Mr Korbik wrote in his blog about his worry that Google Lacks Stickiness. Stickiness is what he refers to by Google's current practise of coming out with new beta versions of programs on a daily basis which might or might not attract a community.
as put in an article by Steve Bryant in "A Competitor's Guide to the Internet, Part II"
BASELINE DATA
Google:
2005 Revenue: $6.14 billion (up 92.4% from 2004)
2005 Unique Visitors: 94.6 million per month averaging 32.3 minutes on sites
Yahoo:
2005 Revenue: $5.26 billion (up 47.1% from 2004)
2005 Unique Visitors: 120 million per month averaging 244.9 minutes on sites
Microsoft:
2005 Revenue: $39.79 billion (up 8% from 2004)
2005 Unique Visitors: 110.4 million unique visitors averaging 176 minutes on sites
I am a big Google-Fan myself and I really like their products even though I wish that most of them would have moved out of beta by now... BUT I agree with Kobrik in a way of having difficulty to obtaining a clear understanding of Google's business and its competitive advantage.
Todate it is mostly Google's supreme internet search capibilities (again being subjectiv here) which attracts people to Google and NOT any other of the services. For Microsoft and Yahoo it is to some degree their search BUT MUCH MORE OTHER OFFERINGS. If there would ever a newer, slicker, more advanced search engine come up to revolutionise internet search, WHY would people still use Google instead?
It is true that Google's numbers do NOT look bad in terms of unique visitor BUT in terms of time on site (which is a major measure of the community strength) it LACKS behind Yahoo and Microsoft by far. This will have to change if Google wants to really profit from its community and turn it into $$
On a closing note... I hope that more people will get to try Google products and hopefully stick around to use them. I wish I had more of my personal contacts using Google's other products - it would make life much easier for me (and many others).
