When you need the help of a big search engine, which one do you turn to? For many of us, it’s Google. Even the name has turned into a part of the language. How many times have you “Googled” something?
But there are pros and cons to getting this big, and the question of whether the company is too big for the internet is debated quite frequently. There is some doubt over whether Google has gone over that tipping point, monopolising the search engine industry as a result.
It’s certainly not all bad, of course. If you have an online business to promote and you have ever tried the pay per click advertising solution, for example, the chances are good that you will have gone to Google to get your campaign underway. There is no other PPC avenue available on the internet today that even comes close to competing with the potential benefits of Google Adwords.
But even as far back as eighteen months ago people were writing articles which asked how wary others were getting about the company. The thinking is that it has got so big it cannot adequately control all the functions it is there for. Will this become one of those stories where the company itself becomes a victim of its own success?
Part of the issue seems to be the number of other companies that Google itself now owns. For example, Google owns the high profile site YouTube, and has done from less than twelve months after YouTube was launched. And it doesn’t stop there – because there are many other websites and companies that have since been swallowed by this huge company. And the chances are that we aren’t even aware of half of them.
It is this growing monopoly over many online resources and services that some people are a little worried about. In the world of online marketing we all want to do well, but when you start succeeding to this degree it becomes almost alarming.
The truth is that we don’t appear to be able to see any great changes in the near future. The monster that is Google will no doubt continue to glance round the internet in search of other companies to acquire, and it will grow more and more as it does so.
There is little doubt that the owners of some of the websites Google will be interested in – some of which were probably started in bedroom or dormroom somewhere – will happily give them up in exchange for a decent amount of money. But does that always make it right?
We congratulate (and are envious of) people who are spotted by Google in this way, but we don’t always think of what Google gets out of the situation. In one article in Business Week, the idea was given that it may simply get too big for itself to handle.
Now that would be an interesting prospect. But if you think about it, that probably wouldn’t benefit anyone other than the other search engines. So let’s just enjoy the Google ride.
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