GOOGLE, THE HYPE ENGINE

Google, has been undoubtfully the best among the search engines. Google in the recent times had introduced array of products like "GMail,Google Talk, Google Online Spreadsheet". Every time when google releases some of its so called innovative products, I get a doubt what kind of company is Google?. What can Google be classified as? An Internet company delivering solutions across the Web. Do they really stand out and compete with their rivals Microsoft, IBM and Yahoo!. My answer would be a definite "No".

Most of its rivals are well ahead of the race. For that matter, Microsoft had made a head start in desktop operating systems, where they stand as an unshakeable leader. Oracle, business leader in database, where Microsoft fights hard to take their pie of database market. Similarly, Google would find it hard to penetrate their products to users, for most users are very much comfortable with the existing products.

Business Week runs an article "So Much Fanfare, So Few Hits". The crux of the article is Google has initially send shiver down its competitor’s spine. But at the end it’s the competitor's who win the battle. To draw some statistics on Google's products

1) Google Talk, an instant-messaging service launched last August, now ranks No. 10, garnering just 2% of the number of users for market leader MSN Messenger

2)Google Finance, heralded as a competitor to market leader Yahoo! Finance, has settled in as the 40th-most-visited finance site

3) Gmail, the e-mail service that was lauded at its 2004 launch for offering 500 times as much storage space as some rivals (they quickly closed the gap), today is the system of choice for only about one-quarter the number of people who use MSN and Yahoo e-mail.

One of the analysts very prompt view is "After sparking substantial buzz, most of Google's nonsearch offerings quickly fade from view. People give Google the victory in the beginning and don't show up later to notice that things didn't go anywhere"

Google has been muddling with its products, simply to show it does innovate. But I would rather say Google always does things "out of the box", which keep people murmuring it for some time. It’s a tricky and challenging thing to motivate and keep the user stick and user their products.

Category: Google