If you’re wondering why Google is doing this, TechCrunch hit the nail on the head recently. “Google wants to create an easy way for developers to create an application that works on all social networks. And if they pull it off, they’ll be in the center, controlling the network.” If you’re getting a sense of déjà vu from reading that, pay attention to it; there’s more going on here than you might think.
Yesterday, if you visited SEO Chat and read our newest article, you learned that Google unveiled its gPhone. Only it wasn’t a gPhone. It was an initiative, dubbed Android, to start building phones in a standards-based way, with hardware that can handle certain mobile applications. Google doesn’t want these applications to come just from them; they’re hoping third parties will use the standards to build their own applications, which will then be capable of working on any phone built to Google’s specifications. This puts Google in the center, controlling the network.
Google is trying to purchase online advertising firm DoubleClick. DoubleClick coordinates online advertising campaigns. And if Google is successful in purchasing DoubleClick, it will put the search giant in the center, controlling the network – or at least a major player in the network.
In June 2006, Google unveiled Google Checkout. At the time it was announced, this new service was billed by some in the press as a potential “PayPal killer.” But Google’s goal wasn’t really competing with PayPal. Google Checkout is that lets online vendors accept several different forms of payment if they wish, including, yes, PayPal – assuming PayPal decided to join, which it hasn't. At this point, Google Checkout doesn’t seem to be very popular, but if it ever catches on, it would be another case of Google in the center, controlling the network. Are you beginning to see a pattern here?
Of course, Google’s dominance of search is itself, in a sense, controlling the network – except that nobody is actually compelled to use Google. As long as Google is doing at least as good a job as its competitors in delivering results, web surfers will continue to search with it. But they will only do so for that long; if Google slips enough, users will begin to desert it. There are, and continue to be, other viable options. This is one reason that none of Google’s recent activity can really be called monopolistic (with the possible exception of the DoubleClick deal).
If it seems monopolistic to you, you’re probably remembering Microsoft. The software giant put itself in the center of the PC rather than the network by controlling the operating system, which every computer needed to do anything useful. Third party applications had to be built to run under Windows if they wanted to gain traction – just as Google is hoping its standards will catch on and everyone will write applications with those standards in mind. Perhaps the two companies aren’t so different in some ways.
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