Google created a loyal audience by providing consumers with mostly useful information.
Google sells advertising around that useful information and those ads are relevant/related to the information presented.
As Google’s popularity (dominance) has evolved, Google has successfully sought to surround that basic strategy/value with digital products and services mostly related to information, entertainment and productivity: YouTube, Picassa, Google +, Docs etc. Google still makes all of it’s money off the ads and it is yet to be determined if they can make money off the products.
As newspapers and media companies go, is the lesson to be learned here that if you build (or have) an audience, is the right strategy to work very hard at maintaining and growing your audience, while building out useful products and services that are associated with the newspaper/media’s brand? Newspapers and media in general appear to struggle with product development, which should not be surprising since most monopolies are less likely to excel in that space. Competition is a critical catalyst to product development and product quality.
Consider for a moment all the active gmail accounts in the market today. There are many options for e-mail and yet, Google has successfully taken the lead over stiff competition; Microsoft (hotmail), and Yahoo (ymail) to name a few. Googles original value and image: “providing consumers with useful information” helped launch this product.
At one time Newspapers occupied this same space (though at risk of fading). Can Newspapers leverage brand to be able to sell products and services to their consumer audiences?
bobleboeuf 