Where, exactly, is Google heading?
There's no doubting the success of Google - from out of nowhere, the company has become (with a comfortable margin) the world's number one search engine. But it's not stopping there. Desktop search, maps, photo sharing, blogging - how do all of Google's new services fit together, and where is the company going?
24 November 2005
Google was started as a college project called ‘Backrub’ by Sergey Brin and Larry Page. The company itself was founded only a short time ago, in 1998. Still little more than an infant in the IT world, Google is now worth billions of dollars and (despite its ‘don’t be evil’ motto) even has many established companies, such as Microsoft, peering nervously over its shoulders.
Why? The reason’s not just market share – although that’s part of it. Without doubt, Google is the first port of call for the vast majority of the world’s Web users – a mighty powerful position to be in. Sure, other search engines such as MSN and Yahoo are worried, but so are some of the world’s leading retailers, who have realised that one company, more than any other, is now in a position to influence where the world shops. On-line resellers were always a threat to companies such as Wal-Mart and Tesco, but having Google as the ‘where do I buy?’ portal shifts the balance of power significantly.
But it’s all of Google’s other activities that have even the most seasoned analysts scratching their heads.
Some things fit obviously and nicely alongside Google’s core business – which is, of course, internet search. There are useful extensions to Google, such as Google News, Froogle (specifically for finding products and comparing prices), Blog Search (for narrowing a search down to just blogs), Google Local (for finding things like pizza restaurants near to you) and Google Images (just for finding pictures). So far so good.
Specialist services – such as University Search and Google Answers – are excellent search services, the first focused on finding information in a specific place and the latter allowing you to ‘ask’ a real person at Google to answer a question – they reply by suggesting links, saving you the hassle of even searching. For a small fee, of course.
Some services are really pushing back the search boundaries, like the new Google Print, which allows books to be searched and partially read on line – which has many publishers up in arms, because these plans originally included books which are still in copyright. But you can see why book sellers are also worried – after you’ve found a book, Google suggests where you can buy it, presumably taking a cut in the process. Imagine the power (and revenue) if Google was to become the whole world’s first port of call when browsing for books?
(Interestingly several porn sites are suing Google for displaying their copyright ‘ahem’ material in search results, without permission.)
Then there is a collection of services that are one step removed from searching. Google Maps and Google Earth, for instance, aren’t searching for information via third parties – they’re providing it. Both are excellent, as we’ve come to expect from Google. Google Maps will give you a great set of directions – and Google Earth allows you to zoom in, from space, on pretty much any point on Earth. This includes otherwise restricted sites (such as Area 51) and even takes stalkers where they’ve never been able to go before (such as Madonna’s house, from the air). Google isn’t passing any judgement on the information, it’s just providing it. But it’s a clear step away being ‘just’ an Internet search engine, since it’s now finding and publishing its own unique information.
How this fits in with the company’s original mission statement to “organise the world’s information and make it accessible” is hard to say. Sure, a secret missile base is part of ‘the world’s information’, but it’s stretching things a little.
Things get stretched even further when you look at Google’s publishing platforms, such as Blogger (for blogs) and Picassa (for images). This is nothing to do with finding and displaying information, this is publishing, pure and simple. The same is true for Google’s new ‘Groups’ (where you can set up and maintain your own discussion groups).
And of course Google is now reaching onto the desktop with Google Toolbar and Google Desktop – an excellent search utility for finding things on your hard disk that beats Windows’ own search hands-down.
Some services have nothing to do with information retrieval – like Gmail, Google’s Web-based e-mail service. This is, quite simply, a hosted application paid for by advertising – Google places ads in your e-mails that are relevant to your e-mail’s content.
And coming up? A free RSS/news reader that collates information from your favourite sites automatically. Also, the ability to search for TV programme schedules, a Web accelerator to load Web pages faster a taxi-ride finder (which, scarily enough, uses the GPS real-time positioning of cabs to find your nearest ride) – and so on.
It’s genuinely hard to see exactly how that lot fits together, let alone why Google is providing free Wireless access to all of San Francisco, or developing a strategic partnership with NASA (yes, both of these are true).
Indeed, lots of analysts don’t believe that Google has a clear strategy as such: that’s it’s just exhibiting a shotgun approach to what it gets involved with.
Some things are clear. Whatever Google does, it does very well indeed. It’s a great innovator, continually surprising us and its competition. It also tries very hard to make money from pretty much everything that it does – usually in small amounts, but these add up to billions. It also clearly believes in information transparency – without making any judgement on information, whether it’s porn, copyrighted material or a secret base, it wants to make it available.
Another key element is that most (though not quite all) of these are browser-based, hosted services. This is logical when you consider Google’s roots, but if we all start moving most of our computing needs to browser-based applications, it significantly loosens the need for a specific operating system – so you can understand why Microsoft is keeping a keen eye on Google.
It’s hard to imagine where this power might go, but it’s at least technically possible to find a person’s location via their mobile phone and, at the same time, obtain a recent image of them from the nearest CCTV camera. Whether that’s information transparency or a privacy violation is a matter of perspective.
One final thing is clear. Mostly we love Google. We like what it does. Some of it makes us nervous, but if people are voting with their clicks, it’s massively in Google’s favour. Google’s competitors are right to be worried: while it’s hard to work out exactly what they’re up to, the whole world seems to want it.
