Google, Search and a Brave New World

MEDIA POST -- Oct 27 -- The Search: How Google and Its Rivals Rewrote the Rules of Business and Transformed Our Culture explores search as a business and social phenomenon. Google is advancing on a thousand different fronts at once. With their acknowledged brilliance, arrogance and determination, Brin and Page have built a company that worships at the altar of technology. The high priests are legions of engineers, all given explicit instructions to invent something cool. There is little in the way of top-down strategy. Page is quoted as saying that he's not a big believer in strategy. Rather, the Google Brin and Page envision is a support system for rampant entrepreneurialism, with grassroots innovation ultimately driving the direction of the company. The multi-million dollar Founders' Award attaches heavy bonuses to this activity, giving employees a reason to stay in the corporate nest, rather than founding their own companies and ultimately hoping to be acquired again by Google. FULL ARTICLE @ MEDIA POST

Mark Brooks: Lycos, Yahoo, MSN, AOL, Ask Jeeves, Google.  Which is the odd one out?  Google!  No online dating affiliation or ownership as yet.  Just what do they have up their sleeves I wonder? Something tells me they won't leave the online dating stone unturned.

Comments

[Sam Moorcroft, ChristianCafe.com]

Mark,

If online dating is only a $500M+/- per year industry with a modest growth rate of around 7-8%, why would Google bother to get involved?

It would make more sense to concentrate on new technologies, or expanding existing ones like VOIP, with multi-billion dollar potential.

The days of cleaning up in the online dating space are over, Meetic's IPO nothwithstanding.

This is (late) 2005, not early 1999.

[Markus]

Each google employee is allowed to work on his her own project 1 day of the week and google owns a part of it. This is how orkut and other projects started. Google employees have already started dating sites but non has recieved any official pushs from google.

If google did a dating site it would be completely free. Google has never owned a paid service. Each paid service it has bought it has converted to free.

[Sam Moorcroft, ChristianCafe.com]

Yes, but the market won't let Google offer free-everything forever. With its ridiculous current valuation it needs ever-more sources of revenue to sustain it. Ad revenue alone can't do this for them.

Speaking of free, how can plentyoffish compete if Google does offer a free service (in the short-term)? It seems to me that you would have the most to lose from Google getting into the dating space.

[Markus]

I think it would be obvious that plentyoffish has the most to gain by google launching a free dating site.

[Bill Broadbent]

Would a dating site help google or only canibalize it's existing business? They make a ton of money from dating PPC as it is. Sure Yahoo did it - but I think they have bigger fish to fry. Markus would have a lot to gain, but I don't know if it would be the most. Markus' brilliant site makes money turning free daters into paid daters just like everyone else - he just collects his money differently.

[Sam Moorcroft, ChristianCafe.com]

Forgive my ignorance, having no experience in the free-dating space: wouldn't a free Google dating site eventually hurt all the other free dating sites out there?

Yes, you could drive traffic to Google in the short-term, but why would singles continue to go to, say, plentyoffish.com, when they could get a far better experience with Google's free site directly?

Or, is it because the market is so big that there will always be traffic for others (the survivors, that is)?

[Mark Brooks]

Paying a membership fee is a great way to indicate a commitment to the process. Most people can afford $20-$30 a month...it's a good price point, hardly exclusionary.

(Answering 436 questions is also a way to demonstrate commitment to the process)

Google could put us out of business. However, they make a killing with PPC fees from the online dating industry so they are hardly likely to jeopardize that...I doubt they see a significant profit increment in entering the business. The opportunity cost of the brainpower they would need to build and run an online dating business is too high. As Bill, said, they have bigger fish to fry (for now).

Mark Brooks
Editor/Blogger
onlinepersonalswatch.com

Media Relations
Internet Dating Convention
idate2006.com

[email protected]

Mark Brooks
Editor/Blogger
onlinepersonalswatch.com

Media Relations
Internet Dating Convention
idate2006.com

[email protected]

[Tom]

This is a call to all Google employees that are interested in joining a team to explore the possibility of Google launching its own dating site. I am an MBA instructor at the University of Toronto that has done extensive research on the technology/software/applications creating by current online dating sites, and I am proposing a significant alternate strategy/approach that could provide a significant competitive advantage to Google. You can reach me through [email protected]