Platforms: Google — What You See is Not What You Get
Trusted Search Engine
Whenever we have a question, or look up anything, for that matter, we turn to Google. It’s instant search results and clean layout provides our short attention spans the uncluttered attention it deserves. But what if Google had other plans for us?
Building a Platform
When Google launched in 1997, it was not the first search engine. However, founders Brin and Page realized the importance of a webpage was a leading indicator of the quality of search results. By incorporating the “backlink” factor, they were able to overtake the incumbent search engine leaders with the best search results on the Internet.
Soon after, the monetization strategies started popping up. In October 2000, Bill Gross founded “Adwords” — the self-service ad program promising online activation with a credit card, keyword targeting and performance feedback.
As yearly search queries grew, it made sense to have customers “promote” their site based on keywords that Google users searched for. However, did it cloud the integrity of their results?
Google is still the world’s biggest ad-driven media company. And the vast majority of its ad revenue still comes from ads on Google sites, mostly Google Search. (Gmail and YouTube also contribute, but not much).
During 2009, Google reported $24 billion in gross revenue. In 2015, Google reported $75 billion in gross revenue. Adwords represented over 70% of that.
Below is a snapshot of a modern day search results. As you can see, to an untrained eye, most of the search results are not the highest integrity. This is because most of the above the fold, is represented by paid results via Adwords.
Reporting vs Dictating
Google launched Maps in February 2005. It wasn’t the first digital mapping product by any means. Both AOL’s Mapquest and Yahoo Maps preceded Google Maps. Yahoo’s product was the first true “local search” tool utilizing maps. Yet given Google’s prominence in web search, Google Maps novel features and the company’s increasing investment in the product it was able to overtake both and never look back.
Two months after Maps went live, Google added satellite views and directions to the product. In April 2005, Google Maps came to mobile phones in the U.S., offering driving directions and local information to people on the go.
Then in May 2007, Street View debuts in Google Maps in five U.S. cities: New York, San Francisco, Las Vegas, Miami, and Denver. Today, Street View is available in more than 50 countries. In October 2009, Google Maps Navigation is a turn-by-turn GPS navigation system with 3D views, voice guidance and live traffic data. And in June 2013, Google acquired Waze, a crowdsourced live traffic app.
Directions have been around for ages, but live traffic was something really magical. By knowing about a traffic jam before you’re in it, allows drivers to save hours of frustration. That was the super feature. As Google got better at creating the association of — when I (the user) use Google Maps, my trips are as fast as possible — the more frequently people used the app.
The issue with directions is that there is only one shortest (length-wise) path between two points. However, if you direct all cars on that path, it would build up in traffic, and no longer making it the shortest (time-wise) path. So Google had to become the “air traffic control” of the roads. Each person is algorithmically given a unique route to minimize overall traffic. This is Google’s attempt redefining Nash equilibrium as defined by “A Beautiful Mind”,
“Because the best result will come from everyone in the group doing what’s best for himself … and the group.”
When owning the platform, you build out a certain trust with your customer. As your brand continues to build goodwill, you will be faced with a tough decision on how to keep the best interest of your customers in mind, while trying to give way to monetization efforts — which most of the time have a completely different agenda.
In addition, as our systems get smarter, we would need to cleanly redefine the difference between the “organic” result, and the one that is “recommended” for us — whether it’s in our best interest or not.
Because sometimes, “Some people like driving the long way home.”
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