Web 3.0 & Google (Part 3)

Web 3.0 Framework discussion

Below is a quick overview of the Web 3.0 framework for the Google sites. This is, in fact, an interesting analysis, since Google’s horizontal approach is pretty much against the grain of the vertical nature of my Web 3.0 framework.

Context
With just one search box in its delightfully simple interface, it is extremely difficult for Google to capture Context, unless the user clicks on News, Shopping, Finance or Photo. As I mentioned before, I would not even begin to know how to search for airline tickets or hotel reservations using Google as my starting point. Nonetheless, within some of the categories where it has
chosen to separate out Context, Google does a decent job.

Content
If there is one area where Google has been lagging Yahoo, it has to be content. Google’s strategy is to be the “finder” of content, rather than the “producer”, although recently, it has started tackling “content packaging” to an extent, especially within News and Finance.

Google also has a very strong position in user generated video content via YouTube.

Community
Google is a major player in the social networking / community space. Orkut, YouTube, Picasa Web Albums, Blogger, Google Groups and its recent acquisition of Jaiku are among its community sites. Again, YouTube and Orkut are two very large community efforts, although purely horizontal.

Commerce
Google earns 99% of its revenues from advertising and the remaining 1% comes from licensing of services. Commerce does not yet feature in Google’s portfolio, although, Google Checkout is starting to look like an avenue that will eventually lead to commerce by becoming a competitor to PayPal. eBay, Google’s top customer, does not like this at all.

Personalization
iGoogle allows users customize the Google page and organize it the way they want to. Orkut, Picasa, YouTube, etc. have some personalization features as well. Nothing earth shattering, and Google’s talks about personalizing search results by analyzing users’ past query patterns have met with criticism due to privacy concerns.

Vertical Search
Vertical Search, in my mind, is the biggest threat that Google faces. Google has stuck to its horizontal search model when players like Kayak, Trulia, Indeed, TheFind, Indeed, AutoTrader, etc. have gone ahead and developed vertical search engines to offer consumers far more refined results. I think Google will have to consider incorporating vertical search in the future as more and more people get used to vertical search engines, and Google starts to lose its central role as the starting point of the web.

Business Model
Google derives almost all of its revenues from advertising. Google charges a nominal, one-time activation fee for Google AdWords campaigns. Mostly, the revenue model is keyword based CPC for both AdWords and AdSense. I have pointed out that Google’s AdSense revenues are under serious threat from Vertical Ad Networks.

(To Be Continued)

[Part 1] [Part 2]

This segment is part 3 in the series : Web 3.0 & Google
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