

Google Still in a Struggle with Mobile - rpm4321
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/23/technology/google-profit-exceeds-expectations.html

======
thefreeman
_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

~~~
potatolicious
> _"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.

~~~
DannyBee
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...](http://www.webpronews.com/facebook-may-not-be-struggling-with-mobile-
monetization-after-all-2012-06) (june, facebook not struggling with mobile
ads)

vs

[http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-10-23/facebook-s-
slowing-...](http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-10-23/facebook-s-slowing-
sales-growth-shows-mobile-ad-struggle-tech.html) (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...](http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/23/technology/in-mobile-world-tech-
giants-struggle-to-get-up-to-speed.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0) (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.

~~~
untog
_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.

~~~
DannyBee
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.

------
ZeroGravitas
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.)

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

~~~
tenpora
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

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ElissaShevinsky
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.

------
ingenium
_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?

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

