Great Job on your SWOT analysis Dave. I like your comments on Google basically giving away it's application for free to consumers as a weakness. It may provide benifits as providing a vehicle for advertising and building it's brand, but I could not imagine it produces a positive ROI.
If Google was start to charge for a Google Docs for example, do you think it would have significant backlash from users?
There are two significant opportunities that could change free services into paid services without backlash.
1.) Users are used to a certain level of free service, you can NOT change the game now and charge for that, the backlash would be too severe. Google could roll out a "premium" customer version with expanded features, which would allow users to patronize Google for a more polished UX without "harming" any current users. This would be in harmony with their corporate motto of "do no evil".
2.) Google could try to to get into Enterprise SaaS at which point they could charge businesses and compete with MS Office. This would be "B2B" and charging for this should not lead to a backlash as it consumers have no reason to be upset that Google charged "random business X" money for a more polished version of the services customers get for free.
Neither of those approaches should lead to backlash for Google and both could help monetize their software development efforts.
Google does sell an enterprise version of its search to corporations for internal search. In terms of their consumer search business, where are they making money? Does it have to be from the search itself? Might that open them up to trust issuesnwithnrespect to the validity of the search results?
Great Job on your SWOT analysis Dave. I like your comments on Google basically giving away it's application for free to consumers as a weakness. It may provide benifits as providing a vehicle for advertising and building it's brand, but I could not imagine it produces a positive ROI.
ReplyDeleteIf Google was start to charge for a Google Docs for example, do you think it would have significant backlash from users?
There are two significant opportunities that could change free services into paid services without backlash.
ReplyDelete1.) Users are used to a certain level of free service, you can NOT change the game now and charge for that, the backlash would be too severe. Google could roll out a "premium" customer version with expanded features, which would allow users to patronize Google for a more polished UX without "harming" any current users. This would be in harmony with their corporate motto of "do no evil".
2.) Google could try to to get into Enterprise SaaS at which point they could charge businesses and compete with MS Office. This would be "B2B" and charging for this should not lead to a backlash as it consumers have no reason to be upset that Google charged "random business X" money for a more polished version of the services customers get for free.
Neither of those approaches should lead to backlash for Google and both could help monetize their software development efforts.
Google does sell an enterprise version of its search to corporations for internal search. In terms of their consumer search business, where are they making money? Does it have to be from the search itself? Might that open them up to trust issuesnwithnrespect to the validity of the search results?
ReplyDelete