They can't monetize it enough, which seems like a perfect situation to sell it to someone who will be happy with a lower cash flow point, or spin it off.
It's actually surprising to me that big companies are so ready to kill products instead of selling them to someone who cares.
The thing is if they can't monitise it better than someone else, they're better letting them bid up the costs of AdWords (which i assume are pricey on these sorts of keywords). Lot of opportunity cost on this one.
Aside from being an ad network based on data-mining search what did Google successfully monetize ? are they making money with Android directly for instance or is it Ad-sense that is paying for that ?
I have a suspicion that this is more about avoiding a big anti-trust quagmire. When they starting dabbling around in the Travel sector, they did get push back...but that's an area where the power is spread across a large number of players, none of which is a powerhouse litigator or lobbyist.
For insurance, credit cards, mortgages, etc, they would be at odds with a relatively small number of deep pocketed, litigious players with experience in political lobbying.
> In its note, Google said that the product has received a good level of traffic from users but, when it came to revenue and activity, it “hasn’t driven the success we hoped for”.
That sounds like they did have problems monetizing it
It's actually surprising to me that big companies are so ready to kill products instead of selling them to someone who cares.