This survey attracted more respondents (152) than any recent survey, and had a very low percentage of invalid forms submitted. Clearly Google is a hot topic.
Google offers new software and search products (most of them free) as rapidly as it adds new employees, and is having a strong impact in advertising and print publishing as well. In search world, the Library of Congress is curtailing some of its cataloging procedures as it expects Google to take up the slack. The company's 2005 revenues were $6.1 billion, an increase of 92% over 2004; net income from operations was $2 billion in 2005, more than double the net income from 2004. Current market cap is $112 billion, and the P/E of 65 attests to the great value the market finds in the company.
Google is a moving target; its $600 million (2005) research budget and $8 billion in cash support its growth not only as an advertising power, but as a growing media company, buying up dark fiber, wiring up cities with WiFi, and offering free online collaborative word processing (Writely).
Softletter wanted to find out how ISVs are reacting to Google, and we began by asking questions about their use of Google for promotions.
1. Does your company buy Google AdWords?
Yes: 65.13% No: 34.87%
Bidding on AdWords is the most basic and popular way to tie into Google promotions, and likewise popular among our respondents. Google not only ranks the paid search results on the basis of how much advertisers paid for an AdWord, but also on the popularity of each advertiser based on click throughs. This combination insures more relevant ad results and more revenue for Google.
2. Does your company's Web site use Google AdSense to display Google ads?
Yes: 10.60% No: 89.40%
Far fewer responding ISVs are allowing Google to put ads on their Web sites, even though the ads are paid. Perhaps they do not realize that they are allowed to block competitors' ads. Nevertheless, as in the next question, there is a small group that has made the plunge.
3. Does your company use Google Products (http://www.google.com/options/) to promote its own products?
Yes: 9.87% No: 90.13%
At only 10%, this is presumably a band of pioneers exploring the many opportunities to tie Web services into Google search by using a simple XML API. Among the many examples would be your linking to maps to guide visitors to your business (a mobile API is also available). Another product is Subscribed Links; it lets you write a gadget that delivers your service so that the user can put it on his personalized Google home page. An obvious use would be to deliver some subset of your full software product's functionality.
4. Has Google's anti-pop-up capability in their Toolbar caused any change in the way you advertise?
Yes: 5.26% No: 94.74%
Only a small percentage of ISVs seem to have been involved in using pop-ups for advertising. The most interesting software pop-ups of course are those advertising pop-up blocking utilities. Most users by now have figured out that their browsers will block pop-ups, and need not depend on the Google Toolbar to do it for them.
5. Does your company's Web site use Google Sitemaps to help Google point to site information?
Yes: 18.54% No: 81.46%
Sitemaps is a means of sending a catalog of Web site pages to Google for inclusion in its searches, and is intended to index dynamic pages that would otherwise be unavailable to the Google spiders, as well as to instantly notify Google when a page has changed. The information can be sent as a text file listing the pages, although Google prefers an XML format and provides a free tool to generate such a report. In the tradition of Google mashups, there are numerous free third-party software offerings that support Sitemaps.
Considering the usefulness and lack of drawbacks to this program, it is surprising to see that more ISVs are not using it.
6. Are you comfortable with the potential for Google to collect information from the machines on which it runs, and potentially report it back to Google.com?
Yes: 52.63% No: 47.37%
Here we tap into the rich vein of caution that surrounds Google. Part of it is generated by Google's size, rate of growth, and metastasis into so many activities, but behind it all is the fact that Google is accumulating staggering amounts of data. While Google truthfully states that for many of its products no personally-identifiable data is collected, it is also true that the Google cookie is the constant identifier for all the services. At some point the user may add a service requiring personal information (such as Gmail or Orkut), and the cookie and all the information it points to will then be related to an identifiable user.
Some ISVs use Google for Promotion Yes No Use AdWords? 65% 34% Use AdSense? 11% 89% Use G Products? 10% 90% Changed Popups? 5% 95% Use Sitemaps? 19% 81% Trust Google? 53% 47% Note: Table made from bar graph.
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