
Google Is Closing Google Compare, Its Financial Services Comparison Service - romarv
http://techcrunch.com/2016/02/23/google-is-closing-google-compare-its-financial-services-comparison-service
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chuhnk
Personally a sad day. I was an employee of the company acquired back in 2011
who went on to build this. I left Google in 2013 but most stayed on to see
this through. I will say, as a standalone company we operated phenomenally and
had solid revenue. I think that was entirely crippled once we got to Google
and has a lot to do with the way Google operates versus a startup. Plus
bureaucracy, plus big companies, plus people leaving after golden hand cuffs
are off.

To the team. You guys were awesome, it was a pleasure, I know you'll go on to
do great things. End of an era.

~~~
mathattack
How much of the issue was internal (how Google builds) versus external (how
Google sells)? The popular myth is that Google is much better at the former
than the latter. I'm curious about your insider's view with respect to
acquisitions.

~~~
chuhnk
I'll start by saying these are my opinions and perspective based on my
experience. I can't speak for senior management or other acquisitions.

I agree with the sentiment. Google can build anything but they struggle to
sell. I think part of that is being subject to anti-competitive practices and
constantly under scrutiny which makes it difficult to use typical sales
practices. It's also just not part of their DNA. They underestimate the need
for the sales process and the human element of customer service. Being an
acquisition that gets dropped into the big machine, everything slows down and
all those tools you once used aren't so effective anymore.

~~~
mathattack
Interesting - thank you for sharing your views. I wonder how much of it is
senior management attention too. Google is very good at building 20x better
mousetraps. Enterprise companies (say Oracle or Salesforce) are better at
tackling immediate needs. Part is the market, part is the style of CEO. It
takes a big shift to say "Build something incremental because someone will pay
for it."

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shrewduser
Google has been a complete imbecile when it comes to these things.

It's simple game theory, If i've been burnt by google shutting down something
i've made part of my workflow or rely on (I'm sure most people at hacker news
have been in this situation) I'm far less likely to adopt their next big idea.

They could have a division which puts these projects on life support or hell
sells them to another company or even open source some of their products and
let the community support them!

I'm still salty about google reader and their original podcast app on android
among other things it would have been so easy to do right by their users.

~~~
ComodoHacker
>or hell sells them to another company

I don't think anyone at Google has ever (OK, in this millennium) considered an
option to sell something. I guess it's a kind of superstition among top
management, a sign of weakness perhaps.

Correct me if I'm wrong and Google has actually sold anything.

~~~
Dlotan
There was Motorola, which was sold to lenovo

~~~
ComodoHacker
Forgot about it, thank you. But it wasn't Google's product.

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Litost
I thought this was quite an interesting comparison between "Old Google" and
"New Google":

[http://www.filmsforaction.org/articles/never-trust-a-
corpora...](http://www.filmsforaction.org/articles/never-trust-a-corporation-
to-do-a-librarys-job/)

Something i'm increasing attributing to the difference between making money
and adding value, between a nash equilibrium and the socially optimal solution
now seemingly picked up by volunteers like the Internet Archive :(.

I still use google search, youtube and maps but increasingly i can only see
this use dwindling partly due to malvertising but as mentioned due to the
problem of not getting to depend on any google service. But also in the case
of search because of privacy concerns and maps because (free) apps tied to
Openstreetmap are so much better for anything other than driving, and i can
contribute back to them etc.

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rubyfan
Insurance Journal has more on the situation with comments from partners and
analysts closer to the matter than TechCrunch:

[http://www.insurancejournal.com/news/national/2016/02/22/399...](http://www.insurancejournal.com/news/national/2016/02/22/399490.htm)

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Agustus
1\. Did not know this service existed. How long had this been going on and why
did it not show up, even accidentally, in the Google matrix drop down to give
me a shot.

2\. Oh, does not work in my state... Okay, no need to worry about this service
then. Google, you are Google, get everyone on board for the domestic region
before launching a service like this.

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feider
I hope Google encourages spin-offs to be launched from these closing services.
Haven't used Google Compare as it's not available in my region, but it seems
like a solid concept.

~~~
rubyfan
Since Google mostly partnered on this you can get a similar comparison quoting
experience from their partner Coverhound who is very much still in business.

[https://coverhound.com/](https://coverhound.com/)

~~~
rubyfan
Coverhound by the way has investors from American Family and ACE/Chubb and
more carrier partnerships than Google had. Coverhound also was expanding
beyond Auto in to commercial insurance. So I'd expect them to stick around a
bit longer.

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robk
Thank God. This was such an un-Googley product to launch. The conflict of
interest was terribly high with so many advertisers and from the UK at least
they clearly intended to onebox this into the top of search results. As an ex-
Googler in ads, I was embarrassed by this.

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tyingq
Google is basically saying that it didn't make enough money. This seems
dubious, as the effort should have been pretty low...this isn't rocket
science, and the conversion/sales as compared to straight ads would have been
higher. The screen real estate these widgets occupy will be replaced with
lower performing ads.

There has to be some other motivation.

Edit: See [http://imgur.com/a/8c9Xi](http://imgur.com/a/8c9Xi) These have to
have a higher CTR and revenue stream than an ad. (edit 2: removed note about
other ads being suppressed...happened for a while, then stopped)

~~~
makomk
Wow, I'm surprised they didn't get dinged for anti-competitive practices for
that - it looks very much like they were using their near-monopoly in search
to try and drive people towards their comparison service and way from other,
established players. (I'm guessing not enough people trusted Google to
recommend the best comparison site, sticking with well-known ones like Money
Supermarket instead.)

~~~
scholia
Google regularly uses its near-monopoly in search to try to drive people to
other Google products. This includes advertising Chrome on its search page if
you are foolish enough to visit from another browser.

The Foundem case is a well-documented example of Google's monopoly abuse, as
considered by the FTC and the EU.

[http://www.foundem.co.uk/Foundem_Google_Timeline.pdf](http://www.foundem.co.uk/Foundem_Google_Timeline.pdf)

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CodingGuy
Really? The king of traffic can't monetize financial traffic? o.O

~~~
ivoras
They can't monetize it _enough_ , which seems like a perfect situation to sell
it to someone who will be happy with a lower cash flow point, or spin it off.

It's actually surprising to me that big companies are so ready to kill
products instead of selling them to someone who cares.

~~~
martinald
The thing is if they can't monitise it better than someone else, they're
better letting them bid up the costs of AdWords (which i assume are pricey on
these sorts of keywords). Lot of opportunity cost on this one.

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andygambles
Well I live in the UK and didn't even know it existed.

~~~
andygambles
In fact I just visited Google Compare and it contains "previous car insurance
quotes" which were not done through Google but appear to be scraped from my
Gmail.

~~~
topbanana
Holy crap, so it does

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dman
Not even available in NY and NJ. First time I heard about this service.

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rabboRubble
This is why I have seriously embarked on the migration of services away from
Google. Every time I really learn to love something Google offers, it's taken
away.

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nikolay
Somebody needs to create a betting game "Which next?" to bet on next closed
product by a company.

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eberfreitas
New business idea: clone Google services and wait for them to shut down.
Profit!

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cmcnally
I was not aware this service even existed.

