What happens to googles main source of revenue when things shift to voice?

[Drael646464]

When most searches are done via voice:

Google makes most of its money via advertising on search. A very very serious amount of money is charged for those top spots.

Will queries to "ok google", be stuffed full of sponsored messages?

When you ask google assistant to fetch you a cab, will it tell you about a great new deal on a brand new lexus before it answers your query?

And if most search shifts to voice, and voice does get stuffed with advertising by advertising model companies like facebook and google, does that really work any more? Wouldn't that be more like TV, and music, where people would happily pay for anything without ads?

If they do, googles extreme advertising income will dwindle. They'll need better profit models. Ads are less intrusive on a page. They are much more intrustive in video and audio. Which would seem to imply that googles current profit model isn't sustainable at its current volume, given things will clearly move more to audio.

Thoughts?

 

[xandros9]

I don't search for stuff often but when I do, it's just another route to get to a page of search results, ads and all. I think, in my humble opinion of course, that you're overestimating the impact voice searches will make. If you use voice to hail a cab, it'll be no more than using the Uber app to hail a car and that doesn't have ads anyway. It'll be a long time before basic searches go the way of the dodo.

 

[Drael646464]

I don't search for stuff often but when I do, it's just another route to get to a page of search results, ads and all. I think, in my humble opinion of course, that you're overestimating the impact voice searches will make. If you use voice to hail a cab, it'll be no more than using the Uber app to hail a car and that doesn't have ads anyway. It'll be a long time before basic searches go the way of the dodo.

Well I doubt people will voice search often on a desktop. But I can see voice search rising up as a control method of mobile devices fairly soon. If you can use a wearable without taking a large screen out of your pocket, its more convenient. And of course its more natural, easier to learn.

Probably voice will really rise up over the next few years I reckon, as something early adopters get into (read tech saavy young people), and something with fuller functionality, Probably will be another five years after than before you get as many, or more mobile searches from voice as the pack followers its leaders.

Whether its far off, or close.....its still googles main source of income. Their whole business model.

I wonder is this something on googles mind? Every tech company worth its salt knows that a new battlefront is in machine learning and voice, they are all investing. Somewhere in a google office, surely its come up....

 

[rhapdog]

Google makes most of its money via advertising on search. A very very serious amount of money is charged for those top spots.

Will queries to "ok google", be stuffed full of sponsored messages?

When you ask google assistant to fetch you a cab, will it tell you about a great new deal on a brand new lexus before it answers your query?

Remember, when Google Now gives you search results, companies pay Google big money to be the top suggestion. It's not always based on the best match, and an advertisement is pretty much always the first result and often the first several. That's where Google makes the most money.

Bing is the same way, and Cortana, Siri, and Google Now will give you the paid result first when it replies. Even with a voice reply, these search companies gets paid for a company's ad being spoken first or shown first in the card.

Also, have you ever wondered why Google is working so hard to branch out to other areas of money making? Fiber Optic networks? Smart cars? Android phones (kickback from manufacturers on those for some of Google's patents.)

Google, like Microsoft and Apple, holds a lot of tech patents. They make licensing fees like you wouldn't believe. Microsoft could probably retire from actually doing stuff and make money from their licensing for a long time.

 

[Drael646464]

Remember, when Google Now gives you search results, companies pay Google big money to be the top suggestion. It's not always based on the best match, and an advertisement is pretty much always the first result and often the first several. That's where Google makes the most money.

Bing is the same way, and Cortana, Siri, and Google Now will give you the paid result first when it replies. Even with a voice reply, these search companies gets paid for a company's ad being spoken first or shown first in the card.

Also, have you ever wondered why Google is working so hard to branch out to other areas of money making? Fiber Optic networks? Smart cars? Android phones (kickback from manufacturers on those for some of Google's patents.)

Google, like Microsoft and Apple, holds a lot of tech patents. They make licensing fees like you wouldn't believe. Microsoft could probably retire from actually doing stuff and make money from their licensing for a long time.

The top five are all ads. Used to be three. They are marked as such, but yeah, people pay major money for that.

And totally, yeah, that's the problem. A voice response gives just one result. If that one result is always, or often an ad, the search product becomes useless. You don't want a query that only delivers ads.

It can't be funded that way. You could have a banner on the screen, as the voice says something else, but the voice response being an ad, is going to turn away users, like radio and free to air tv turned away users to other services.

Amazon has this right now, on their devices - I think it will be their undoing.
Not every result, but it does advertise, over voice.


Spotify literally put in that feature not to make money, but to annoy people into paying for the service

Yeah I am sure Google has a lot of balls in the air so to speak. But their central profit model, that of advertising to me, seems like something that is sort of, use case specific, and only up to a certain tolerance level, much like ads in other mediums. But they do have cloud services, and other areas.

I just wonder how, in the long term, they will adapt.

Will they ever charge for search? Or will someone else ever beat them at it? Suppose its like the iPhone - it cant last forever. Can't have ones eggs in one basket.