Google: Changes Coming and Steadily
February 4, 2020
Google’s financial results suggest that the company’s advertising business is facing some headwinds. “Google Lifts Veil on YouTube, Cloud Units” states:
Meanwhile, the company reported disappointing results in its core online advertising operations.
The “meanwhile” is a “nice” way of suggesting that Google’s good news about YouTube and its baby cloud endeavors were supposed to distract from that ominous line:
disappointing results in its core online advertising operations.
And the word “operations.” That is a pregnant choice. The problem perhaps is deeper than softness in companies’ ad spending, more problematic than Amazon’s and Facebook’s expanding advertising initiatives, and more troublesome than the withdrawal of the Silicon Valley sultans, Messrs. Brin and Page.
What is caused the spangled juggernaut to wobble in its “core business”?
DarkCyber’s early morning thoughts include:
- Google’s rush to mobile created an ad inventory gap; that is, more ads for a small space. The fixes have not been satisfying to users or to consumers.
- Trading off relevance for broader results so more ads can be shown in relation to content which is not germane to what the user wanted information about. Even the most jaded consumer of Neverthink content, sort of wants ads relevant to their interests when using Google.
- Overhead is tough to control. Yep, that means productivity from human resources and efficiency in use of capital have to take precedent over moon shots, solving death, and dealing with litigation related to interesting staff issues.
- The Steve Ballmer “one trick pony” assessment of Google is proving accurate. Billions spent and the Google sells ads.
Net net: Worth monitoring the company’s performance and actions whether one has shares, works there, or is just mildly interested in what has defined “search” for billions of people.
Can these people find relevant information online? Nope. That’s probably part of the problem. Can cleverness address the issue? Sure but at what cost. Can Jeff Dean save the overdone cookies? Maybe.
Stephen E Arnold, February 4, 2020
Comments
-
- Subscribe to Beyond Search
Feature archive
News archive
-
