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Is a Google ESP next?

July 10, 2007

Sorry for the pathetic week of posts last week, I am back with a vengeance this week. Consider yourselves warned.

So I was thinking, with Google's recent acquisitions of Feedburner and Postini, what is stopping Google from targeting an ESP next?

There has been some debate around the office as to why Google would want to enter the ESP space. I say, more ads, obviously. My only thought as to why they wouldn't is their motto, "Don't be evil." What ESP hasn't been considered evil by someone daily. We get people reporting their double opt-in message as spam for example.

I think Google has a real opportunity to go after small businesses with a basic email marketing service, which would be a great intro to their Apps, which seem to be a very high priority these days. When you look at the market share Constant Contact and Vertical Response are getting with low volume, low need clients, why wouldn't they swoop in, like they did with Analytics?

Maybe the brains at Google can figure out how to make sure their users have a clean, 100% opted-in list, and help them get 75% read rates, 50% click rates, and deliver 99% inbox?

Posted by alex.

Comments

I've wondered the same thing for awhile. I wonder if they have my number...

Posted by: Gregg Oldring at July 10, 2007 12:39 PM

Yeahhhh, this is where I get nervous ...

Just blogged about that last night after watching a documentary called "The World According to Google" ... wish they'd just slow down a tad and make us all a bit more comfortable about taking over our lives.

http://corprockstar.blogspot.com/2007/07/its-google-world.html

Maggie Lang

Posted by: Maggie Lang at July 13, 2007 1:03 PM

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