Google, Red Herring, and Damage Control
September 26, 2010
I found the story “Eric Schmidt: Forget Apple, Facebook, Bing’s Our Biggest Problem” quite interesting. The basic idea for the story was a statement attributed to Google’s top boss. The passage that caught my attention was:
“Bing is a well run, highly competitive search engine,” Schmidt tells the WSJ’s Alan Murray in a long interview. Meanwhile, it’s “too early to tell,” how big a competitor Facebook will be, he says. Apple is, “the extreme expression of a closed system, but also a partner.” While Bing is going right after Google’s core business, we think Apple and Facebook are long term threats. Each of those companies are fighting for the next big thing. Bing is fighting the war Google won last decade.
Several thought struck me. First, Google really needs Bing to gain market share. With the skies above Shoreline Drive dark with legal eagles, a competitor will make clear that Google is not a monopoly. My own poking around suggests that the usage reports spit out by the azurini understate Google’s dominance of Web traffic. The praise for Bing, therefore, has less to do with the excellence of the Microsoft system and more about the need to pump that baby up.
Second, I think the Apple situation is a pretty big and serious deal. Google’s present tactical approach seems to be heavily influenced by Apple’s earlier actions. In fact, I find the lock step actions fascinating. The problem is that Google has not been able to respond to the profitable construct Apple has in place. Is Google investing in the mobile market in order to gain market share? If so, this tactic is a longer term one. Apple has time to expand its rich media position. Like it or not, Google has not yet responded to the hardware/software ecosystem Apple has in place. So Google is, it seems to me, emulating Apple just with a lag time between an Apple action and a Google response. Otherwise, Google is in the me too game. Is that enough to make Android pump cash at a time when online ad sales may be getting tired?
Third, the Facebook thing is a really big deal. I am not a social goose. Math Club people are not going to win seats on the Student Council without some serious pizza ploys. Facebook continues to chug along, and it is now spawning a rich, weird ecosystem that has become a “curation resource”; that is, you can trust Facebook believe it or not. I know “trust” and “Facebook” are not like peanut butter and jelly but the idea is that friends offer better info than a search engine with mystery methods.
My hunch is that Google and its top brass recognize these forces: legal hassles, ad purchasing behavior, the need for revenues from a hardware/software ecosystem, and the crazy “friend” revolution.
Google has no answers as I write this to these modest hurdles. So what concerns the Googlers? Bing.com.
There you go.
Stephen E Arnold, September 26, 2010
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2 Responses to “Google, Red Herring, and Damage Control”
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I think you don’t get it. Apple and Facebook are natural enemies, since both are platform companies. Google is not yet a platform company.
And Google knows more about web than any other company due to Google analytics.