There are three certainties in life for start-up entrepreneurs: death, taxes and Google.
It’s old hat that the internet changed everything: how we buy, sell, interact, work, relax, consume. The internet is pivotal to people’s lives and so business.
And if you needed evidence Google is synonymous with the internet, this week’s analysis of Microsoft’s $44.6bn hostile bid for Yahoo! provided it. The media’s most-celebrated had their say but a million words of prose can be easily condensed to two: catching Google.
Microsoft and Yahoo! probably can’t believe they let it happen, but Google quite simply dominates global search and global online advertising spend.
Two thirds of global search is via Google, with Yahoo! dwarfed into second place on 13.1% and the likes of MSN, AOL etc languishing helplessly around the 3-4% mark. Subsequently, Google holds 70% of all search advertising that accounts for a staggering 45% of global online ad spend.
The David and Goliath analogy was overused during Google’s rise, but it’s clear it’s now Microsoft taking the hopeful punts. And Google’s tit-for-tat reaction to the bid – accusing Microsoft of threatening ‘openness’ and ‘innovation’ – showed its ‘be no evil’ anti-corporate days are long gone.
Then again, who cares? The very fact Google has been able to create a huge global marketplace and allowed anyone with a credit card to advertise on it for a starting cost of under £1 has revolutionised enterprise.
Has there been a business started in the past five years that hasn’t had Google at the centre of its marketing strategy? If there is, there shouldn’t be.
Google might be dominant but it’s not a monopoly. It’s not to search what Microsoft was/is to PCs. It also got there offering people what they wanted, not the bloated ego publishing that sent Yahoo! crashing. Google might be protecting its interests like a corporate behemoth, but that’s what it is, so why the surprise?
Then again, competition has to be healthy too doesn’t it? Google’s pay-per-click model is only ever an upwards auction for exposure. Business is arguably more reliant on it than any other organisation. If Google hiked its prices today would it directly affect the bottom lines of more businesses than an interest rate change or another increase in capital gains tax? Possibly. Choice brings value and should be welcomed.
There’s a whole minefield of obstacles to overcome before Microsoft emerges as a genuine contender to Google. But that’s not to say it won’t. Microsoft’s trying increasingly hard to understand enterprise and the way people use the internet.
Also as Doug Richard concurred this week, the idea Microsoft is the epitome of evil (with Google the antithesis) is simply 10 years’ outdated.
What do you think?
