Google pulling plug on radio advertising service

Thursday's announcement could lead to up to 40 layoffs among Google's work force of 20,200 employees

If that line doesn't tell you something about how Google's operating, and whether they have any one else's best interests at heart, think again.

Any decent company of that size, with that much money, that has any compassion at all should have issued the release as "40 positions were eliminated, but Google has assured continued employment for all 40 employees, including retraining as necessary." instead of "Don't let the door hit you on the way out".

Google said it still intends to place ads on television.

i'll bet you a gillion they'll pull tv ads too; they are diluting their brand with all these line extensions. people won't trust them with their ad dollars on media in which google is not specialized. i think product placement may eventually phase out tv ads anyway.

i haven't looked too deep into any of these other ventures; but are they putting any tracking parameters to these ads that made ppc a money maker?

You have to give them credit for trying to diversify, but all the money still flows from one stream; selling contextual advertising on the internet.

Adwords & Adsense, that’s it.

You have to give them credit for trying to diversify.

Yes you do. Their portfolio of purchased entities has grown to be quite large over the years. I stopped tracking in 2007, it was a daily chore to see who they might have been thinking about purchasing and who just hit the Google Lotto.

It won't be long before we see Ads while playing Wii. You'll go to swing your Tennis Racket and click on an Ad by mistake. Woohoo! < Humour

If this New York Times article [nytimes.com] is to believed, radio ad revenues are in decline. Google may simply want to focus its resources on a medium (the Internet) where the future looks more promising--especially in a sagging economy.

Wheel, the wording "could lead to up to 40 layoffs" doesn't mean that they are laying 40 people off. I'd be very surprised if Google hasn't done what you've suggested--they know how expensive it is for them to hire and train new people compared to retraining existing staff so they'd want to do that, if only out of concern for their bottom line....

I read the same thing you did. It didn't say anything about concern for existing staff. You're reading into it stuff that's not there.

Is this a thread about Google's radio advertising service or its HR department?

We toyed with Google radio when it first came out. You could pick the spoken text and specify if you wanted a male or female voice, voice "authority" and tone, age of voice, and a bunch of other weird stuff.

It was just a little to weird. Plus, you had to submit it to the people listed who had good voices presumably. Never heard back from the ones we contacted. They had no set prices but did it as a task if I recall correctly.

Anyhow, the payment aspect left a little to be desired. Payment required negotiation and was not real clear, felt like it was different for everybody and hard to know if you were getting a good deal if you were new to this. Same with the newspaper ads which were discontinued.

And gone is another GREAT service from Google. *sniff*

Google, the one-trick pony show.

They're very much a one trick pony. They're doing the right thing to diversify they just haven't managed to do it even remotely successfully.

They need to focus on making money from search, not in areas they know nothing about.

Paid search services?
What about providing paid services that SEO's would be interested in? How much would you pay for access to a full linkgraph?

They need to focus on making money from search, not in areas they know nothing about.

You could say that about any company that's been around a while. (Hewlett-Packard didn't start out making PCs, Coca-Cola wasn't in the orange-juice business 100 years ago, 3M made its name in sandpaper and other abrasives, and IBM was making "business machines" long before computers came along.) Fortunately, companies that care about long-term growth know enough to acquire and hire.

You have to give them credit for trying to diversify.

Being over-diversified will break you faster than being too slow. Too thin in too many highly competitive areas with too many problems moving at the speed of light.