judgement, on 10/12/2007, -3/+14Google's fanfare alone is something to jitter about. Maybe they haven't had a market leader from their newer services yet, but in the long run...
- perral1, on 10/12/2007, -2/+13@duniyadnd: Rumours? eBay bought Skype in October.
-Perral1 - doctorteeth, on 10/12/2007, -1/+11Indeed, and part of the appeal of Google's services for me is transparency. Other services (ahem, Yahoo) seem to practically scream at you. Gmail, Google Reader (RSS), Google Calendar, and even the Google homepage are all ultra-streamlined and efficient. Google's experimental approach is also getting them into things no one else is, like purchasing the SketchUp 3D program and making it free so users can populate their Google Earth product with their own models. It's worth noting that not everything Google is doing is sticking, but fears that after IPO they'd stop innovating or lose their focus were clearly unfounded. Google's secret is giving everything the simplicity of their most popular products (search and ads). And I wish their competitors would learn from that.
- MrUnderbridge, on 10/12/2007, -6/+15"Alternatives are always good in the market place. But I will not respect Google on my desktop until they can offer products I will use in business. Where is a MySQL or a SQL Server Express Edition Google offering? Where is the iLife type applications? I love Google but they get too much press for less than exciting things. When they start to generate revenue from more than ads then I will get excited. IBM, Microsoft, Adobe, Oracle, etc have all made profits from more than ad revenue."
Um, that's not their market? Why don't you criticize them for not entering the fast food industry? - Murdats, on 10/12/2007, -0/+8I remember when I got my awesome wonderful gmail account, going from 2mb (with ads saying give us money and we will make it 10mb) to having 1gb free, and then 2gb, no more having to constantly keep up with deleting spam so my important emails werent automatically deleted, and seriously, I thought I didnt get much spam with my hotmail, how wrong gmail proved me, the only spam I get now is stupid referer ads from friends using crappy sites, and even then hardly at all
- JayA, on 10/12/2007, -6/+14Gmail, Google hompage, Google Calendar are amazing and gaining steam.
People expect them to explode, and thier not, but their still amazing products that people are using. - joshfraz, on 10/12/2007, -2/+10Why do people think that every new product Google makes has to have a defined way of making money? They already have that - it's called ads & they're doing just fine! Most of these services are just pet projects that employees have made with their 20% time. It's a good way for Google to show off their innovation, make their competitors nervous, stay in the news, give us products we enjoy, and give their employees an escape to work on something they really enjoy.
- ahawks, on 10/12/2007, -2/+9I'm torn....
I am a google fan, but I find some of their competition better. I love gmail, the search, and the personalized homepage, and use gcalendar sometimes, but I love Flickr, and youtube is still better than Google Video if you ask me.
As for the rest of their products, I can't really even think of them, let alone use them. - Sirocco, on 10/12/2007, -0/+7If 100 failures still lead to a few awe-inspiring apps like Gmail and Google Earth (or even Google Maps!), then I say go Google.
- xenoputtss, on 10/12/2007, -0/+7I agree with you also. There are better things for most of google's products.
But, googles prodoucts do extactly what they say they do, and are changing to be more benefical to its users. There is nothing wrong with being #2 or 3 in a field.
You say YouTube is better then google...yes, as far as quality goes i agree. But feature-wise no. With google video you can skip to whatever part of the video you want, while the video is downloading. Youtube you can not (at least not on my two pcs that i use). No with the nuew updates to google video (ratings, replys, labels...) i will have to see exactly what is feature differnent from YouTube. - nTensify, on 10/12/2007, -2/+8"one of the reasons their stock is languishing."
At $410/share after just a year+ with an IPO at around $130 a share, I wouldn't call it "languishing", I'd call it "flourishing". Unlike most web-giants, all Google has to do to keep its value is to invest wisely and not blow their money on products they can't deliver (which so far hasn't been the case; all of their products have delivered almost exactly what consumers were looking for in some way or another, all that's left is waiting for them to adopt the platform which is becoming easier every day). - Murdats, on 10/12/2007, -3/+9thats what I like about google, they are one of the very very few companies that consider the long run and arent about immediate profits
why do you think all these technologies we were meant to have in 5-10 years time dont exist 20 years later? because most companies say
'hmm, lets make a ton of money of selling this item, nah we will have to wait 8 years to make any money off it and I wont be CEO anymore, instead lets just release a modified/upgraded/different colour of this item, the company will make a small immediate profit and Ill get rich next week" - acurism, on 10/12/2007, -1/+7Its quite obvious if you think about it why gmail is not as popular as the other email services...
They rolled out the service much later once probably half of the internet users had probably already set up an account with MSN or Yahoo.
and for a while, it was Invitation Only!
Although, Gmail started slowly, I have seen several people make the switch to Gmail and like the service better. - CiceroGuru, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6One Google product that is not mentioned in this article is the Picasa photo management application. Maybe its because its a misfit in the Googleplex - it is an offline app with ties to online services (similar to iTunes) it is free of charge and free of advertising, it was acquired not built by Googlegeeks - oh yeah and it rocks!!! Why would anyone ever buy a photo management app from anyone (MS or anyone else) when they can use this great app.
- nTensify, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5"Now, ads can be how they get revenue from things like Mail, but the goal is still to make money."
Google's said time and time again that Google's goal is to help organize the world's data. Nowhere in that declaration do I see "making money".
If Google ran at 1% market effeciency, but indexed all of the world's data, I'm sure Larry Page would sleep well at night. Basically, now that Google's a $100 Billion Dollar company, they can afford to wait and find new markets; their core market will likely not decrease as long as they continue to innovate (which is abstractable from the goal of indexing the world's information; one cannot index that much information without innovating a way to do it). While investors may not like it, Google honestly doesn't need them anymore (sure, if everyone tanked Google's stock tomorrow, it would hurt the company dearly, but with their income level, even if that DID happen, they would stay sustainant).
Right now Google's in a phase where in order to grow, it must acquire; new software isn't going to help them if they don't have the partnerships and the hardware to allow them to grow. Google wants to offer Nationwide Wifi, it's apparent they want to. But they can't do that without the support of the telecom networks (for now, until they build their own telecom network, which it is obvious they are trying to do). Google wants to offer internet telephony (and has the software to do it), but now it needs to grow its partnerships with other internet telephony providers to allow interoperability.
Google is here to stay, and their IPO was simply a way to show to the world that money isn't an issue for the company, they just needed to grow faster so that they could do everything they wanted to do before the founders and coders all died of old age. - truthRises, on 10/12/2007, -1/+6The competitors get the jitters because they understand what google COULD do with a given project.
Google is the 800 lbs gorilla, and their widening strategy really just serves to make their core product more useful. UNTIL, as has been mentioned that the long-tail theory comes into effect.
Google is working on a webOS... but if you think about it like an OS you won't get it. Google is changing computing, someday soon, software will be built on Google's platform instead of java because while it's great to have programs that run on any software, it will be even greater to have them run on someone else's computer and EVEN better still to have them always have YOUR data.
If you can do anything you would normally do with a PC on a GoogleOS platform, why would you do it anywhere else? You could get away with a tiny little PC to run just a web browser. People think thin clients died a long time ago... really they were just before their time. Anyone noticed all the linux boxes running off of flash memory that came out recently? A wristwatch PC? How small would a computer have to be if you only need a slow processor, a wireless link and a web browser.
Now, don't get me wrong, it's not mature yet, but it's not as far off as the author of the article might think.
The major gripe the author has is that google isn't acting with good business sense. Well, that is true, if you're looking from a classical industrial business perspective.
From a software developement perspective, building slowly and steadily, with enough time and effort in the early stages to support all the future features you want to add, is ideal. Google takes the time to build a solid base, instead of reaching like a product manager for features to throw in for the first release. If microsoft made software this way, they would never have caused the current quagmire of innovation.
Google's strategy will pay off even bigger than their search engine. I give it 3 years really mature into something amazing. - caliky, on 10/12/2007, -2/+7siggyfawn, thats pretty unlikey. This is as much a cultural thing as anything else. Google has an incredible critical mass with society. As soon as your brand is synonymous with your action, unseating the dominance is at best a long slow process. Think Kleenex, Q-Tip, iPod etc. The Ad's are bought based on percieved usage (Supply/Demand), if people aren't going to search with Microsoft, advertisers won't pay to be on it.
- theblooms, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4Picasa is wonderful, my wife eats it up, Google Desktop Search is great, and I can't remember life before gmail. Just my opinion.
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -2/+6There are dozens of reasons why Google's stock won't drop 50% in a week, even if MS and Yahoo had comparable advertisment services/products.
10% in a week maybe -- since Google doesn't provide guidance, the fair value of the stock is anyone's guess; maybe it's really worth $1000 a share, who knows, except the execs. - willi698, on 10/12/2007, -2/+6Anyone notice the date at the top of the article?
- nTensify, on 10/12/2007, -2/+6"hat's about the most unintelligent thing I've heard someone say on Digg. Google is a publicly traded company, thus their financials are public. Analysts and others can determine the value of the company by comparing their earnings with similar companies. Google currently trades at 70 times earnings, Yahoo at 25 and Microsoft at 18"
Analysts can also say things like "the next generation iPod will be late", and everyone on the market will listen to them, even though they're blowing hot smoke out of their asses. Everyone on Wall Street is ultra-pissed that Google doesn't release Quarterly Guidance like virtually every other company its size (except for Coca Cola and a few others), and the Google Vendetta is now extending into mainstream, with every press release being held onto like gospel.
All Google's current P/E value indicates is that the company is a very high risk target to invest in, and that it's seriously outperforming the company. This value will come down as income goes up and as the companies assets grow to allow more income; look at Microsoft or Yahoo at their IPOs and afterwards, they were overvalued for years (IMO). Now Microsoft's the largest software empire on the planet, and Yahoo's a much more stable Wallstreet company.
Google has rocked the financial world, and the financial world is wanting to rock back, but Google is a very solid company, and has weathered all ready what could be considered as serious blows to its constitution, and yet it's still on it's way to being worth $500/share. That says something about the company. - sbrown123, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4"Gmail, the e-mail service that was lauded at its 2004 launch for offering 500 times as much storage space as some rivals (they quickly closed the gap), today is the system of choice for only about one-quarter the number of people who use MSN and Yahoo e-mail."
Okay, is that Gmail versus MSN OR Yahoo or is it Gmail versus MSN + Yahoo. Well, if you research outside this idiot you find out the formula is :
G = (M + Y) / 4
So, if both MSN and Yahoo each had 1000 users, Google's Gmail would have 500. A better way of saying this woud be to say GMail has half the registered users as compared to either MSN or Yahoo. But hey, saying "a quarter" has a bigger "shock-and-awe" factor to it for a glam journalist.
Oh, and I must have like 5 junk yahoo accounts, 4 hotmail accounts, and 1 GMail account. Am I always counted as 1 registered user by Yahoo and Microsoft? - Murdats, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4but as the parent said, most of these were pet projects made by employees not to make money, but because they can/because they themself wanted that/people in general have been wanting it, the ones that can be popular google injects with some money making ads and tada, a new gooogle product, of course not all have been successes but I know I have found many of them useful and I am greatful, and really, I really couldnt care if the 99% of internet users use crap because they dont know any better (such as myspace being all the buzz because most of them are idiots who dont know any better)
- cyclotron, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5"competitors are worried about getting knocked out someday."
That's life and especially business. All that feel good nonsense we teach kids in public school only disables them. - chriskzoo, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5Their bread and butter is Advertising. Seriously, I've been using Yahoo Search the last few months and there isn't a thing I haven't been able to find as quickly as on Google.
- killdashnine, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5Personally, I think that what we're seeing with Google is DISTRACTION. While business analysts and others scoff at admittedly "very beta" applications that they keep launching with frequency (some which flop), they are doing things like snagging dark fiber, developing free wireless networks for entire cities, and actually doing something with IPv6.
If they're smart, it probably isn't really costing them much to toss out "experiments" which neither yield significant market share nor are very successful. It's likely not the point. Google is obviously not constructed like your standard business, and they likely cannot be viewed as such. It's exciting to watch a more academic organization spew out new creations like a mad scientist on crack and kick back to "see what happens". Still, they have a number of successes under their belt and my guess is that they're working on something truly revolutionary. As to what that could be, who knows (and who's going to tell if they do).
My advice, try their stuff, criticize the heck out of it, and watch them take all that information and use it to come out with something that will make the Internet more useful to you and everyone than it's ever been. - carguy84, on 10/12/2007, -5/+9Why is the article dated July 10th, 2006? And why is there no author? I want to make sure I don't read any more of his/her trash. What a waste of time. :(
Chip- - SaberWolf, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4Yeah, now if only Microsoft would do that, rather than signing up for a selective beta program.
- jesusfresh, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3@ acurism
that's a good point. for instance, i still have a hotmail account, used now only as a spam trap, but i still check it every 2 weeks or so. zomg, google only has 50% share of the jesusfresh market! - Funakoshi, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4Not sure why people have a tough time understanding Google's financials and/or stock price.
They don't give estimates on their earnings. Traders hate that because they can't make as much money. Other people jump on the wagon because it's fun to bash large, sucessful corporations, it seems.
They have ridiculous growth numbers. That's why they have a high stock price, with a high P/E (check http://investor.google.com/index.html) for details - look specifically at http://investor.google.com/fin_data.html if you still can't find the growth). - rockingrhino, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Plus they can afford to play the same "hit or miss" game Microsoft did in the 1990s. Let the market shake out demand for tiers of products (Internet for example), produce your own version (or buy a company that made it), release it at low or no cost, and see what sticks. Put money in what stuck and create such demand for it so you can dominate that segment (and charge for it).
- acurism, on 10/12/2007, -2/+5I seriously think most people are not seeing the big picture...
They don't expect to grab all of the market share from everyone else overnight...
but, like someone said earlier, they are setting the stage for a multitude of great FREE products that can be used to compliment each other.
If they wanted to, I am sure they could spend billions and advertise their new products and grab a hefty chunk of market share overnight.
But by people adapting their new products slowly, it gives them a chance to work out all of the kinks and improve the product considerably before it becomes more mainstream. - lukas88, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3speaking of ads, that site goes overboard. They should be ashamed.
- hubrik, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2yup me too. I have 1 yahoo and 1 hotmail account for junk, and 1 gmail account for everything else.
- apotropaic, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Wow... no author and with good reason! This is merely a google bashing article. Here's the biggest deal that your not mentioning here when your throw out numbers and percentages, google doesn't come with ANY ISP. When you get a new ISP, MSN, AOL or Yahoo is set as the default front page. And for users who don't know any better, they just leave it without realizing that there are even choices out there. This is why your numbers are faulty. I say for google to have ANY of the numbers that it does with the way AOL, MSN, At&t other major ISPs hide them from you is really quite something.
- rewritable, on 10/12/2007, -2/+4SketchUp is da bomb, easy, fun, and FREE
- goffy59, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Well whatever, This is pretty koo. What I hate about most people like the people on this website. Every time a company is successful, they make up a bunch of ***** rumors. Its like I'm imagining some ***** retard spiting ***** outta his mouth. I bet if apple takes Microsoft's place, all the stupid fan boys would cry and start favoring Microsoft. Hah. God digg has gone down hill. I have nothing against apple, but why do they get there own categories. Apple is just UNIX with all the I-candy.
- b7j0c, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2google is not the only focus of hype, this entire industry is throwing off much more heat than light these days. yahoo shamelessly self-hypes, as does microsoft, and of course the ajax fanboys are cheering it all on, despite the fact that very little real money is falling out of these redux sites and pointless dhtml twiddling. the web has produced almost nothing of interest in 2006 beyond youtube's emergence, and arguably its main strength is opaque data that sits outside the web stack.
- cyclotron, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2That's what I have been saying all along. Plus, they dont charge and fees.
- Sirocco, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3>> email is not to be scanned, and anybody doing it is not respecting the nature of email
Yeah, I'd really hate for someone to automatically scan my email so I don't get as much spam. Oh... wait, nevermind. - fanboydcs, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Its because all the google apps I use are beta!
gmail, spreedsheets, calander, etc..
Once these become non invite.. They will take off. - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2It seems people get the e-mail scanning all wrong. Your e-mail is scanned also if you have a Spam Engine .
-
Show 51 - 100 of 108 discussions
© Digg Inc. 2009
— Content created and posted by Digg users is