Google dot com UI is growing ever closer to following in the footsteps of iTunes. It’s just becoming a cluttered mess and more confusing to users... I didn’t even know you could shop directly from the site.
Google drops charges on shopping service to counter Amazon's surging ad sales
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Re: Google drops charges on shopping service to counter Amazon's surging ad sales
#12Google has always been a fascinating company to me. A lot of my friends still work there and love it and my impression of their internal developer experience is that it’s top notch. This shows me though that despite them being an engineer-first company (or used to be) they really haven’t created another dominant business since ads and consumer gsuite. Basically when I was a new grad I thought if your company had technical prowess everything else would follow but I’m slowly learning that it’s not the case, sound strategy is really all you need and you need good leadership for that, which comes and goes.
Re: Google drops charges on shopping service to counter Amazon's surging ad sales
#13Earlier quoted context omitted.
Basically all of googles products produce significantly worse value for the consumer so that google can squeeze out extra profits. It’s only a matter of time before they start losing market share
I would argue that GSuite, Google Drive, and Gmail (the only things I currently pay Google for) all offer pretty excellent value, even at the free tier (for those which have one).
Just for comparison, what percentage of their overall yearly revenue do those three products represent?
Re: Google drops charges on shopping service to counter Amazon's surging ad sales
#14Different approach to business. For Amazon, the product is the product. For Google, the user is the product. And, as others noted, how long will Google pursue this? It is definitely not a core competency, or business line.
for Amazon, the user is also the product. everything is a product to Amazon.
they have a flourishing advertising business and have extremely valuable and actionable data on all of their users.
Re: Google drops charges on shopping service to counter Amazon's surging ad sales
#15How many people were not even aware/were barely aware that Google had a shopping service? I wasn't.
Re: Google drops charges on shopping service to counter Amazon's surging ad sales
#16Google dot com UI is growing ever closer to following in the footsteps of iTunes. It’s just becoming a cluttered mess and more confusing to users... I didn’t even know you could shop directly from the site.
The worst part is depending on your search all the different options can be in different order or sometimes not even show up. My UI pet peeve is inconsistency and Google has it in spades.
Re: Google drops charges on shopping service to counter Amazon's surging ad sales
#17This is a good move but several years too late. Google has already squandered it's lead in shopping when they replaced an excellent shopping search engine with a crippled advertising board that neither shows the cheapest prices nor a wide variety of products to buy. This has been compounded by introducing absolutely no substantitive improvements to the product over the past few years. Meanwhile, because nobody used t…
TIL google has a shopping service. Which is probably part of the problem. I had no idea google even had a shopping service. I don't think i've ever actually clicked the shopping tab before. I vaguely remember when I first noticed it existed, but even when i've been looking specifically to buy something online i've never even thought about using google shopping or even really considered its existence at all until seeing this.
This seems to be kind of a problem with google. I'm usually pretty good at noticing things in software I use, especially changes or added things, except when it comes to google products. I'm still regularly surprised when I learn about or find some feature in a google product i've been using for years or some product that came and went without me ever noticing it was there. Every new thing from them feels like some side project that just gets tacked on to their existing platform without much thought or reasoning until they get bored of having it there.
Re: Google drops charges on shopping service to counter Amazon's surging ad sales
#18IMHO this is a significant new "front" in Google's battle for online retail.
"Google is trying retail now?" was my first thought. "For how long?" was my second thought.
They’ve been doing it for 17 years now: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Shopping
Re: Google drops charges on shopping service to counter Amazon's surging ad sales
#19Earlier quoted context omitted.
I would argue that GSuite, Google Drive, and Gmail (the only things I currently pay Google for) all offer pretty excellent value, even at the free tier (for those which have one).
Just for comparison, what percentage of their overall yearly revenue do those three products represent?
That's the point.
The ads revenue subsides other products. And that's always Google's argument of upholding that business model. Google claims ads-supported internet is key to retain the free offering.
Re: Google drops charges on shopping service to counter Amazon's surging ad sales
#20Different approach to business. For Amazon, the product is the product. For Google, the user is the product. And, as others noted, how long will Google pursue this? It is definitely not a core competency, or business line.
Eh, the user is a product on Amazon too. That's why it's nigh-impossible to close an Amazon.com account.