A screencap from the Canada Get Your Business Online website, launched by Google
(WEB HOST INDUSTRY REVIEW) — Is this the big Google push into shared hosting that web hosts have feared for years? According to several reports surfacing Tuesday, the search engine giant has launched a new program called “Canada Get Your Business Online,” offering small businesses a free domain name, web hosting space and a coupon for $100 worth of AdWords credit.
The company announced similar programs in Australia and in the UK. It has yet to launch a program in the United States, but one can only imagine that is either in the works, or on the horizon, pending the success of the current offering.
In Canada, the offering is delivered via the website gybo.ca, and appears to be a partnership between Google Canada, the Royal Bank of Canada, Rogers Communications, the .ca registry, the Canadian Chamber of Commerce, website design tool Yola, and small business development firm Silver Lining.
An item that might be comforting to hosting providers, Google isn’t going to be doing the hosting itself.
The hosting will be provided by Yola (www.yola.com), a website builder and hosting company based in San Francisco. The GYBO package is free for 12 months, after which Yola’s standard website pricing applies – $99.99 (US) per year for the lesser of its two paid options.
For hosting providers, there’s some opportunity tied to the obvious threat – in an interview with the Financial Post, Google Canada country director Chris O’Neill shared the company’s estimate that of the approximately 2.2 million small businesses in Canada, less than one million have a web presence.
In an Angus-Reid study commissioned by Google, 71 percent of small business owners said they thought they should have a website, but many said they lacked the expertise to set one up, and the time to learn.
Google’s offering seems squarely aimed (not just from the name) at those small businesses that have yet to establish any online presence at all, which means that, for now, the company isn’t after the existing business of shared hosting providers.
For Google, the value is fairly evident. With each new website created (at the cost of a domain name and basic hosting), the company creates a new AdWords customer with the potential to spend hundreds or thousands of dollars a year promoting that website.
In the end, this could prove beneficial to the hosting competition. Google has the marketing muscle and name recognition to get a significant chunk of those currently-offline small businesses online, but it (and even Yola) may not ultimately have the kind of support structure these customers want.
There may be an opportunity to win over these new hosting customers with your support. And the small business hosting market may find new customers looking for alternatives when their 12 free months expire.
About Liam Eagle
Liam Eagle has worked as a contributor to the Web Host Industry Review since its inception in 2000, and as editor since 2003. He has been editor of the WHIR's print magazine since its launch. His daily involvement in the gathering and reporting of Web hosting news and his regular interaction with Web hosting leaders gives him an uncommonly broad appreciation of the issues and tends facing the business. Through his WHIR blog, Liam spots Web hosting trends and offers opinions on the industry-wide impacts of major developments and the motivation behind big announcements. Follow him on Twitter @liameagle
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