comScore has released statistics on the performance of Google’s various properties over the last year, and TechCrunch provides these handy reference charts.
As always, Google search is the big boy, with Google Images the only other vertical that performs spectacularly. However, strong growth in Google Maps and Gmail mean that the two have a shot of breaking out of the pack and joining those two.
In the third tier are Google News and Google Video, one growing slightly, one sinking slightly. Guess moving around Video and changing its focus every few months hurt Video, though not as much as you’d expect. The fourth tier has Books, Earth and Groups, which enjoyed moderate growth, Scholar, which sank 32% due to neglect, and iGoogle, which exploded and grew over 250%. iGoogle is Google’s success story for the year, which is great news for the struggling personalized homepage product category and Google’s Gadget developer ecosystem.
There are the also-rans at the bottom, including Blog Search, the Google Directory (shockingly still popular than many of the others), Google Talk (most neglected product of the year), Calendar and Finance. Google Product Search is Google’s biggest failure, losing 73% of its users from when it was Froogle. A year ago, Froogle had a good ten million unique visitors and a nice brand name, now it has maybe two million and two generic names. Google killed Froogle, and hurt itself badly with this one.
Missing from this list is another Google success story, Google Reader. This suggests that Reader, while disrupting the RSS market, is too small to make the list, or that comScore screwed up (since we know Reader had a ton of growth). Also: No Google Apps or Google Docs, no Blogger or YouTube or SketchUp or Desktop.
It’s important to note that, of the 17 Google products listed, the only ones being monetized are Web Search (#1), Gmail (#3), Google Maps (#4) and Product Search (to a very small extent). Not making any money are Images (#2), News (#5), Video (#6), Earth (for the most part), Groups, Books, iGoogle, Scholar, and any of the others. Google would love to monetize Images, News and Video, but the amount of content it doesn’t own in there makes it damn near impossible to do so and not get sued.
December 25th, 2007
Posted by
Nathan Weinberg |
iGoogle, Reader, Talk, Google Video, Google Book, Blogsearch, Product Search, Finance, Calendar, Google Earth, Google Maps, Services, Google Images, Search, Groups, Froogle, Google Scholar, Google News, Products, Gmail |
no comments
It’s been 21 months since Google Finance, Google’s financial news, information and stock price site was launched, and that ComScore chart above shows that it doesn’t really have any more users now than it did a year ago. Google’s that hot pink line at the bottom, representing 1.5 million monthly unique visits, well behind leader Yahoo’s roughly 38 million, MSN’s 20 million, AOL’s 12.2, and CNN Money’s 6.7 million.
Why does Google have so little upward movement that in the last 12 months, Yahoo has gained as many users as Google has in total, seven times over? Google may promote its own Finance product at the top of search results, but it also links to Yahoo, MSN, CNN, MarketWatch and Reuters, giving itself no more real space than the competition. Plus, the Finance chart it inserts on certain searches actually discourages users from seeking further information.
Universal Search is useful for users, but it doesn’t seem to do any good promoting other Google services. In the long run, it may have more value convincing users to stick with Google search than convincing them to switch away from search verticals that are extremely popular at Yahoo, MSN, or anywhere else.
On a related note, it’s been just over a week since Google removed the Google Video link from its search link bar, and it gets more annoying every day. I really miss having an easy way to get video search results.
The chart’s via TechCrunch, which has a report on AOL Money and Finance’s new version, complete with Relegance deep news browsing integration, very powerful interactive Flash charts, and a return-on-investment table for multiple time periods. Michael doesn’t actually explain how to get it, so I’ll tell you to go to this page to check out the new beta experience, or check out this chart for GOOG.
December 3rd, 2007
Posted by
Nathan Weinberg |
Finance, Yahoo, Microsoft, AOL, Search |
no comments
The Google Finance team blog announced some new Google Gadgets for your iGoogle personalized homepage. The first, Google Finance Chart, lets you show the chart from Google Finance for your favorite stock (or a bunch of stocks, if you add multiple Gadgets), complete with all the dragging that comes with the regular Finance charts (even with some advanced features, like dividends, extended hours and splits).
The second, Sector Summary, shows you the performance of different sectors on the stock market, a popular Google Finance feature.
(via Blogoscoped)
July 10th, 2007
Posted by
Nathan Weinberg |
Finance, iGoogle, Products, Search, General |
one comment
The Google Blog announces that NetCoalition’s efforts to free up stock quotes are close to succeeding. For now, stock quotes online are a messy business, with most websites haveing quotes that are time-delayed (usually 15-20 minutes), or require registration or fees for real-time stock values. It’s ridiculous that the stock exchanges wouldn’t be making it ridiculously easy for people to buy and sell stocks with proper information (their bread and butter) in the name of considerably smaller stock quote fees.
As a result, we’ve worked with the SEC, the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) and our D.C. trade association, NetCoalition, to find a way to bring stock data to Google users in a way that benefits users and is practical for all parties. We have encouraged the SEC to ensure that this data can be made available to our users at fair and reasonable rates, and applaud their recent efforts to review this issue. Today, the NYSE has moved the issue a great step forward with a proposal to the SEC which if approved, would allow you to see real-time, last-sale prices across all Google properties including Google Finance, Personalized Google, Mobile, and of course, Google.com. It won’t matter if you’re on Wall Street or Main Street — you’ll have free, easy and fast access to real-time prices from NYSE on Google.
NetCoalition is a collective public voice for Google, Yahoo, IAC/Ask.com, CNet and Bloomberg. Gary Price told me that, if you can’t wait for NetCoalition to complete the deal, you can get free real-time stock quotes at FreeRealTime. The site requires registration, but BugMeNot’s got your back. There’s even a WAP version. The quotes are ECN quotes, which is a confusing and difficult situation in itself, so be aware of that.
You can find out how delayed Google stock quotes are currently at the bottom of this disclaimer page.
| American Stock Exchange |
20 min |
| Canadian Venture Exchange |
15 min |
| Commodity Systems, Inc. |
End-of-Day |
| Dow Jones Indices |
Real-time |
| Euronext: Amsterdam |
15 min |
| Euronext: Brussels |
15 min |
| Euronext: Lisbon |
15 min |
| Euronext: Paris |
15 min |
| London Stock Exchange |
20 min |
| NASDAQ Indices |
Real-time |
| NASDAQ Stock Exchange |
15 min |
| New York Stock Exchange |
20 min |
| New York Stock Exchange Indices |
Real-time |
| S&P Indices |
Real-time |
| Toronto Stock Exchange |
15 min |
|
January 12th, 2007
Posted by
Nathan Weinberg |
Finance, Ask, Yahoo, Search, General |
one comment
Hitwise has some recent numbers on Google Finance, showing how tough it has been for Finance to gain traction. Currently, Finance holds just .78% of the market share in the finance category (yes, .78%, as in three quarters of a single percent), fifty times less than Yahoo’s 37.3%. Hitwise’s post offers a possible explanation: Google Finance gets 57% of its traffic from Google Search, while Yahoo Finance gets 1.7% of its traffic from Yahoo Search (and 55% from Yahoo.com and MyYahoo).
This could imply a crucial error in the Google growth model, that search engines just don’t drive traffic to other properties. Yahoo and Google push almost the same amount of traffic from its search to its finance as Google does, but has other properties doing the bulk of the promotion, since the search engine just doesn’t do it.
The theory has to be that search engine users already know what they’re looking for, and as much as they trust the Google brand, they aren’t going to click on Google Finance just because it’s there. Searchers look at all the search results, and when you weigh Google Finance against Forbes, NASDAQ.com, MarketWatch, BusinessWeek, USA Today, and even Yahoo Finance, all of which appear in the top results for searches that promote Google Finance, Google doesn’t have the strongest brand.
Google doesn’t have a portal, and despite its attempts, hasn’t created anything as effective as one. Google’s main promotional efforts are from trying to promote properties through its search engine. That, clearly, is failing, as the only successful Google products are the search engine, older innovative search-related properties (Images, News) and properties with buzz (Gmail, Maps). Everything else relies on Google Search, and that just doesn’t work.
December 19th, 2006
Posted by
Nathan Weinberg |
Finance, Yahoo, Search, General |
2 comments
Google Finance has extended how far back its charts go, with them reaching all the way back to 1970. While Yahoo reaches 1962, Finance previously only went to 2001, so this is a huge upgrade. I still don’t understand why the charts don’t go as far back as the stock market does; if Google’s mission is to organize the world’s information, then why is it that it doesn’t have any information about the stock market prior to 1970?
December 4th, 2006
Posted by
Nathan Weinberg |
Finance, Search, General |
one comment
Google added Google Maps to Search History, so you can now track those searches. Maps joins web search, images, news and Froogle in Search History (how about Blog Search?).
Google and Yahoo are asking the Securities and Exchange Commission to review the fees charged for stock quotes and other market data. The NYSE recently raised its fees, which make up 10-20% of its revenue, and the net companies want there to be a review of whether the fees are fair and reasonable.
Looks like Google disabled (and later reinstated) the AdSense account of Ionut Alex. Chitu, who writes the Google OS blog. The didn’t like that it had “google” in the blog URL, but after a little talk with some Googlers, the whole thing was sorted out an all was well. Gee, I hope google.blognewschannel.com has nothing to worry about…
Skype was added to the Google Pack. It is the second IM/VOIP client in the Pack, although it is used by most for phone service, while Google Talk is used more as for IM. Still, the two will likely be competitors in the future, so Google promoting Skype seems almost short-sighted.
Finally, Gmail has a bunch of new features. They include a link in the top right hand corner that drops down some handy options, and helps clean up the interface, notifications of new items in a conversation while you are replying to other items, as well as some new icons. There’s also a feature that “mutes” a mailing list by hitting the “m” key, sending future emails straight to the archive. Philipp points out, rightly so, that Gmail’s interface is suffering from overload, and needs a housecleaning.
November 14th, 2006
Posted by
Nathan Weinberg |
AdSense, Stock Market, Talk, History, Finance, Google Pack, Products, Services, Gmail, Email, Advertising, Search, Yahoo, General |
no comments
Atul and posters in the Blogoscoped forums noticed some strange stuff in Google Finance. You may not see it in your account, but here’s Atul’s screenshot, in which I’ve highlighted the differences:
If you can’t tell, the top right-hand corner has red text that reads “Google Confidential!”, the area above the chart has two drop downs reading Compare and Settings, and the chart range selector is now below the chart. No idea what sort of actual new features we’ll see, but I’ll keep looking for more info.
UPDATE:Here’s a screenshot with the settings tab enabled, via Haochi Chen at the Blogoscoped forums:
Click to enlarge
UPDATE 2: The new features are live!
October 20th, 2006
Posted by
Nathan Weinberg |
Finance, Search, General |
one comment
A guest post on Valleywag says that 66% of the Yahoo Finance team has deserted, leaving for other companies and leaving Yahoo in a bind. Granted, we are talking four people of a six person team, but the exodux isn’t good for Yahoo, which was earning major big bucks with the product.
Remember how Yahoo’s Q2 earnings plummeted? They said it was slumping advertising from online finance (plus automotive). Remember that Nielsen NetRatings gives Yahoo 54% of all online financial services advertising in the US. That’s over half the entire category, folks. Oooooooooooooohhhhhhh!
Yeah, that’s a cash cow, falling apart as the Google machine sharpens its swords. On the other hand, knowing how important Finance is to Yahoo, you could probably negotiate a good salary to take one of those open spots. Just search HotJobs.
September 29th, 2006
Posted by
Nathan Weinberg |
Finance, Yahoo, Search, General |
no comments
John Battelle wrote last week about some improvements Google shipped for Finance. They include an autocompleting search box, a stock market module in Google News’ business section, support for multiple portfolios, auto-refresh on the portfolio page, reverse chronological reading of discussion groups and links to free transcripts of earnings calls. There’s even a new suggestion box. Nice!
July 27th, 2006
Posted by
Nathan Weinberg |
Finance, Search, General |
4 comments
