Google and P&G: Data Gluttons Team Up

November 20, 2008

I just finished my next column (December 2008 or maybe January 2009) for KMWorld. My topic was Google’s enterprise initiatives for 2009. I ran through the most important developments based on some interviews and phone calls I made in the last few weeks. I hit the addition of Google Analytics, and I described the purpose of Google’s hackathons. After I filed the column, I read “P^G, Google Team Up to Trade Knowledge”, a reprint of an Associated Press story written by Dan Sewell. I won’t quote anything from this AP story because I don’t want to be sued by an outfit that is going the way of the dodo. You can find the article here and probably on Google News. The main point is that the Procter & Gamble Co. (home of proctoids) is a data glutton. The company surveys, tests, and data mines to move those consumer products. The reason there are 20 types of shampoo is that outfits like P&G know that the average consumer can’t figure out what to buy and offers meaningless choices and different value points. The result of this baloney is selling more shampoo, which is pretty much the same stuff in different bottles. The partner for a data trade is Google, another data glutton. P&G may think it is a skilled data cruncher, but I know that the Googlers are bigger, better, and smarter about data. Frankly I don’t care what data these two outfits exchange. The point for me is altogether different. If a company thinks it can sell into P&G after Google starts delivering some useful analytics to the P&G crowd, those enterprise vendors may have to do some fast adapting. This tie up is a much more sophisticated enterprise relationship than trading data. Google has data and lots of it. What Google doesn’t have is a sure fire way to get close to a big, influential company. I think it is a very short step from trading data to Google’s plugging P&G into the Googleplex so the company can play with more of Google’s digital toys. Real time data, dataspace functions, and dossier functions will convert P&G from partner to customer in a way that will put the hurt on existing P&G enterprise software vendors. Let me know why I am wrong. Bring facts. I don’t need Barry and Cyrus assertions without data to enrich my understanding. Facts, please.

Stephen Arnold, November 20, 2008

Written by Stephen E. Arnold · Filed Under Business strategy, Google, News, Technology

Comments

Comments are closed.

Search the site
Subscribe to Beyond Search
Feature archive
News archive

Stephen E. Arnold monitors search, content processing, text mining and related topics from his high-tech nerve center in rural Kentucky. He tries to winnow the goose feathers from the giblets. He works with colleagues worldwide to make this Web log useful to those who want to go "beyond search". Contact him at sa [at] arnoldit.com. His Web site with additional information about search is arnoldit.com.