Product Evaluation
4 Main Product Categories
1) Advertising Solutions – Includes Google main source of revenue Google AdWords and Google AdSense.
2) Business Solutions – High Cost, Industrial strength search engines such as GB-1001, GB-5005, GB-8008
3) Google Store – Google Merchandise
4) Google Apps – Includes several applications like Google Maps, Google Earth, Gmail, Google Chrome, Picasa, Blogger, Calendar, Orkut, Youtube, Google Video, Android, Google Translate and many more.
Evaluation of Google’s Product: Google focuses on rapid and continous innovation. Products are usually available early in the development stage on Google Labs or Google.com. Based on user reviews, the product is tested more until it is satisfactory. Google’s range of product can be divided into four categories:
a. Advertising solutions – Google AdWords offers pay-per-click (PPC) advertising, and site-targeted advertising for both text and banner ads. The AdWords program includes local, national, and international distribution. Google's text advertisements are short, consisting of one title line and two content text lines. Advertisers specify the words that should trigger their ads and the maximum amount they are willing to pay per click. When a user searches Google's search engine on www.google.com or the relevant local/national google server (e.g. www.google.fr for France), ads (also known as creatives by Google) for relevant words are shown as "sponsored links" on the right side of the screen, and sometimes above the main search results. Get a picture. The ordering of the paid-for listings depends on other advertisers' bids (PPC) and the "quality score" of all ads shown for a given search. The quality score is calculated by historical click-through rates, relevance of an advertiser's ad text and keywords, an advertiser's account history, and other relevance factors as determined by Google. AdWords – Activation fee -10$, Cost Per Click - .01$ , Minimum Cost Per 100 impressions – 0.30$
Google AdSense is used by website owners who wish to make money by displaying ads on their websites. It also works on a per click or per impression basis. Participation to AdSense is free of charge. Even better, Google will pay you for clicks or impressions on the Google ads that you will display on your site.
b. Business Solutions – GB- 1001, GB-5005, GB-8008 – High cost industrial strength search engine.
c. Google Store – Google merchandise ( Clothing, accessories, etc.,)
d. Google Apps – Includes several applications like Google, Google Maps, Google Earth, Gmail, Google Chrome, Picasa, Blogger, Calendar, Orkut, Youtube, Google Video, Android, Google Translate and many more. Most google applications are simple, clean, clear with minimalistic user interfaces.
S.W.O.T.
Strengths:
1) Speed and user friendliness
2) Relevance ranking based on citations - PageRank
3) Price and availability
4) Strong Market Position - As of January 2009, Google’s Growth Rate is 38.4%. Query Market Share stands at 63%. Google led it’s competitors in the consumer satisfaction index with a score of 86, up by 10.3%. 5) AdWords and AdSense
Weaknesses:
1) Arbitrary content, risk of dead-ends
2) Focus on the English language
3) Weak presence in social networking domain4) Lack of Product Integration
Opportunities:
1) Growth in internet usage – from 2000 to 2008, internet usage has grown 338% (Internet World Stats)
2) Growth in online ad-spending – from 2007 to 2008, online advertising grew by 23.4% and is projected to grow to 147 Billion by 2012 (Kelsey Group)
3) Growth in online video
Threats:
1) Competition from Microsoft, Yahoo, Ask, AOL - Yahoo’s growth rate grew from 17.2% to 21.6% with a market share of 21%.
2) Click fraud and data scams
Growth in search queries Market Share
Google 38.4% 63%
Yahoo 21.6% 21%
Microsoft 11.3% 8.5%
Ask 4.6% 3.9%
AOL 1.1% 3.7%
Competitors: Google’s main competitors are Microsoft, Yahoo, Ask.com and AOL. As of January 2009, Google’s query growth rate was 38.4%, however it has slowed from 42.8% in the previous year. It’s overall query market share stood at 63%. In comparison it’s closest competitor Yahoo had a growth rate of 21.6%, up from 17.2 % and market share of 21%(Source: comScore qSearch). As of August 2009, Google also lead its competitors in consumer satisfaction. Google scored an 86 in the index, up 10.3% in consumer satisfaction from last year. While Yahoo was down 2.5% to 77, Microsoft’s MSN remained at 75, and Ask.com dropped 1.3% to 74. AOL did increase by 3% to 69, but lost a lot from the year prior and is still not where they were then, which was 74(Source: Advertising Age).