Forum Moderators: goodroi
Google is one of the best things to happen to the Net. So will its IPO, expected this spring, be a must-buy? A look inside reveals a talented company facing trouble....first the worrisome news: Google has grown arrogant, making some of its executives as frustrating to deal with in negotiations as AOL's cowboy salesmen during the bubble. It has grown so fast that employees and business partners are often confused about who does what. A rise of stock- and option-stoked greed is creating rifts within the company.
Employees carp that Google is morphing in strange and nerve-racking ways. And talk swirls over the question of who's really in charge: CEO Schmidt or co-founders Brin and Page?
[fortune.com ]
A Google IPO of that size would be the largest by any startup in high-tech history and would probably value the company at about $20 billion, just a couple billion dollars north of what Google valued itself for when it proposed using stock to acquire social-networking site Friendster last summer.
Did not know that number surfaced during the Friendster flirt.
investors—stockholders and the limited partners in Google-invested venture capital funds—are growing nervous. And no wonder. Members of those groups count as insiders who by standard IPO procedures will probably be required to wait at least six months before cashing out. Google may well be worth $20 billion when it goes public; but it could be worth much less by the time they can sell.
I wonder whether the recent Google update has influenced Google's valuation? I bet that a lot of the feelgood purchasing may have been affected amongst webmasters. I hope that it makes a few more people aware of the precarious nature of stock dealing; Google can go up as well as down, and a lot of people could lose a lot of money if the previous threads on the IPO are anything to go by.
...All are aiming for what they see as Google's weak spot: lack of customer lock-in
Do they really have a lack of customer lock-in? In my opinion that`s not the case...
Customer lock in I beleive they have the best so far.
I mean..
The customer has the toolbar before they access Yahoo.
The customer has the Deskbar before they access MSN.
The customer has access to Googles results from the biggest range of quality web sites. Internationally in many different languages.
Think their doing very well with Customer Lock In.
I don't know how many articles I've read now that say "Google needs to watch out because Microsoft et al. are breathing down its neck" ... but such essays always seem to underestimate just how far ahead Google really is.
I've been a heavy interent user for almost a decade now and the reason I admire Google is because it is so damned good at what it does. No-one else comes close.
Google isn't perfect -- of course not! And Google is the first to admit that: "This constant dissatisfaction with the way things are is ultimately the driving force behind the world's best search engine." -- [google.com...]
I always detect a sense of jealousy (why a *journalist* would be jealous, I don't know ... but perhaps the journos are picking up on a feeling they get when talking to Google's rivals?) when I read these overly-critical articles.
I agree that folks at Google can sound a little cocky sometimes. I think that's only natural though, given the company's huge and rapid success. I don't think they have become as arrogant as other fortune 500 company execs, however.
I also think that the work culture (people late for meetings, 12 hour days, etc.) described in the article doesn't sound any different to the IT companies I have worked in over the years. Certainly nothing to worry about...
...All are aiming for what they see as Google's weak spot: lack of customer lock-in
In my opinion this is true. If they don't deliver relevant results, users are gone.
MSN can ship IE with a preconfigured search page. Yahoo has plenty of "added value" (portal).
Toolbar is something you have to install. Novice users may be unable to.
"AOL's concern is that Google wants to be a portal,"
This is a huge concern. I wonder if Google is going to try to be the next MSN or Yahoo. If they're smart, they wouldn't try being a portal but continue to do what they do best.
On a related note, here's what's going to happen after the IPO:
1. A bunch of employees get rich.
2. Those employees, who now have money, stop using the internet so much and because they now have money, work less and play more.
3. Because they're out spending their money more and using the internet less, they're less in touch with what users want and how to give it to them. Google's products and services suffer.
4. Because Google isn't as relevant (ironically) to people using the internet, people stop using Google as much as they used to.
5. Company executives, seeing that Google usage is declining, come up with a bunch of ideas to get people to use Google again (for good or ill).
6. Managers, who have a lot to lose if they fail, a lot to gain (option$) if they don't, and not much more to gain if they take a risk and succeed, take on a risk-aversion mentality. This means that they don't question ideas floated by management and don't even consider ideas floated by employees. If they try something innovative or new and if fails, they're a failure. If they just sit tight and do what they're told, they get an annual payoff.
7. Innovation at Google slows.
8. More people stop using Google.
In my way of thinking, it's the user who decides who they are "locked in to". And they decide based on who gives them the best value for their time and trouble.
That means if the user feels they are getting what they want from using Google's SE more so than any other option they decide to try, then they are indeed "locked in" -- by their own choosing, rather than by "Where Microsoft Search wants you to go today!". I can hear it now, "Just follow the butterfly! (click here)".
And remember they have to be persuaded to not only *try* another search option, but to also change their current *habit* of using Google every time they decide to search.
Even if another SE comes along that is better than Google -- and assuming for the sake of discussion Google doesn't improve to match or exceed them -- it will take a long time for the mass of people who now habitually use Google (but don't spend a lot of time on tech, webmaster or tech news sites looking for what next to "early adopt") to migrate away.
It will also take time for all those using an older version of MS OS to "upgrade" to Longhorn, let alone any other new search option/player.
Depending on how heavy handed MS is with DRM and other "monetize the customer" so called "benefits" -- and what kind of press and consumer reaction these efforts get -- MS might just do a very good job of shooting itself in the foot with some of their shear the sheeple schemes via Longhorn "improvements".
MS made it's billions during an era where most people were quite new to computers and clueless. Lots of people still are of course, but more and more folks have learned enough to seek out and find a better value than what vendors want to spoon feed them as their "default". Especially when it comes to something so crucial to a person's ability to wade through the information overload of the internet as a search engine.
Most of Google's competitors "breathing down their necks" are likely going to fail for one simple reason. Regardless of their rhetoric, they are going to try and milk their users to whatever degree they think users will stand for by giving their users "search solutions" that will make their companies the most profit rather than serving the users search results that are in the best interest of the user. This is doomed to fail to whatever degree and speed users figure out there is greater value elsewhere -- and it's just a click away.
Maybe some of the companies mentioned as major competitors to Google will be smart enough to avoid doing this, but in this era of maximizing share price by the time management's stock options can be exercised, I have my doubts.
I think both Google and it's well financed competitors will succeed to a degree. It's more a matter of marketshare rather than a case of all of the competitors failing. There no doubt will always be a niche of sheeple for the Microsofts of the world to shear -- and who will even thank them for the MS style "service", too. But 80% of today's SE users who habitually use Google? No.
When people order their new Dells after Longhorn comes out, no doubt there will be some users clueless or lazy enough to stick with whatever MS puts on their desktop. But unless Microsoft's IE or its Longhorn equivelent prevents people from going to www.google.com, MS is going to have to give users better *quality* search results than Google does or they are limiting themselves to a niche of the lazy, clueless and of course, the sheeple.
And the Ebays of the world? P-L-E-A-S-E. How are they going to "maximize shareholder/option holder value" by indexing and serving up the entire collection of internet domains and their pages not paying ebay listing and final value fees? Think the great managerial and IT minds at Ebay can even think of a way....especially considering it's likely effect on the value of all those stock options management recently awarded themselves? I could say a lot more based on what folks I know who sell on Ebay tell me, but I'll stop now.
The more time goes by, the more value rather than the distractions of a dot.com era AOL style venture capitalist pleasing "walled garden" will determine who wins the SE wars of the future. Anything else is fighting against the tide of people skilling up and becoming more knowlegeable about computers and all things internet. Right now, it's Google's ball to drop. All the rest is vaporware.
To me, the real unpredictable wildcard in the SE wars of the future will be the effect of patents. This is something most media opinion merchants and talking heads never even think to mention. Shows the real depth of their analysis and understanding.
May the best SE value proposition for the user win.
"the folks saying "Google doesn't have customer lock in" are either clueless about what locks in people doing search or
What they mean is that there are no services that tie people to the service such as email, calendar, etc. That is, people investing time and information into the service which they can get only from the service. I can do a search anywhere. I can only get my Yahoo mail from Yahoo. The value of that is that if someone is already using one service, they're likely to use the other because it's right there in their face. Google has nothing like that.
Even if another SE comes along that is better than Google
Google is not the best search engine for everything. It's particularly useless for local search.
it will take a long time for the mass of people who now habitually use Google (but don't spend a lot of time on tech, webmaster or tech news sites looking for what next to "early adopt") to migrate away
Not really. I doubt most internet users have much loyalty to anything (unless they're "locked in"; see above).
they are going to try and milk their users to whatever degree they think users will stand for by giving their users "search solutions" that will make their companies the most profit rather than serving the users search results that are in the best interest of the user
And so might Google after the IPO.
no doubt will always be a niche of sheeple for the Microsofts of the world to shear -- and who will even thank them for the MS style "service", too.
I'm currently getting better search results on Yahoo and MSN than I am on Google. Regarding "sheeple", there's money in that market. Most people would rather be told what to do than to make their own decisions. Regarding search results in general, do you think the average internet surfer compares their MSN and Google results to figure out which is better? I doubt it.
