[saidajigumi]

I wonder about the lifetimes and user engagement between examples from Amazon and Google. It's interesting that my off-the-cuff impression is that Google gets into hot water here by letting its experiments 1) run for a long time, 2) acquire a lot of users because "hey, it's free" and 3) sometimes suck the air out of a product segment because #2 (see: Google Reader). Likewise, my impression of Amazon's similar experiments are that they're cut short at a much younger age, with lesser engagement. Now I'm very curious: does the data actually back up those impressions?

[Gibbon1]

Maybe I'm wrong but I think the difference is Amazon always/mostly charges the primary users money. Googles business seems to be 'hey it's free' for primary customers, charge secondary customers $$$. Problem with that is much later when it becomes obvious there isn't enough money to be made by spying on the now quite large user base. Google then just tosses the thing over the side.