Think eBiz; thoughts on eBusiness: Is Google Evil? Too Powerful?

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BusinessWeek posed the question, Is Google too Powerful (April 9, 2007)? It is a very interesting and indepth read about a giant in the advertising industry. Are they huge - you bet - with a market cap that dwarfs many of the long standing media/ad organizations... combined. Are they powerful - well of course they are. Are they "too" powerful? Think-ebiz does not think so.

As we read the BusinessWeek article, our thoughts turned to IBM and Microsoft… and probably Standard Oil and AT&T in its day. Even the Romans! And we came upon this paragraph, which addressed this thought:

If this talk of corporate dominance sounds vaguely familiar, it should. As firmly as IBM ruled mainframe computing and Microsoft the personal computer age, so Google has the potential to rule the Internet. To some people, Google's position today, while clearly far from identical to Microsoft's in its heyday, nonetheless shares some striking parallels. "Google feels a lot like Microsoft in the mid-Nineties," says Silicon Valley startup adviser Dave McClure. "Right at the height of its power, getting a little arrogant, and challenged for the first time by some powerful people."

Perhaps In 10 years there will be some other dominant entity, pushing Google’ together with this list of past champions. In a capitalist economy, there will always be a dominant company in the marketplace. Dominance doesn’t last forever.

Does that make Google evil? Too powerful? Instead of the naysayers tossing stones at them, those that have the brainpower should try to think ahead at what is next. I am sure if you looked back at Standard Oil and then AT&T, their dominance lasted much longer then IBM… which lasted longer than Microsoft. One misstep, and the Google’s empire could collapse… or be greatly minimized. And perhaps it is already.

Be honest, who uses anything other than Google search? We don’t see corporations racing towards adopting the Google spreadsheet. PayPal is still the biggest online transaction partner. eBay still rules supreme in the auction space. Google Earth is fun… but not yet strategic. Maybe Google TiSP will catch on - or maybe not. Even Gmail hasn’t forced Hotmail nor Yahoo out of the game.

We believe it is all about search when it comes to Google. If search consumers decided they hated or feared Google, there still exists Yahoo, MSN and Ask.Com. Choice still remains.

Think-ebiz does not think Google is too powerful, however we think they are terribly unfocused and may simply collapse under all their beta products while others figure out a better way to promote content and informational search.

Where choice remains, power in the marketplace can be blunted. Google is the most adopted search engine in the world, not necessarily the best. What will come next? We wish we knew... but there will be something else that we fear and hold in awe.

Think eBiz; thoughts on eBusiness

Thinking about eBusiness and Online Marketing; ideas, concepts and other ramblings.

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Is Google Evil? Too Powerful?

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