Google and Its Toughest Rivals
January 9, 2010
Let’s see. Google is disrupting a number of business sectors. These range from mobile phones to publishing. There are some other sectors in the Google Hummer’s headlights, but you have heard about the Google phone, haven’t you?
ComputerWorld ran an amazing article called “Google’s 10 Toughest Rivals.” My initial reaction was, “Just 10?” The core of the story is that after 11 years, Google faces some competition. I don’t buy this assertion, but that is neither here nor there. My view is that Google has a dominant position, not just in search, but in the computational platform game as well. No, I am not forgetting Apple, but Apple is Sony and Google has become the Microsoft on steroids for the now generation.
Here’s a snippet from the ComputerWorld story that I noted:
Until now, Google’s biggest frenemies were the traditional media: newspapers, magazines and TV stations that create online content Google searches and that buy online advertising from Google. But as its portfolio has grown to encompass more than 150 products — including free, hosted versions of popular software applications — Google has attracted an array of tech industry competitors.
ComputerWorld is playing the get clicks game because of Google. You will have to click six times to learn who the 10 competitors are. I will give you one hint: Yahoo is on the list.
What is omitted from this story are these points in my opinion:
- What is the competitive advantage each of these competitors has that Google does not possess? Yahoo as a competitor is a notable example of the analytic depth of this write up.
- What is the competitive line up for Google outside the US? Mentioning Nokia won’t cut it because Nokia has fallen on its sword and the company has its own management, not Google, to blame in my opinion.
- How similar is Google to companies with a single competitive challenge to Google? An example is the reference to Facebook, arguably a Googley company in some ways. Is Facebook different from Google or is Facebook similar to Google? What are the key points of each?
- Is Google really competing against companies? In my research, I think Google intentionally annoys and makes fun of other companies, but I think Google perceives most of its competitors somewhere in the space between “ants at a picnic” and “irrelevant”. Sure, this seems arrogant, but the Google, in my opinion, is in a different technical space, so company to Google comparisons fall short of the mark.
Read the ComputerWorld story. I think that most folks do not understand what Google has built via its methods over the last 11 years. As I have pointed out in my Google studies and in this Web log, Google is more like a New World than an challenger to a single business. Google will remain mostly unchallenged because pundits, mavens, and wizards cannot perceive the Google in a way uncolored by simple and superficial generalizations about markets and competition.
Stephen E. Arnold, January 8, 2010
Okay, this is a freebie. I am sitting in a client facility and getting paid to think about publishing, not Hulu and Google. I have to report this conflicted situation to the National Institutes of Health, an outfit that knows all about mental distress.
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