Why can Google lose with services that can not be "fully automated"? ~ The first part ~

Google is a winning group company, there is no doubt. However, looking at the history of that service, there are also services that are actually defeated. That is, the service lost to the competitors. That name is "Google Answers"... ... The ultimate" manpower search "that started with the shape of filling in the hole of Google's existing model that has a huge index and fully automatic search results.

In Google Answers, it is possible to make such a huge maniac question that you do not know even by searching, clearly that Google researcher specialists "researchers" can retrieve information from everywhere and respond with knowledge as far as they can have Personally speaking, the Japanese version was the service I wanted most. A wide range of genres are "Art · Entertainment" "Education · News" · "Business and Money" · "Politics and Society" · "Computer" · "Science" · "Life" · Sports · Leisure · "Health"

Also, although it was famous abroad, "Legendary response" acknowledged as "crystal of wisdom of mankind"How many dinosaurs are in one gallon of oil?"I put fly in the microwave and chin for 1 minute, but I was alive, why"Is it safe to drink water discharged from the air conditioner?"You can see smoke from Google headquarters. Is it a fire? Should I go get help?There were things such as, and it was a high quality level service that can say that "It is truly Google" at the time when various services were also explosively sent out.

So why did you fail? If you examine it, you can see that when the equation for winning Google is in "fully automated" and it can not be fully automated, it fails.

Below, we will go through various materials with the fundamental principle "fully automated" that supports Google's business model "free" and the reasons for the failure.
■ Reason for failure of Google Answers Part 1 "It was charged"


The service provided by Google is basically free. It is also "Provide virtually free items at the same level or higher as paidIt's style. Actually, this style is not made by Google, it is the style that Microsoft first performed. In the "browser" looking at the Internet's homepage, in order to dash the "Netscape" which is a rival browser and accounted for 90% of the market, Microsoft is free from the strategy reverse to the Netscape which was charged, from the beginning "Internet Explorer "To the windows, it broke the stronghold. It is basically the same thing that Google does. Access analysis service "Google AnalyticsOriginally "Enterprise access analysis software Urchin (ア チ ン)This is a very high price access analysis software, which is now free for up to 5 million page views a month.

However, the manpower search service "Google Answers" was charged. A beta test began on April 18, 2002,Back thenAccording to the per-user questioning fee$ 0.5. The compensation for the answer is 2 to 200 dollars. Three-quarters to researchers, one-quarter to Google as a support fee. The answer time and rewards can be set for the question, but this is a junkie. If you lower the price or shorten the time to answer, the probability of getting a good answer drops. The area around this was the limit because it is manual. The slogan at the time was like this.

Get a answer.
(Ask, please decide the value, good response will be obtained)


Of course Google also did not just look and watch hands but it did it in the same way as adding ingenuity to improve various qualities to their search engine. In order to improve the quality of the researcher, when hiring, let me write the sentence "Why do you want to be a researcher of Google Answers?" And researchers who have imposed ten questions within the specified time and can respond to it accurately Appointed as. In addition, if the client decides that the quality of the response is low, the evaluation falls due to evaluation systems like Kakaku.com and Yahoo! Auctions. When the evaluation falls below a certain level, it is fired. In addition to that, I did not fail to secure quality of researchers by conducting extinction tests.

In other words, the quality of respondents was not low. Rather the quality was extremely high. When that announces the closing announcement of Google Answers on the evidence, Yahoo! The same service "Yahoo! Answers" which had been offering from December 9, 2005, is a "Yahoo! Answers" service for researchers who will be dismissed "Please come to our place!"I showed my intention to welcome.

But, in the case of Google, profitability did not suit if it was charged. The advantage of fully automating is not only to save labor costs but also to visualize costs. This is self explanatory for those who have experience in budgeting, etc. Personnel costs are sources of fluctuations of any cost anyway, they are sources and uncertainty. In order to provide services for a fee, it is necessary to reduce uncertainty as much as possible, but "Google Answers" was the opposite.

Regarding this point, "Google Apps Premier Edition" which is a paid service started on February 22, 2007 is fully automated system. 6000 yen per year per account.

Google Apps Company

I heard that support will be attached, is it fully automated to send a fixed form mail? It is worrisome.

■ Reason for failure of Google Answers part 2 "Manual limit, it is time and effort"


Google Answers was able to search past questions for free. In other words, if someone asked a similar question in the past, you did not have to pay the money. This was bad. It made it possible to utilize the past log database which is precious accumulation of precious thing leaked out. This strangely caught my attention ironically with the stance of "Google whatever you offer!" And the accurate fully automatic past log search by our own full automatic search technology. Nevertheless, because it was not used for that reason, we were entering into a vicious cycle where the same questions are repeated.

Also, after all it is a basic style that humans search instead, it takes time. As time goes on, the more you pay, the more you pay. So we needed more "time and effort" in order to answer just enough to win against Google's full automatic search engine.

However, there were not many people looking for quality to that extent. Furthermore, since valuable answers obtained in such a way are searchable for those who come later from free of charge, everyone will ride a free rider at the beginning with a valuable question. This also caused a stall.

In this way, what happens next will be "Collapse of the community"is.

· Continued
Why can Google lose with services that can not be "fully automated"? ~ The second part ~