Google Bashing: Now Googzilla Is Playing Catch Up
July 5, 2008
Elise Ackerman’s essay “Google Finds Itself Playing Catch Up” is another installment in the continuing saga of Google’s losing its youthfulness. You can read the full story here. I am fearful of quoting anything from a newspaper because the Associated Press has intimidated the squawking goose.
My take on her July 5, 2008, analysis is that Google is getting its rump roasted in the mobile phone sector. The reasons range from industry giants taking such un Googley actions as buying Symbian to forming the LiMo foundation, owned by 18 telcos. You can learn more about LiMo here. This is a link to Wikipedia, but when I scanned it, the entry seemed reasonably objective. Telco-related information can be difficult to winnow for information versus disinformation.
Ms. Ackerman’s conclusion is, based on my reading her essay, that Google has to contend with competition, technical issues, and its own desire to make a Gphone that is similar to the iPhone.
My thoughts on Google and mobile phones have been described in both of my Google studies, which you can learn about here. I also took money to dig into Google telephony technology for a couple of telcos. My audience communicated in verbal and non-verbal ways, “Google is a Web search and ad company. Google is not going to be able to play in the mobile telephony space.” Fortunately I got paid before sharing my research findings with the poobahs of phones.
Let me offer several observations on the Google-telco show down:
- Google has been fooling around with mobile technology for at least nine years. Do a patent search or check out the technical journals using a commercial online engineering database. The company has been thinking about telephony, quality of service, and alternative transmission technologies over time.
- Google is not a fast mover. The company gives an impression of joyful spontaneity, but at its core, Google is conservative in many ways, preferring to test, obtain data, test, refine, obtain more data, and then determine if any one cares. “Care” as I use the term means “click” or “advertise”.
- Google operates via “pull”, not push. Most companies, including telcos, decide what the customer will get and then shoves it down the marketing pipeline. the “pull” model, when combined with test-analyze-refine-test looks pretty ineffectual. Caution is advised before tagging Google as “ineffectual”.
- Google’s “play” may not be easily translated into a one-to-one response to existing products and services. Android is a work in progress. Voice search is a component of a knowledge base. Google’s deals with various companies and partners are better viewed as variants of what I call the “Google dating model”. You can learn about this by checking out how Google works with Salesforce.com. Google is dating, not yet marrying Salesforce.com, which might happen.
When assessing a Google challenge in telephony, then, a different perspective on the day-to-day activities are needed. Getting perspective on Googzilla is hard for some companies, some analysts, some competitors, and some partners to do.
My thought is that it is too soon to label the GOOG as a winded has-been in the great telephony race. Perhaps we are watching a young Googzilla running wind sprints. The Googzilla may be in training, not playing for real yet.
Stephen Arnold, July 5, 2008
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