Free listings & Ads to spin revenue from that…

Look at their existing offering: Free to be on their search, free email, free voice etc etc all supplimented with Google Ads. Google has an interest to index the world’s data, property data is just a vertical in that greater plan.

With that said, i feel agents should look forward to a google takeover. One thing it would guarantee to agents is free listings (like they already do on google real estate (gbase)) and superior search. They may even move into SEO for Real Estate Listings per say.

Lastly my shameless punt: if you’re looking for free listing property, check out http://www.propati.com.au

They increase prices simply because they can. REA and Fairfax are the only game in town…………at the moment.

Its as simple as that as far as I can tell.
They dont need a portal because thats not what their core goal is.

Its actually very smart – if you want to find information then you go through Google to get it.
Advertising only comes in to the picture at that point.

I think you are reading too much into it. I doubt anybody is excited over any one company holding any power whether it be an Australian corporation like REA or an International company like Google.

Most of the people on this forum are agents.. and many are keen to see somebody with enough clout and experience behind them to make effect the power balance. Any day now we are going to find out what the next round of price rises are going to be and rumours are its not going to be kind to agents.

When Myhome was first announced agents were just as hopefull that they had the ability to make a difference. Unfortunately despite the pedigree of its parents Myhome version 1 was a failure and agents were left looking for the next entrant who could bring some serious competition. That was Google. As Peter mentioned in the article many claimed they would not touch the real estate sector but they did. Not in the way many had hoped but they have made a difference already and they have made some of the players nervous whether they want to admit it or not.

Google has the ability to change the landscape radically but we are talking about a company that has so many other opportunities that there is only a small hope that they will create a vertical real estate solution. This is also a company that takes its secrecy very serious. There seems to be very very few disgruntled employees that leak anything so the best anyone can do is guess what step they make next. The only way you can figure it out is from all the non-google people they have to involve when they have to liase outside the company.

One of the worst kept secrets was their Australian launch because they had to have agreements in place with many of the real estate groups, many of of which could not help themselves but talk about it. This made it all very funny when many comments on the property Portal Watch board were adamant that Google was not releasing any real estate solution at all. At the time it was very funny watching RS troll lures through the site getting people to state their position inside 24 hours of the release so he could rub salt in the wounds later.

Now they have access to the data there is no reason whatsoever that news of any product under development would leak prior to its release.

I definitely would not want any company including Google to hold the majority of power for real estate online but (and thats a big but) you can be damn sure that IF one company was to hold that power I would certainly rather it be Google than Fairfax or REA. I personally trust them more. I like their business principles more. I like their business models more.

Dont like monopolies or duopolies….good luck with that (Google).

The only problem I see with Google is that one day they may fall into the hands of those who’s motto is not “Don’t be evil”

The owners are young enough to see it through for a while yet though.

Search is their primary vehicle to display their clients adverts and althought they do actually sell search appliances they dont make much profit out of the search products itself. The same goes for software and the occasional hardware they sell.

Microsoft is a Software company. Apple is a Hardware Company. Google is an Advertising Company. They all do other things.. Microsoft does hardware, Apple does software etc etc etc.. but that is where their core profits are generated from.

As to precedents of Google entering a vertical market, what about Google Finance and Google Books as two quick examples. Google Finance has been far from a success and took very little away from Yahoo Finance but Google Books is about to start digital book sales in direct opposition to Amazon and the losers will be the publishers who are stuck in the old ways of doing business. There are plenty of other vertical markets they compete in or are about to compete in as well including browsers, email, voice, and now mobile and desktop os.

Google has now released a free gps navigation solution for mobile phones that leverages their google maps and streetview technology. GPS navigation software is some of the most expensive software in the Apple and Google Marketplaces. Whilst most other software is available for $1 to $5 the GPS navigation software sells for $80 to $120. Ask TomTom, CoPilot and other companies offering GPS software for smartphones whether Google enters vertical markets and they might have an opinion!

Whatever vertical markets they enter, they don’t do so out of a pure profit motive but what appears as some genuine belief that they can offer improvements to what is currently available. The best example of this is the browser. Only two or three weeks before launching Google Chrome, Google committed financial funding to at least 2011 to Mozilla for Firefox. They then offered to share the new technologies they were working on with anybody who wanted them for the benefit of the entire web.

Google will enter the real estate search vertical if it believes it can add something for the majority of all participants and they can make a buck or two out of it.

The simple reality is that for the vast majority it provides our online oxygen where for some it is now threatening their business longevity. Many businesses that ignored the online movement are suffering just as badly as they have lost relevance so it is just not online businesses that feel threatened.

What you don’t and wont see are businesses defending their respective positions against Google – which is what I find most interesting! So it appears for some it is all over bar the shouting.

If Google were to get the right people on board they could decimate Domain and REA in seconds flat.

Google have the capacity to do this they are very smart and know what they’re doing.

Whether they do or not is another matter but I think I spelled that out previously.

I somehow doubt they would depart from their philosophy, being a search engine first and foremost.

Google for the most part has defended user’s privacy and has played fairly with existing markets.
From their actions, it seems that Google is very happy with their real estate search as it is, and they have no intention to become a portal.

Yes they are powerful, but so far they havent abused it unlike many other companies with similar power.