Google’s Weak Points?

Here's is a post about how to kill google.  And i must say i completely agree with it.  Google makes all of its money from AdSense or advertisements.  If MSN can come with a product that is far better than AdSense, that will be like hitting Google where it hurts.  But if only if MSN can come with a product that is much better than AdSense.  Other thing that i think will hurt Google is the privacy concerns.  Calendar came out early this week, but more information people put online, more people will be concerned about their privacy.  And eventually, governments of the world will have to get involved and create laws regulating the internet or at least amount of information that can be collected.  Google Earth is an amazing application, however, it shows secret or sensitive locations.  In fact, recently an Indian army General raised concerns over Google Earth showing sensitive locations and has urged countries of the world to come together and find solution to this problem.  Google does come out with great applications/services once in while, but it has put all its eggs in one basket (a big mistake).  And it is trying to diversify, but it has long way to go.  I think Free WiFi in cities is a great idea, but again, it is putting advertising on it.  Putting these advertisements all over the place and in all products/service will bring click fraud back in focus and cause dissatisfaction among advertisers due to high CPC and low conversions.

Google is trying to strike before Microsoft does, because it realizes what Microsoft can do.  It is targetting MSFT's bread and butter, Office and OS.  Targetting Office by recently acquiring Writey which is online word processor that can be shared online.  Also by coming out with Calendar to replace Outlook.  G Tried to replace MSN messenger with GTalk, which didn't quite work out that well, attacked Hotmail by coming out with GMail.  And finally i have seen a small trailer of Google OS on YouTube.com.

What is Microsoft doing?  It has come out with AdCenter which is still in Beta but from what i have heard, it has better conversion rate than any other products out there.  Because AdCenter is innovative in its own way.  However, i would like to see the results when it goes live 100%.  Microsoft might not be the first one to the market but when it comes from behind, it comes strong.

Phewwww, this is a long post.  So that is my take on Google/MSFT.  So what about Yahoo and Ask?  That is a great question, to which i have no opinion.  Yahoo tried to attack AdSense by coming out with its own Publisher Network, didn't quite work that well, because it didn't have any "ahhed" features.  Ask's TV advertisments are great and right to the point.  In fact, its market share has increased since that advertisement campaign.

Alright i am done.

Tejas

Google Calendar

Google finally launched much anticipated Google Calendar (Beta of course) tonight.  First thing I noticed was I got this error message:

 "Sorry, Google Calendar does not support your browser yet, so things may break in unexpected ways.  Press OK to see a list of browsers that we support.  Or cancel to try to use it anyways."
I am using IE7.  Wow, since when did Google applications started not working in IE?  So here are my first impressions of this product.  It is trying to replace Outlook, which is used in most business environments on daily basis as a useful tool.  Second thing I noticed was, this is copy of Outlook, except it’s online. 

"Gmail now recognizes when messages mention events, so when you get emailed about an event, you can add it to Google Calendar with just a couple clicks."  Hmmm, I know of some other product that does the exactly same thing.  Oh wait, that's right, it’s Outlook 🙂  The way I see it is:  Google is trying to make people switch from Outlook to Google Calendar.  So who uses Outlook?  As far as I know Business people.  Who uses Gmail?  Not business people. 

To be fair, here are some new things that Google Calendar has:  sending invitations.  I think eInvite does pretty good job of this task.  I wonder if this feature will work with people who don't have gmail account.  Other feature that I thought was interesting was reminders that can be sent to your text messages.  I think you can do this with outlook too.  That's all.  I think everything else is copy of Outlook. So is this another of Google flops?  Should we add this to growing list of failed Google products along with (Froogle, PageCreator, Google Video, Accelerator, etc.)? 

So to answer my original question, is this another Google Flopped product?  Only time and of course consumers will tell. 

Update:  I was just reading an email and he is alrady getting "Calendar is unavailable right now, please try again in a few moments".  Is anyone surprised? 

"It is important for me to state that, this is ONLY MY OPINION.  It does not reflect the views, written or expressed, of anyone, anything, or any entity.

Tejas