Google Overload: More Search History, More Acquisitions and More Revenues!
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Written By John Chan | April 20, 2007 | Share This
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Big news from Google: Yesterday’s earnings call reported that Google brought in $3.66 billion in Q1 revenues, an increase of 63% y/y, with a 69% profit increase. CEO Eric Schmidt attributed Google’s success to its core search advertising business that “continues to let us take calculated risks in new markets…and extend our business to new platforms and formats.” From ClickZ,
“In addition to alluding to the growth of YouTube, and relationships with content partners like BBC, Google execs referred to its recent partnerships with traditional media outlets and acquisition of ad management firm DoubleClick as driving efficiency for advertisers.”
Though the earnings call focused primarily on advertising, Google execs pointedly mentioned upcoming enterprise products like Google Presentations, Apps Premier, and the accelerated growth of social applications like Talk and YouTube. On that note, Google today announced their acquisition of Marratech, a swedish video conferencing company. A competitor of WebEx, Marratech will “enable from-the-desktop participation for Googlers in videoconference meetings wherever there’s an Internet connection.” It’s unclear whether Google plans to use Marratech as an internal software, or release it as part of their growing portfolio of enterprise apps.
Finally, Google announced the expansion of personal “Search History” into “Web History”. Using data from the Google Toolbar, Google has added mored stats to their visible record of each user’s personal browsing history. Danny Sullivan has an extensive rundown of what Web History is and why it matters. He writes,
“With today’s announcement, part of me wants to ring the alarm bell and shout “Uninstall your toolbar! End your Google account!” Because let’s face it. Google’s getting big, huge, giant… The “we’re a tech company” charade is over from the very top, with CEO Eric Schmidt finally calling Google recently in a Wired interview “an advertising company.
“I remember when Google was a search engine, with a philosophy that said, “Google does search.” Now it puts ads on TV, in radio, in print — serves as a payment platform, provides web analytics, pitches software “packs” to us and more. Does it really need to have our web surfing histories as well? When’s enough enough?
“On the other hand, I’m a big believer in personalized search. I think this type of data can indeed improve the search experience…Should you be concerned? Of course. Everyone should be concerned about their private data. Everyone should really think about what is being logged and how it is being used. But we also make tradeoffs. We want certain things from companies, and to get them, we have to give up some of our privacy often trusting it will be protected.”
Further Reading
- Google’s Still Going Gangbusters (IP & Democracy)
- Text of Wired’s Interview with Google CEO Eric Schmidt (Wired)
- Google as the Invisible Hand of the Online Economy (SEO Book)
Topics: Google |