It’s Not Easy Being Google
The Google share price is over $740 today, so certainly the stock market is not unhappy with Google. However more and more of the people involved with Google in one way or another are writing about their dissatisfactions.
Andy Beard was concerned about the Google initiative to develop an Open Social platform for social media web developers. This is to compete with the enormously successful Facebook. However the concepts are not owned by Google. Beard felt that this was a Google Reputation Management Disaster.
In parallel with this, Adwords advertisers were complaining that the rules were being modified so as to bump up Google’s advertising revenues in the third quarter. Mike Churchill has a good explanation of this in Expanded Broad Match and The Google 1-2 Punch
Why does Google refuse to allow opt out for “expanded broad match”? The original explanation I received for implementation of “expanded broad match” was to enhance the AdWords user’s experience and provide them a better variety of related ads. Started out innocent enough, but as Google went public and had to answer to the ridiculous quarterly financial demands put on public companies by “Wall street” they probably realized that killing “expanded broad match” would have a severely negative impact on AdWords revenue. Furthermore, with continued “Wall street” pressure following Google’s first time “missed quarter” Google probably sees this:
(My Opinion Only and I will remove it if Google will allow us to opt out of “expanded broad match”.)
Not only can they NOT AFFORD to allow opting out of “expanded broad match” – by just loosening the knob they can instantly and dramatically pump revenue up in seconds.
Another commentator, Robert X. Cringely, believes that all these instances show that Google is becoming The Next Microsoft. He feels that some of the problems are created by the sheer size of the organization with little serious direct competition.
So Google says it will do the right thing and maybe even intends to do the right thing, but failures in its IT systems effectively keep it from doing the right thing, which brings us back to Microsoft, which has long been the poster child for inability to follow through because of IT failings.
It’s not that Google learned this behavior from Microsoft. It may just be an inevitable part of having an IT monopoly.
Related: Is Google Now The Big Ugly?
Google has a lot to deal with, so perhaps they’re trying their best to increase revenues but expand their business at the same time.
Not everyone will be pleased as google has a reputation of quality and thoroughness that we’ve all come to rely on.