Google Still in a Struggle with Mobile | Hacker News Reader

Google Still in a Struggle with Mobile

nytimes.com

16 pointsrpm432116 comments

But a closer look at the results shows that while Google continues to be a moneymaking machine, its most lucrative business, search on desktop computers, is slowing, while Google has not yet figured out how to make equivalent profits on mobile devices.

Aren't they discounting the fact that the mobile serach market is still developing and not nearly the size of the desktop search market? Notice they don't say they aren't profiting from mobile. They say they aren't making equivalent profits.

Mr. Page, who has had health problems related to his voice, sounded unusually weak and breathy.

Really?? I am not even sure what to say about this.

Honestly, it seems like every quote in the article is positive, with everything in between trying to justify the idea that they are struggling.

I don't know, maybe I'm just a google fan boy. But it seems like weak reporting from the times

> "They say they aren't making equivalent profits."

The concern is that this will be the case in the long run - i.e., the desktop search market will contract substantially but mobile searches won't make up the difference.

We know that mobile users, at least with the phones and UIs available today, are lower-intent and lower-converting than desktop users. This is a pretty big looming problem not only for Google, but for anyone whose traffic is disappearing into mobile - Facebook being the most obvious one that comes to mind.

The worries about mobile are IMO legitimate, though it isn't quite time for breathless worry.

Please point to a company that the business press believes is not having this struggle?

I can find humorously contradicting articles about mobile growth at every single interesting tech company.

Let's take:

http://www.webpronews.com/facebook-may-not-be-struggling-wit... (june, facebook not struggling with mobile ads)

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-10-23/facebook-s-slowing-... (october, oh shit, facebook's got a mobile ad struggle again. I guess it's a relapse?)

In fact, here's an article about how everyone seems to be having this trouble:

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/23/technology/in-mobile-world... (facebook, google, intel, microsoft, yahoo, all sucking it up at mobile apparently).

Sorry, i'd go on, but i just can't even read these articles. I had to stop at:

  “What has caught people off guard has been acceleration of   
  the multitude of things that you can do with a smartphone,”   
  said David B. Yoffie, a Harvard Business School professor 
  who studies the technology sector.

Yes, Google was completely off guard by the acceleration of things you could do with smartphones, especially after starting a project to accelerate what you could do with smartphones in late 2005.

Look, this is what the business press does. They have deadlines, they pick the trend of the day/week/year, and write about its relationship to some company, without putting any real thought in the matter.

None of this is any different than the "The market was down this morning in reaction to XX YY" bullshit articles you read.

Please point to a company that is not having this struggle?

Does that matter? If the article is about Google, and Google is having problems, then it makes sense to report on it.

I guess you missed the rest of the comment, where I pointed out that you can find contradicting articles on subjects like this for every single company. If you believe the business press, everyone is having problems monetizing mobile, and nobody is having problems monetizing mobile.

BTW, here's a perfect example, just to contradict the title article:

http://allthingsd.com/20130123/wall-street-buys-googles-mobi...

"By last night, though, Wall Street analysts seemed to have come up with at least one consensus takeaway: Google’s mobile ad business is looking pretty good. Or, at least, less worrisome"

I think the worries are kind of ridiculous. It seems like people are just recently adapting to a real use of mobile. Once google figures out how people are using mobile, it shouldn't be long for them to adapt and monetize. Until people stop using the internet altogether, I'm not too worried about Google's ability to turn a profit.

In my opinion, we have only been able to have a somewhat equivalent (to desktop) mobile browsing experience in the past few years. Combine that with the dramatic reduce in the cost of mobile data plans due to competition. In addition, the technology is just now becoming cheap enough for less then middle class people to afford it.

I have no doubt that the explosion in ownership of internet browsing devices, as well as the ease of use, will continue at an exponential rate. With continued growth, eventually someone is going to figure out how to monetize it past 99 cent downloads.

This just in: Athlete who trained doing 110m hurdles for 10 years not as good at shot put after only 2 years of training.

It is not the search that makes money, it is advertising on the top of search. And on mobile advertising has a bit of the problem.

Can someone confirm that Desktop search is actually "slowing" as stated twice in this article?

In the first instance CPC is dropping because the CPC on mobile is lower and mobile is growing faster than desktop, but that doesn't give any info about whether or not desktop is growing in absolute terms.

In the second case desktop search is making up less of the total because mobile is growing faster, but again that doesn't mean desktop search is not growing.

For all we know given the info in this article desktop search could be growing at an ever accelerating pace, but just not keeping up with mobile.

To give a parallel this is as silly as saying iOS is "slowing" because it's not growing as fast as Android (even the much maligned Blackberry only actually dropped in number of users very recently, up until that point they were just being vastly outpaced in growth rate by rivals.)

If they're struggling then I'd like to have their problems, just a tiny fraction would suffice.

The part of struggling is the one where they are yet to figure out how to make money from it. They have already spent loads of money developing and protecting that business (billions in Motorola and patent purchases) but not made much money from the whole thing

What's relevant & interesting here is that this levels the playing field (at least somewhat.) Google's struggle to monetize mobile ads - on search & elsewhere - means that there is still time for another company to figure that out first and dominate the mobile ad revenue market.

Desktop ads existed in a mediocre state for a long time before Adwords changed the game. The mobile landscape resembles the desktop landscape before Google invented Adwords.

And even when consumers use Google for mobile searches, they are often doing so on Apple devices like iPhones, for which Google has to pay Apple a fee. Those types of fees are large — equivalent to 25 percent of Google’s revenue in the quarter.

Really? Why would Google have to pay Apple a cut of ad revenue from searches? Or is it referring only to searches initiated in the search box in Safari?

Mobile is a top trend in IT industry. It seems that almost every industry march into mobile industry.

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