5 Things Google Gives Away for Free
Google Maps, Analytics, Gmail, YouTube, and, oh yeah, Search are all free. Maybe it's time to stop whining about ads.
Google Maps, Analytics, Gmail, YouTube, and, oh yeah, Search are all free. Maybe it's time to stop whining about ads.
I’ve developed a slightly mystical belief: there is no free lunch. Or call it instead the Free Stuff Karma Syndrome. Better yet: Maybe You’ll Do Me a Favor Sometime.
To sum it up, if you’re an end user, and you cherry-pick all the best online content and services without ever paying a penny for them, and do your best to avoid engaging with the ads…well, you might be OK. There are slightly less than even odds of you being hit by a bus on your way to work at the local hospital.
If you’re a marketer, though – if you take and take and take, and then try to get out of all the paid services and whine at Google whenever it makes a tweak to its (free) organic search algorithm that slightly disadvantages your for-profit company – well, let’s just say that a “wrong turn at Albuquerque” via Google Maps’ driving directions will be the least of your worries. Unless your idea of a wrong turn is off a cliff. It’s just bad karma, man.
The interesting thing about all the free products and services Google develops for consumers – and some for the benefit of small and large businesses – is that they aren’t all tied efficiently to revenues. Google just invests heavily in products. Sometimes it does a good job of monetizing them. But generally speaking, Google derives the lion’s share of its revenues from the same old things all the time (search ads and display ads). Not all of them tie well to the investments Google has made. It’s almost like Google’s bad at monetizing (or doesn’t care enough to monetize everything, since free stuff keeps you happy and keeps engineers engaged in worthwhile projects).
Here are five free Google things we’re pretty much all using.
It’s pretty clear that Google has invested heavily in Maps, Earth, Street View, and all these related functions. Sure, it eventually hopes to recoup that investment through local advertising (Google Places, if you want to use the cute name), and why shouldn’t it? Please don’t jump up and down and hoot and holler when Google suggests your clients buy the local ads instead of hoping to get everything for free.
You know who you are. You know you’re using the services. You’ve run 52,358 driving directions on Maps and your version of Second Life is Google Street View. Karma…
So next time you’re in a casual conversation about what you do for a living, and someone blithely says, “Oh…I had nooo idea…I mean, I never even look at the ads” (an assertion that is now proven to be 100 percent impossible, BTW), as a marketer, it’s not acceptable for you to smile and nod to maintain the peace – even if they’re your dog walker. It’s your job to punch them in the face.
So if you’re one of these wankers who uses free GA only to watch over your organic search referral traffic and the occasional Facebook “like,” you didn’t hear it from me, but a large flowerpot is falling toward you from that eighth-story window. As we speak.
There is one free Google thing that went away a few years ago, and that’s the annual Google Dance event held in connection with the Bay Area stop of the SES conference every summer. Hey Google, most of the attendees pay to attend the conferences; and they’ll wear the dickens out of the t-shirts as they smile at the camera and post the results on Google+ so they can enhance their Klout scores, or on Pinterest (for reasons unknown). Bring back the Google Dance! Karma…