The list of ways where Google is falling short continues to grow, and none of them have to do with AI. Well, maybe some do, but none that I’m talking about today.
As I recently shared, Google’s approach over the last few years is very clearly aimed at shareholders instead of users, and it’s going to hurt both of them as time goes on.
The graveyard
The first, and likely most justifiable, is the Google graveyard. They’ve killed off hundreds of products over the years, and will continue to do so. Some made sense (did you use “Jamboard” very much?), some were frustrating (such as losing Google Stadia), and some just make no sense (why get rid of Google Domains?).
Google Reader
The telling one for me, as I’ve shared before, was Google Reader years ago. I don’t mind that they shut down the product, but the way they did it made the internet far less useful for millions of users.
Google Now
I just shared this one a few weeks ago, but this is probably the most glaring. They took a piece of tech that was super useful but hard to monetize (“Google Now”) and essentially replaced it with ads (“Google Discover”).
Google Analytics
The final one that points toward Google’s future is their treatment of Google Analytics. Google Analytics has been a free, powerful tool that website owners have used since 2005 to monitor the traffic on their websites. The problem is that the new version (“Google Analytics 4”, or “GA4”) is far too complex and powerful for most businesses. It’s fantastic for Fortune 500 businesses, but it’s awful for the tens of millions of small businesses that have relied on it.
Rather than letting companies choose to stay on the less powerful but easier to use version, everyone has been forced onto GA4.
Worse, your old data can’t convert to GA4, so everything you’ve tracked since 2005 isn’t in the new system.
Worse yet, Google is deleting all of that old data in just a few months, and they offer no good solution for companies to make a copy of it other than essentially manually creating hundreds of PDF copies of your data. It’s such a mess. We’ve put together a plan to help GreenMellen clients keep some of that data, but it’s tricky for everyone.
I’ve been confused about Google’s plan for this for a while now. Why not keep the old version running for those that prefer it? I finally figured out the obvious answer — money.
The tens of millions of smaller companies that use Google Analytics get it for free. With this move to GA4, Google is simply trying to push out the freeloaders and just keep more of the large companies that pay for things like Analytics 360.
Follow the money
I know that Google is a company that needs to make a profit, but as time goes by it seems that profit is now their sole motivation.
- Google Reader was a great trick to get people off of RSS feeds and into their algorithms.
- Google Discover is 1% as helpful as Google Now, but is wildly more profitable for Google.
- Google got the majority of the internet to use Google Analytics, and now they’re thinking that was a mistake.
I’m not entirely leaving Google yet, as it’s difficult to do, but the small amount of trust that I had in them is fading very quickly.
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