Interactive Marketing Blog

Read this post from BusinessInsider early today and wanted to pen down my thoughts on the same. At some point of time while I was reading I was getting all the wrong vibes about how the whole word play has been crafted around Google’s CEO Eric Schmidt being not fit or just being plain lucky to be at his post.

The post circumspheres around his performance and things which were under his control. The analysis is based on Google revenue streams, expansion, acquisitions, deals, new product developments, bottomline and few other.

So soon after when I got some time to write my thoughts, I just happen to browse through some of the comments. Incidentally, I saw one commenter sharing similar thoughts as mine; so I thought of endorsing his words on this context.

Here’s what he has to say about it:

Your analysis has MANY mistakes. I can hardly believe that somebody who deals with tech for a living would misunderstand that much.

1) Revenue streams: “AdSense is very successful, but far less profitable”. Just because AdSense is not AS profitable as AdWords, says absolutely nothing… Adwords is HUGE…. Not being THAT huge, but being very big, is a big deal…

2) “Mobile, Selling search or apps to the enterprise, Google Checkout”: What you fail to understand is that Google does not create / offer products because it believes it can make directly and immediately money of them. It creates/offers products because it can very successfully recognize where the money WILL be in 5-10-15 years…

Can’t you understand that mobile for example, is where Google thinks that the FUTURE ad battles will take place? It doesn’t care about making money NOW… It wants to grab as much market share as possible, as fast as possible, and THEN make money…

Checkout is a product that needs time too. It is not a flop, lots of users and merchants use it, but as it is related directly to peoples finances, it need time to win their trust. Searching is not the same thing as handing out your credit card. So I think that judging Checkout NOW isn’t relevant. Try in 4-5 years.

Enterprise apps. You have to be pretty naive to included this to flops. Companies change their hardware spending habits far harder and slower than consumers. Google apps is gaining ground slowly. It is very important that it is hugely popular with Educational Institutions, as these kids get used to using Google for their everyday needs. If Google wins them NOW, their future spending as consumers AND business people is heading towards GOOG.

3) Expansion: “Over-hired”?? Where do you live? Haven’t you noticed that almost every freaking company on the planet has had to cut-down on its payroll?? Have you noticed something called “RECESSION”???

4) Acquisitions: “You Tube may yet be a flop.” “Despite years or trying the company’s development of the product and the revenue has not been impressive.” yeah… developing you tube into the worlds second largest search engine has not real value… Nobody said that ads in video were going to be easy. You tube is making all the RIGHT moves to succeed, AND not pissing people of with pre-rolls… It would be easy to just put ads everywhere… But they are trying to NOT destroy our viewing experience…

“Dodgeball, for example, which could have been Twitter”

Clearly you never used Dodgleball… See Google Latitude…

“What about Grandcentral? Nothing meaningful yet.”

Did you write this article 2 months ago?? Haven’t you at least HEARD of Google Voice? 3-4 years from now, when we won’t need all the Telco’s stealing our money, you will be able to understand WHAT Google Voice is… (add to the mix that fact that it will by tightly integrated with Checkout…)

5) New Products: “Android hasn’t made much noise”. 5% of US Smartphone market in… 3 months?? Almost every major tel-co currently designing their own Android-based Smartphone? HP home Android phones? no? nothing rings any bells??

6) The new company everyone loves to hate: Clearly that’s YOUR OWN opinion. Millions of people love Google for all the cool free stuff that the company offers, making our lives easier… Google IS NOT M$, and that fact that month after month, its search share keeps growing, shows exactly that…

Bottom line…

Eric is a visionary, and someone who doesn’t evaluate products according to their present money making figures. Instead it sees their potential… That’s his difference with all the crappy CEOs out there…

BTW do follow the heated debate thats on the post. After all that, I just want to point to two important paramaters amongst many which I believe is undeniably important for present day Execs – One being Profitability and the other being Growth. And I don’t think $GOOG’s CEO has faltered in those paramaters. But yes, talking about being there at the right place at the right time – isn’t that something we can’t debate upon? Also take the example of Yahoo’s present CEO, Carol Bartz – what if she makes Yahoo into another stunner? What will the author write then…

So do you think- Was Eric Schmidt plain lucky or he did the right things at the right time?