Michael Eagar | Internet Entrepreneur

With all the buzz around all the products that Google has released after becoming the search leader, I thought I would track Google’s Product Success.  Here are some results thanks to BusinessWeek, July 10, 2006 edition:

1. Google Maps ranks No.2 behind market leader MapQuest at #1 (with a 20% gab between them)
2. Google News ranks No.2 behind market leader Yahoo! News (GN - available in 40 languages)
3. Google’s Blog Search trails Technorati (GBS - gets less than 1/5 as many users as Technorati)
4. Google Talk ranks No.10 in the world (2% of the market) behind market leader MSN (GT - 10mo. old)
5. Google Finance ranks No.40 behind market leader Yahoo! Finance (GF - 3mo. old)
6. Google’s Froogle ranks No.8
7. Google’s Orkut (social networking site) gets less than 1% of U.S. visitors as Myspace.com
8. Google’s Gmail (2yrs old) trails Yahoo and MSN getting about 1/4 of the traffic.

A lot can be said about the data above.  On Google’s side, they are making headway despite entering the market late in every category above.  But they are still #1 at only one thing - search.

Google does have a few things going for them:

• Demographic research provided by hitwise and comscore suggest most younger people use Google compared to Yahoo! and MSN.  If this trend continues, Yahoo! and MSN will eventually lose customers (which they are in almost all categories)
• Google continues to innovate.  Within the last month Google has come out with an online spreadsheet and Google Checkout - a competitor to Ebay’s PayPal.  Google is providing good products and good adoption rates despite trailing the industry.  Google provides great interfaces and simpler operations
• Google has the image.  It seems whatever comes out of Google, the press is all over it, they get tons of free marketing for their new products simply because they are Google

Later this year, I will report on Google’s Product Success and where Ebay, MSN, and Yahoo! stack up.