We all know how big and important Google is, I’d be surprised if you landed on this page from listings in another search engine to be honest. I’m a massive fan of Google, their products and services such as Gmail and Google maps are some of the best available and they keep pushing the boundaries of what they seem to achieve (I guess their unlimited tech budget helps though). I use their products on a daily basis in fact I think its a good idea to list the Google online services I use to give you an idea of my reliance.
- Gmail
- Google maps
- Google Calendar
- Google Analytics
- Google reader – both mobile and online
- Google docs
- Google checkout
- Google webmaster tools
Okay, I don’t use all of them on a daily basis but I think its clear to see that Google hold strong positions in a range of markets and my dependencies on the search giant are growing. Their online tools are so perfectly interwoven that its actually hard to move away from them to alternatives because they are so good. I’ve got years of emails sitting within Gmail and my life planned through Google calendar. It begs the question, what would I do if Google started charging a monthly fee for access to their services?
Lets take Gmail as the perfect example. Millions of people use Gmail, its easily the best online email solution and works on pretty much and device you try to sync it with. If Google started asking for a monthly £5 fee for the service what would happen? Is Gmail so good that people would be wiling to part with cash? I’m in firm belief that it would be worth a charge up to a certain limit (around £10) if we could get a much larger online storage facility.
Its hard to also contemplate how much business Google drives to company websites, I bet some companies generate 100% of their revenue from Google. Google if it wanted to could start asking for money to drive normally organic traffic. It’ll be the beginning of the end for Google but anythings possible.
Would you pay to continue using Google products? Leave a comment to let me know.
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I’d never pay for webmail.