Commentary
WWGD: Why Google TV Won't Match Google Search
- by Dave Morgan , Featured Contributor, February 5, 2009
I just started reading Jeff Jarvis's book "What Would Google Do?" -- and I love it. I've been looking forward to it ever since he told me about his idea for the book almost a year ago. As many of you know, Jeff is a former journalist and media executive and now very high profile blogger at Buzzmachine.com.
In Jeff's book, he writes about the very successful -- and fundamentally different -- approach that Google takes in running its business relative to virtually every other company in the world. He details its obsessions in serving users, its "publicness," its ability to create and exploit network effects. Then he hypothetically applies these principles to a number of other industries, from banking to retail, always asking the question, "What would Google do?" His stories and ideas are fascinating and the book is a fast read. I highly recommend it.
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However, my purpose in writing today about Jeff's book was not just to review it, but also to follow his advice and turn the question back on Google. Why? Because as I read the book, it occurred to me that Google has done some things that are not "what Google would do."
Google has built an extraordinary business in search by focusing on the user and giving searchers more and better information faster than any other company. Its effort to organize the Web's information certainly created "the world's greatest Yellow Pages." Then, the company combined this search directory with an enormously powerful and profitable advertising business, AdWords, which delivers commercial messages that are very relevant to the search results. Finally, its strategists extended the scale of the AdWords business with the creation of AdSense, where tailored commercial messages are distributed across millions of other Web sites. The combination of Google Search, AdWords and AdSense has given the company a media franchise of a size, growth trajectory and profitability such that the world has never seen before.
I think that the order in which Google created these businesses is important. AdWords worked because of the power of Google Search. AdSense worked because of the existing power of AdWords. These products would not have worked nearly as successfully, if at all, if they had been launched in reverse order.
Why then, when Google launched Google TV and Google Print, did it focus first on the advertising sides of those businesses? Essentially, these products aggregated commercial inventory from traditional media companies and offered them for sale through the same kinds of self-service interfaces used for AdWords and AdSense. Both Google Print and Google TV seem to have been the company's attempts to horizontally extend its online ad franchise into traditional media, but neither product had the advantage of leveraging a massive user base viewing a "Googlized" directory of print or television content. Neither of them really focused on the user, nor did they follow users.
To me, Google Print and Google TV seem like the kinds of new business extensions that more traditional corporations would implement -- on the counsel of expensive, brand-name management consultants, of course -- rather than follow the model that Google did in building its core franchise. Maybe this is why Google Print wasn't successful and was recently shut down. I don't know how Google TV is faring, but my bet is that it will never be anything like the franchise the company has in search.
Why? Because they didn't do it like Google would. What do you think?
Thanks for your perspective on this Dave. This subject came up recently on the Old Timers List. I think there is a more fundamental reason Google has not succeeded in print and will probably not succeed in TV.
Google=Search, that's it. They may be marginally successful in other areas, but they will never dominate any market other than search. History proves this to be true.
Precisely why Yahoo is failing at being a search engine. It never was. And why AOL is failing. Losing your identity is the beginning of the end.
I largely agree with Mr. Formentin. Google does one thing exceptionally well. But its fundamental innovation in terms of creating the PPC marketplace was completed almost a half decade ago. It has proved impossible to replicate this success elsewhere, despite the expenditure of millions of people hours and many billions of dollars. The fault isn't Google's: it's just that one only comes across a genuine revolution in advertising methods once -- maybe twice -- in a lifetime.
"I don't know how Google TV is faring, ..."
So, have any of you even tried Google TV ads...?
I have tried Google TV, though just the Interfaces and reports. It is a great interface (as you would expect from Google) and certainly offers more granular data than TV buyers might normally get. Its pretty slick. My point, however, is more strategic. I think that Google may not be solving the right problem if they are truly focused on changing television as the changed web searching.
Anyone, even Google cannot categorize users or specific content (a la SEM and AdSense) esp within TV or even the vertical nature (speciality mags) of print the way search is typed for the immediate need of that consumer. So I don't believe that Google did not stick to its contextual roots helping consumers, that is why it's potentially failing.
I have used both Google Print and TV. It appears to me that they are merely bringing a better level of automation, self-service and one stop inventory control to these medias. That is in their inherit nature too. This product has the potential of eliminating and reducing the amount of expensive salespeople. Whether you like it or not, that's a progessive leap. New business have long succeeded by improving upon an existing model to drive innovation and revs.