Google is certainly the world’s greatest tech giant, with products such as YouTube, Gmail, Chrome, and Google Search synonymous with the internet. But this does not mean the company is immune to failure. Following is a look at just a few of the company’s many failed products.
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Google Plus
Google Plus is one of the company’s more high-profile failures. The social media platform emerged at a time when Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Tumblr were already rather popular. Nevertheless, the platform saw 90 million users within a year of launch.
So, what went wrong?
For one, the circle system used by Google Plus was complex and far from user-friendly. The process of creating separate circles for family and friends did not appeal to most users who wanted a simpler solution.
Google also had to deal with the fallout from security flaws, discovering in late 2018 that the personal data from 52.5 million user accounts had been leaking for at least three years. A Google Plus app was also ignored for the most part, with the company only developing an app after it became clear that Facebook and Twitter were using mobile to their advantage.
By that stage, it was too late. Google Plus was finally shut down in April 2019.
Google Web Accelerator
Google Web Accelerator was launched in 2005 to speed up page load times on a user’s computer.
The software was riddled with bugs from the outset, preventing YouTube videos from playing and embedding sensitive personal information in page requests. Google Web Accelerator also tended to retrieve unwanted webpage content and killed webmail sessions as soon as the user logged in.
Google ceased providing support for the software in January 2008.
Ultimately, Google Video was unable to attract users from YouTube which was starting to gather momentum during the mid-2000s. What’s more, Google Video was a very basic video player that didn’t solve a user problem.
For a large company with significant resources, it was simply easier for Google to acquire YouTube and shut down its own platform.
Google Answers
Google Answers allowed users to pay a researcher to answer a question they had, with Google taking a percentage of the fee.
Though the fee was typically around $2.50, platforms such as Yahoo! Answers and Quora meant users could find the information for free elsewhere. Interestingly, Google Answers was also competing against Google’s own free search engine.
The service was closed down after approximately 4.5 years.
Knol
Knol, an arbitrary term denoting a “unit of knowledge”, was Google’s response to Wikipedia.
Knol was supposed to feature user-generated articles on a variety of topics and even used the same font as Wikipedia. However, the platform failed to gain traction and was shut down in 2012.
While Google recognized the importance of creating an accessible knowledge repository, it did not understand the community aspect that made Wikipedia a success. Contributors to Knol who wanted to make edits were at the mercy of the so-called “expert” who wrote the article. This resulted in users uploading duplicate articles instead of trying to improve existing pieces – a fundamental strength of Wikipedia.
Google also allowed article submitters to earn money through their content through advertising. Inevitably, this attracted users with nefarious intentions to the platform.
Key takeaways:
Google’s most successful products are synonymous with the internet. But the company has certainly had its fair share of failures. The social media networkGoogle Plus is perhaps the most significant.
Google Video was another failure because it did not solve an identified user problem. Google Answers was shut down because it competed with free question-answer services such as Yahoo! Answers and Google’s own search engine.
Knol was a Wikipedia-esque knowledge site that also failed to gain traction. In developing Knol, Google did not understand the community aspect of Wikipedia that made it so successful.
Google is an attention merchant that – in 2022 – generated over $224 billion (almost 80% of revenues) from ads (Google Search, YouTube Ads, and Network sites), followed by Google Play, Pixel phones, YouTube Premium (a $29 billion segment), and Google Cloud ($26.2 billion).
Of Google’s (Alphabet) over $282 billion revenue for 2022, Google also generated over a billion dollars from a group of startup bets, which Google considers potential moonshots (companies that might open up new industries). Those Google’s bets also generated a loss for the company of over $6 billion in the same year. In short, Google is using the money generated by search and betting it on other innovative industries. Of Google’s (Alphabet) over $282 billion revenue for 2022, Google also generated over a billion dollars from a group of startup bets, which Google considers potential moonshots (companies that might open up new industries). Those Google’s bets also generated a loss for the company of over $6 billion in the same year. In short, Google is using the money generated by search and betting it on other innovative industries.
Google is an attention merchant that – in 2022 – generated $224 billion (almost 80% of its total revenues) from ads (Google Search, YouTube Ads, and Network sites), followed by Google Play, Pixel phones, YouTube Premium (a $29 billion segment), and Google Cloud ($26.3 billion).
The traffic acquisition cost represents the expenses incurred by an internet company, like Google, to gain qualified traffic – on its pages – for monetization. Over the years, Google has been able to reduce its traffic acquisition costs and, in any case, to keep it stable. In 2022 Google spent 21.75% of its total advertising revenues (over $48 billion) to guarantee its traffic on several desktop and mobile devices across the web.
Alphabet generated over $282B from Google search and others, $32.78 billion from the Network members (Adsense and AdMob), $29.2 billion from YouTube Ads, $26.28B from the Cloud, and $29 billion from other sources (Google Play, Hardware devices, and other services).
YouTube was acquired for almost $1.7 billion in 2006 by Google. It makes money through advertising and subscription revenues. YouTube advertising network is part of Google Ads, and it reported more than $29B in revenues by 2022. YouTube also makes money with its paid memberships and premium content.
In 2022, Google generated over $282 billion in revenues, of which over $162 billion from Google Search, over $29 billion from YouTube Ads, and almost $33 billion from Network Members’ properties. In addition, Google generated over $29 billion in other revenue, over $26 billion from Google Cloud, and over a billion dollars from other bets.
Gennaro is the creator of FourWeekMBA, which reached about four million business people, comprising C-level executives, investors, analysts, product managers, and aspiring digital entrepreneurs in 2022 alone | He is also Director of Sales for a high-tech scaleup in the AI Industry | In 2012, Gennaro earned an International MBA with emphasis on Corporate Finance and Business Strategy.
