Google Is Small, Really Really Small, Really
June 6, 2009
In 2007 I thought I heard a Googler suggest that Google would be a $100 billion dollar company. I mentioned the number to a couple of folks who said, “You are nuts.” I know what I wrote in my notes, but as an addled goose with lousy hearing from various loud sounds over the years, I may have misheard. I dropped the number from my Google descriptions until I read a Washington Post story. The article’s title was “Google Says It’s Actually Quite Small” by Jeff Horwitz, who probably is neither addled nor half deaf. He wrote:
If that number seems low for the runaway success story of the Internet age, Google wants you to believe that it’s just a question of market definition. Google rejects the idea that it’s in the search advertising business, an industry in which it holds more than a 70 percent share of revenue. Instead, the company says that its competition is all advertising, a category broad enough to include newspaper, radio and highway billboards. Google’s argument is not simply that it’s not a big bully. If you believe the company, it’s not even that big.
The “small” argument is part of a longer term effort to blunt any allegations by those who would assert that Google is a monopoly. Even Microsofties have used the verb “google” to describe some of their information retrieval efforts. Is Google small, depends on where one sits I think. IBM is in the #=$100 billion range and considered toothless by some including me. Microsoft is in the $65 billion area and we know what that firm is doing. Google is just a small outfit in my opinion, really tiny, even eesie meensie.
Stephen Arnold, June 7, 2009
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