Forum Moderators: Robert Charlton & goodroi
Google is likely to require its users to begin providing personal information to use some of its products and services, said CEO Eric Schmidt. Requiring people to provide their identity and a password to gain service access is common at many Web sites, but would be new for Google. Having more personal information would enable Google to offer more useful improvements, Schmidt said. He didn't provide a timetable or specify which services might require registration
AP Report [story.news.yahoo.com]
"Don't be surprised if many of Google's products, including its widely read compilation of recent news stories, remain in the test phase known as "beta" for as long as five years. Page said the "beta" tag is a sign that Google engineers still anticipate making significant improvements to the service. "
strange approach to forecasts :o)
Dazz
in a country of 300 million people? I know math is not taught as it should be here in US, but with 300 million they shouldn't have any problems. Not mention that they have offices in India. It's possible that you can raise the bar so high that barely anyone meets the requirements, but they're plenty of smart people in this country. Methinks this is in part a marketing ploy.
as far as the earnings forecast: They don't do it because they don't need to. Their stock is sky-high, Wall Street loves them and they're making money. They will when things get rough though
I serious doubt that they would be stupid enough to *require* people to enter data before performing searches, look at google news, images, groups.
In fact, I can't really think of anything that should demand user info that doesn't already.
Having it as optional is another issue, but *require*? - They'd want to be very careful.
If you don't give them those simple numbers, then they have to pay attention to what you are actually doing.
actually they didn't becuase they were losing money like there's not tomorrow but I agree on the long term plan. Companies do a lot of things to meet the forecast down to the penny, most of the times hurting their future prospects.
At the end of the day, it's a regular business, it has streams of incomes and various expenses - the objective is to get your expenses to be less than your income - simple.
I think Google need to be careful. I can see how treating employees is a wise move, but with entire company ski trips and other such elaborate stuff, they might be leaning towards that unrealistic part of the tech sector where, with a rush of blood to the head, stupid & costly decisions are made.
As has been stated before - Search in itself is quite possibly a loss leader (don't know the figures).
I can think of 6 companies off the top of my head that could swallow Google within the year (maybe 2) if the right steps were taken. Amazon, eBay, MSN, Yahoo & others - all of these are in a position to operate some kind of an AdSense type program, which would seriously put a dent in Google's income because advertising is their only solid form of income.
If those other companies could get a good search product together, you're looking at the potential end of Google, unless they tighten up and make the right investment decisions. When a lot of the people in there have just been made millionaires - I'm not convinced entire company ski trips are a wise decision... They have enough money to do it - don't be eating into your profit like that, otherwise investors won't be too pleased (it's their money!).
I serious doubt that they would be stupid enough ...
and i have boundless faith in the ability of supposedly bright people to shoot themselves in the foot.
for example
Google has banned its management from projecting profits — a policy that limited the disclosures made to the roomful of analysts who make the earnings estimates that influence the company's stock
and i have boundless faith in the ability of supposedly bright people to shoot themselves in the foot.
Ha ha ha ha.
Personal information is worth quite a bit, and I am little concerned that Google may become a legit data harvester... potentially providing that information to 3rd parties and making a lot of $$$. Before word even got out about this, they'd have collected a LOT of information.
Straight up though.. if personal information was required to search though, I'd never use them. They won't do that. Even Phd's can analyze things on the lower level... I think!
But it doesn't stop there. This will truly enhance content match as ads are much more targeted. Publishers and advertisers are happy.
