On Thursday, Google held a Google Analyst Day for investors and analysts, and you can download a PDF of the presentation slides. There’s some fascinating stuff in there, including the slide above, which shows how it ranks its various products. Search is the core 70%, with things like Gmail in the supplementary 20% circle.
Things that are non-strategic — often produced because individuals thought they were interesting — are in the outer (10%) circle. Examples include Orkut, Reader, Google Pack, Google Movies and W-Fi. Which is fine. The problem is that the outer 10% are mostly mediocre products badly executed. This has made people like me wonder if Google can actually execute, and whether it has a real strategy or is simply confused. Such wonderings can have a decidedly adverse effect on the image of Google’s core businesses. If Google is serious, it needs to signal the relative importance of these products much more strongly than it does. Or simply stop releasing half-baked products under the Google name.
Eh?
Wayne – while I agree with you that they may need to do something about the quality of their search results, I disagree about their homepage. Far from being all mucked up with junk – ala Yahoo! or MSN – Google’s main page has retained it’s dirt-simple single-box appeal, only adding a handful of links just above the search box…
Disappointing graph. At least they have a graph though. I don’t think Microsoft has a graph, because that would require hiring someone with a whit of talent. I wish Google would just hurry up and take over the world so that I can drink Google Beer, drive a Googlemobile, eat Google pizza and watch Google TV.
I’m not brainwashed. Nope. Honest. Huh?
I nominate google for the republican party. Ha, I called dibs.
What’s the difference between Google Video and Google Movies? Are we seeing leaked stuff here?
goodle would do well to cut out the mediocre (at best) products like Google Pack lest they dilute the brand name too much.
witch is better goggleware or vaporware?
The problem is dishonesty. Ever since Man discovered the Lie, it has been Man’s downfall. This is what happened with Google. People have probed and discovered Google’s formula for relevant searches and have used that knowledge to skew results for their advantage.