Wow, a valuation of several billion? What a joke. They have no revenue stream, they're just giving away search for free. I don't see how this startup could ever be successful.
Actually, I would imagine the odds are worse than that. Not all startups give away their product for free, and I'm guessing the failure rate is higher for those that do.
But I don't see the problem with that. Software companies that want to change the world have to be free, at least initially. If somebody wants to swing for the fences, I don't think anybody should stop them. It's not the business model I would choose, but I certainly admire those that do.
for some reason i feel more fuzzy inside thinking about the companies that change the world with free software, free as an ideal, with $$ secondary and on a sliding scale. i mean fuzzy as a human being rather than investor (although investors are also human beings).
I think the point is to provide value to the investors. In either case, I disagree; Twitter provides all kinds of valuable information to very specific groups of people.
I don't think they click ads, I see friends checking out ads all the time. Particularly music ads. I'd imagine that it's not just a small-time thing, considering they're in the green now, but perhaps that money's coming from something else.
Their ads are also a lot better than they were a year ago. They target more effectively, within reason. (My ads are screwy since I list no information about myself, but they used to try and sell me Arrested Development t-shirts and they almost succeeded on multiple occasions.)
"Google, a start-up dedicated to providing the best search experience on the web"
Google is one of these less common start-ups who started doing one thing and ended up successful (to this day) with that specific idea. Yes, they extended their reach a lot, but the core is still the same as on the first day.
Not really. Google is an advertising company now. When they started, they had no idea that's what they would become. Search is being leveraged for eyeballs to sell advertising space.
Google still does search, but it's business has nothing to do with search directly.
That's like saying that Walmart's business is cash registers.
If I could aquire either Google's search business, or their ad business, I would take search, no question. The ad part could be rebuilt on search, but the opposite is not true.
Search isn't a business. It's just a technology they developed. If Google hadn't found their advertising business, they would have failed.
You don't want Google's search technology because it will make you money. You want it because it has brand value and lots and lots of users that you want to leverage to make money using some other business.
Walmart's business is selling merchandise. The fact that they have to be experts at building construction so they can make stores to sell merchandise is just as secondary as Google's search business.
Would you rather have Walmart or their real estate?
It's more like saying NBC is an advertising company. No, they create content and sell ads beside it. Google gives us great search results and sells ads beside them.
And 1/3rd of their revenue comes from the Content Network, which has little if anything to do with search per se. (Realistically speaking the Content Network is a second bite at the apple from someone coming off a search result to a page which doesn't address their need, but it is in approximately no one's interest to admit that.)
Search eyeballs are the most valuable eyeballs on the internet. You know what people want, you can show ads for related things. Without search, Google would just be another ad network.
It's business has nothing to do with search directly? I can only assume you are being semantically pedantic here and using "business" to mean literally making money by selling a product. But even then I disagree with you. Yes they make 97% of revenue from selling ad-space next to search results. But without the search results that ad-space is (nearly) worthless. So how can you say Google's business has nothing to do with search directly?
I agree. Search is how Google builds its product, which is advertising. It's their competitive advantage. Because they have the best audience (targeted, biggest, etc.), they can use that to sell their advertising. By this measure, their product is superior to others, since they have put a lot of time into developing and refining their 'product' of advertising impressions, via the input of search traffic.
The company has an advantage, and it's using it to help sell something. Of course if they didn't have adwords, I'm sure Google could have found other ways to make money from their search.
Did they really list the "I'm feeling lucky button" as a time saving feature in their first press release? I've spent a lot of time writing documents like this recently and I can only imagine how people would scold me for including a such a minor detail in a press release.
Ahem. The “I’m feeling lucky button” might be a minor detail today but it for sure wasn’t then. Certainly not the thing to mention first (it isn’t) but considering the very narrow and minimalist scope of Google (then) nothing minor.
This is, however, quite a boilerplate press release. A [verb] B. X says [boss]. Boring. If you know one you know them all.
"PageRank is computed by solving an equation of 500 million variables and two billion terms."
Does it take 500 million variables to compute my Pagerank of 3 when there are only 32 sites that link to it? How many of those 500 million variables are 0 or null?
