5 Things Google Gives Away Free
The interesting thing about all the free products and services Google develops for consumers — and some for the benefit of small and large businesses — is that they aren’t all tied efficiently to revenues. Google just invests heavily in products. Sometimes it does a good job of monetizing them. But generally speaking, Google derives the lion’s share of its revenues from the same old things all the time (search ads and display ads). Not all of them tie well to the investments Google has made. It’s almost like Google’s bad at monetizing (or doesn’t care enough to monetize everything, since free stuff keeps you happy and keeps engineers engaged in worthwhile projects).
Here are five free Google things we’re pretty much all using.
1. Cool features in Google Maps: A co-worker was moving closer to downtown Toronto from the suburbs. Excited about his new address, he checked out the driving directions feature to find out how close he would be to the airport. Turns out that two totally different routes gave him about the same travel time in light traffic: 27 minutes and 28 minutes. And in “current” traffic, they were 34 minutes and 46 minutes. (Needless to say, both routes were mapped out flawlessly.) What? Google has integrated local real-time traffic databases seamlessly into Maps, in an actionable way? Then, my friend was further gratified by finding the fastest walking route to the subway station: 7 minutes.
2. Google Search: Uh oh. Lest we forget that one…it’s free. No one else can hold a candle to it. Google has invested billions in it. It seems Microsoft has lost billions trying to figure out how this “web division” should make money.
3. YouTube: Free. Extremely costly to build. Every day you share a video, or 20. Would it kill you to buy an ad or two on there?
4. Google Analytics: Comparable SMB enterprise class software will run you $20,000 to $50,000, yet for some reason, this is free. (The pro version of Google Analytics is also well-priced, and since so many advertisers and webmasters use the free version, let’s not be under any illusions that Google is covering its costs on this product.) That’s mainly because Google figures if advertisers have the very best data, then they’ll understand how to best allocate their online marketing dollars. It would be nearly impossible to go about the business of allocating a decent-sized online ad budget without spending some of it through Google. That would take some real contortions.
5. Gmail: Yep, there’s a corporate version of Google Mail you might want to look into, but most of you are rampantly using Gmail for free. So save the rant about the “intrusive” ads…especially if you’re in marketing. Consider figuring out how to buy the ads in Gmail, if you haven’t already. You might even have clients who could class up the place. Is Google currently making money hand-over-fist on this free service? You have to wonder. After years and years of running “lucrative” Hotmail, Microsoft appears to be shutting it down. Yahoo Mail is a leading service, and that company isn’t exactly pumping out Apple-esque profits either.
