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by smakz 5726 days ago
The flip side of course is that it becomes dangerous if you rely on any of Google's free services. An extreme example, but what happens if GMail isn't profitable enough? Maybe Adsense for content isn't pulling it's weight any more (if it ever has)?

411 was a fairly useful service, and while shutting it down is probably the right business move, it pushes me more and more to move my primary email account and diversifying my advertising.
3 comments
joezydeco 5726 days ago
The rumor I always heard was that 411 was only around to stress-test their voice recognition backend. It really wasn't delivering ads or anything of revenue to them.
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smakz 5726 days ago
I've also heard rumors that Gmail and Adsense for Content aren't particularly profitable for Google. Of course I've also heard that the brand equity created with Gmail is very valuable and those two are extreme examples, but even based on similar rumors it's possible Google could shut down either one.
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joezydeco 5725 days ago
I don't think Gmail would get shut down since it's a part of Google Apps, a paid service. Unless that turns out to be a burden on the company...
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robk 5726 days ago
Adsense for Content is exceptionally profitable. Gmail pulls its weight.
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izendejas 5726 days ago
Rather than a rumor, it's just the way Google works. They are as data-driven as you can get. Think of all the AI work they're doing that one easily takes for granted: computer vision (image search, goggles, street view), nlp (translate, voice, search, etc), machine learning (search, et al), etc.
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elblanco 5726 days ago
Right, and now they have millions of Android devices out in the wild with voice input collecting for them.
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mattmaroon 5726 days ago
Most services have no switching cost, so it doesn't really matter. Gmail is pretty much the only Google service I can think of that would be a pain, and they'd keep Gmail even if it were losing money for a large host of reasons.

Oh, also Google Voice. When they bought that they changed my number on me and I basically stopped using it as a result.

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andrewtbham 5726 days ago
my understanding is that "Adsense for content" is called " Google Network Web Sites" on their financial statements, and it's responsible for about 1/3 of their revenue.

http://investor.google.com/financial/tables.html

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