Comment Risk Management (Score 1) 310
I can think of one obvious reason why Google would continue to run Google News in some sort of beta/loss-leader mode: To deny anyone else the market until they *do* figure out how to make money from it.
While they may not be making any money off of it, so long as Google & Yahoo control the lion's share of the "news aggregation" market, they are effectively insultated from an upstart competitor taking it away from them by thinking of an angle/model that has not yet occurred to them.
It's a long-term risk management strategy, not a short-term cashflow strategy. Pretty smart, if you ask me.
While they may not be making any money off of it, so long as Google & Yahoo control the lion's share of the "news aggregation" market, they are effectively insultated from an upstart competitor taking it away from them by thinking of an angle/model that has not yet occurred to them.
It's a long-term risk management strategy, not a short-term cashflow strategy. Pretty smart, if you ask me.
