Maybe you were drowning your sorrows in a keg of beer instead? <smile>

That's business 101. Adapt or die like the dinosaurs.

It also helps that some of their competitors are marketing buffoons too.

How many years was Overture the dominant keyword search tool... but they never put a single ad or pitch about their service on the same page? Hell, they could have even run keyword research tool ads on the same page and made a few extra bucks.

So Overture eventually sells to Yahoo... who takes a dominant tool in the online industry... doesn't run any ads on it -- even for their own PPC service -- and eventually discontinues it. They could even charged $1/month and made a ton of cash with it. Dumb, dumb, dumb.

Back to Google.

Since they are a publicly traded company, they will continue to get pressure from the shareholders to deliver juicy dividend checks and stock prices.

They pleased the shareholders in the past by lowering Adsense payouts... raised PPC prices... offered lower quality traffic in addition to their normal quality offering to boost PPC spending... and even more which I'm forgetting right now.

Take their free tools like Google Analytics or Gmail.

How long do you think it will take until some bean counter at Google decides to slap a price on them and make some extra millions for the shareholders?

It's only a matter of time.

Take Analytics as an example. Suppose they slap a $10.95/month tag on that tool and only 10,000 of their current customers agree to pay it in order to keep using it. Everyone else decides they'd rather remove the Google testing codes from their websites instead. That's $109,500 per month in additional sales for Google.

If you're not doing it already, it's a good time to get stronger at your organic traffic generating skills.

Mike

Its true. Most people/companies just don't have a clue how to use adwords properly. Sometimes i think i have an unfair advantage.

Ahh, Jason, you're making me blush

See, that's my USP, dude. When I get bent over, I yell, "Rape!". I'm not gonna say, "Harder... faster... make me your b itch!"

Second, I essentially paraphrased an article AND the sentiment of the article, from DM News. That tells me that THEY considered it news, not bitching.

Lastly, I'm venting and it makes me feel better, ok? Now I'll shut up and find a way to work around it, if necessary.

I'll be at Yanik's in a week. You coming? Just buy me a beer though. I don't want none of your stash.

That's nothing - less than nothing to a company this size. My "small bus." clients earn 3 and 4 times that a month.

You would have to add at least 3 more zeros for them to even think about it.

I'm about 80% sure I'll show up.

Will be good to finally meet you.

You too. And I promise to not b itch, as long as the beer is cold

Good point. I was merely trying to give a small, easy to believe example of the kind of cash they could pull down if they switched to a paid model.

Take care,

Mike

I'm very surprised to hear Google is doing this. Especially since everytime I call them about an issue I am having on Adwords I get sermonized about their "relavance" mantra. Hard to understand how an ad can remain as relevant if they expand the keywords your ad will show for.