Predicting Google’s Next Move
27 Nov 2011
Anyone who has watched Google’s product releases over the past 5 years knows that the Silicon Valley giant has much greater ambitions than to simply be the World’s best search engine. In recent years they have effectively built and consolidated the Internet’s dominant advertising platform, and released both B2B and B2C products that span just about every hot vertical, from mobile to television. There are even rumors of secretive Google robotic, dark fiber, and renewable energy projects.
For any entrepreneur looking for a viable niche to pursue in an online business must surely be concerned about what Google’s plans are. After all, no matter how great your product concept, if Google begins to compete with you, they have a clear advantage since they dominantly control nearly every major online marketing channel. It thus becomes imperative to take a closer look at where they might be headed, and try to find a business that would be complimentary, not in conflict of a possible Google move.
So where are they going next? I’ve tried to map it out and at some level, it seems they’re just spreading out like in every direction, both in terms of going deep into product platform and infrastructure, as well as going upon pretty high into B2C branded destination products.
But I do think there is a discernible pattern. I would characterize it like this – entrenchment by way of building multiple layers of reinforcement around a core product. They’ve added a number of services that seem to not have a monetization plan, but are really about adding depth to the B2C search and B2B advertising prerogatives. For example, building out the maps product, creation of Google places and recent acquisition of Zagat guide for reviews, helps to ensure dominance of the local searches (aka Yellow Pages) business. Meanwhile Analytics and Website Optimizer are complimentary products at the B2B level that facilitate better ad spend for businesses.
While not every product that Google has created follows this pattern, I do think the approximate pattern of propagation has been something like this:
Basically, there is a core search backbone, with specific use layers of Local, Social, Mobile, and Media that overlay on top of that. Meanwhile, I’ve been observing a recent bifurcation of the B2B tools around 2 primary nodes – local small businesses (SMB), and larger national businesses (B2B). You can see local specific tools being aggregated together such as the recent deals platform that sprung up after Goupon acquisition failed, AdWords Express which aims to make advertising easier to understand for small businesses, and the places publishing platform for basic business presence. Meanwhile, Analytics has been made more robust and DoubleClick for Publishers and Website Optimizer have been released for for larger businesses who have more sophisticated advertising needs.
If you observe the progression of the release of these services, it has generally been along these lines, and I think the last couple steps of building out the platform are completion of Local and then media, which would be the Google TV directive. Many people believe online media convergence is the next major wave that is began quietly this year.
And so what is Google’s next step? Or put another way, what should aspiring entrepreneurs stay away from? My best guess is two things:
On the B2C side, watch for more vertical-specific search integrations. For example, I heard rumors of Google trying to acquire Trulia to integrate house searches. We’ve already seen integration of travel searches, and they’ve recently released Google Advice which gets in tot he business of comparative product reviews, competing with companies such as LendingTree and probably software product comparison companies such as SoftwareAdvice and Capterra shortly.
On the B2B side, I would watch for is a publishing platform. Actually, this is the single biggest hole in their B2B strategy from my perspective, and seems like an obvious hole to fill. Since they’re now going after the small business market (SMB), this is one of the greatest needs of a small business and a precondition to effective online advertising spend. Just like they provided Analytics and Website Optimizer to facilitate advertisers, enabling spend more money on AdWords, it would make just as much sense to provide a platform with template layouts that are optimized for landing pages and conversions, to assist small businesses to be effective with their own advertising. It could be a very nice launch page for SMBs with an integrated advertising platform.
I have also observed that they’ve been approaching commerce from a few directions recently. They run their own store, launched Google Checkout a couple years ago, and Analytics offers very nice eCommerce integration hooks as well. It seems entirely reasonable that the publishing platform they would eventually launch for small businesses, would also include commerce functionality, all of which would close the loop on foundational web platform services.
So there you have it. If I were to plan an entrepreneurial roadmap, keeping one eye out for Google, I’d probably stay away from creating a small business or eCommerce publishing platforms, as well as any B2C search directories that might fall neatly inline with a vertical extension of Google search, such as real estate search or a directory of professionals such as AngiesList or doctor reviews. It is unfortunate to have to watch out for Google in such a way, but given that they essentially control every major online marketing channel, it is imperative to stay out of their way, unless you have something truly special to bring to market.
SMB Publishing Update (dec 2, 2011) – after doing more diffing around, I found that Google is already pushing a pretty extensive campaign for small businesses in the state of Texas. The program is called Get Texas Online and launched this past Summer. The program provides a free domain and website to small businesses for 1 years, and includes a $75 coupon to try AdWords Express. After the first year, it will be $2 per month for the domains and$5 per month for the site. Site owners can further upgrade to have a shopping cart to enable sales. The site builder component is the Intuit SiteBuilder technology and thus any ecommerce transactions are easily imported into Quickbooks and Quicken. Apparently Google has already purchased dozens of domains and is imminently scaling this program out to states nationwide.
Technologist living in Los Angeles, California.
