Weakness of Google

1. AdWords and AdSense -- Google's greatest strength and biggest revenue driver -- to the tune of 99 percent -- is its advertising scheme. But Google's contextual ads are also the company's biggest weakness. Spammers and made-for-AdSense site creators are constantly gaming Google's system through the practice known as click fraud. And some AdSense publishers note that Google's black box algorithms ensure that the company can bilk advertisers for millions. While Google says it has click fraud under control, it's made some concessions. And if AdSense publishers continue to grouse, expect more equivocating -- and changes? -- from Google.
2. Overreaching -- Google scored a home run with text-based advertising, but its subsequent efforts at monetizing content have fallen short. Google's project to sell ads in magazines floundered, but the company has recently redoubled its efforts and is selling ad space in newspapers. Google has been ramping up its audio sales force, and the scuttlebutt is that the company will soon sell advertisements in podcasts. Google's success in these offline efforts will depend on its ability to sell to scale, whether in one medium or across media. But the technology is unproven, and there's no guarantee Google will be able to target ads to consumers as effectively in offline environments. In the interim, the company may be vulnerable to established players or companies that specialize in a single market and/or medium.
3. Copyright -- In the eyes of some media companies, Google's business relies on exploiting content the company doesn't own. To technophiles and those who understand the flow of attention and Web traffic, Google is nothing but a highly effective guide to the wilds of Internet content. But the media companies that are accustomed to being at the top of the attention food chain -- everyone from HarperCollins to Agent France Presse to, potentially, Mark Cuban and Howard Stern -- are expressing their frustration through lawsuits.
   
   Google admitted its vulnerability recently in a recent SEC filing: "Courts in France have held us liable for allowing advertisers to select certain trademarked terms as keywords. We are appealing those decisions. We were also subject to two lawsuits in Germany on similar matters where the courts held that we are not liable for the actions of our advertisers prior to notification of trademark rights. We are litigating or recently have litigated similar issues in other cases in the U.S., France, Germany, Italy, Israel and Austria. Adverse results in these lawsuits may result in, or even compel, a change in this practice which could result in a loss of revenue for us, which could harm our business."
4. Mobile Carriers -- Google is moving aggressively into the mobile phone market. The company's strategy: provide useful mobile versions of its applications while helping carriers sell handsets and bigger data plans. The carriers, Google and the advertisers will all take a cut from the ad revenue.
   
   But the carriers, which are already grousing about net neutrality laws, may not consent to being just another channel for Google's wares. And as Internet access increases on handsets, they may drive a hard bargain or cut Google out of the ad game altogether. After all, carrier reluctance made the so-called iPod phone unusable-- who's to say a Google phone would do any better?
5. User Experience -- Perhaps the least of Google's worries, but a worry nonetheless, is how to make applications that lay users understand and actually use. Some of Google's products, like News, Maps and Gmail, are very successful. Others, such as Google Video, Google Reader and Google Talk have faced adoption challenges. Many of Google's products go unnoticed by the general public.
   
   Part of the problem is Google's tendency to solve engineering problems instead of user problems. A good example is Google Video's link within a video feature. The feature is great if you know about it and want to physically change a URL. But otherwise, it's an accessibility nightmare. Another problem is Google's tendency to come out strong with a beta release, but neglect to follow up with a release candidate.
6. It doesn't produce many desktop applications that can stand alone without Internet connectivity.

7.      Google's Link Analysis Weakness. Google only shows a small subset of the backlinks that they're aware of when you search link:hubpages.com on Google. From one perspective this is a big weakness with Google. The tool is so deficient that they send users to Yahoo and now Microsoft to do link analysis.

Strengths of Google

1.      1- Google's position on the Web is solid. According to the analysis firm Efficient Frontier, Google held 75 percent of the search engine advertisement market in first quarter 2010. 

2.      2- Gmail, Google's Web-based e-mail shows steady growth, up 27 percent from 2009 to 2010, while the reigning Yahoo Mail is losing ground.

3.     3-  In addition to its search engine, Google offers consumers online productivity software, video and photo sharing services and mapping applications. Google has worked its way into the OS market with its mobile platform Android and its Web-based OS project Chromium.

4.     4-  Google's strengths are searching, development of Open Source Internet services, and running clusters of tens of thousands of servers.

5.    5-  Google hired a pair of very bright industrial designers to figure out how to cram the greatest number of CPUs, the most storage, memory and power support into a 20- or 40-foot box. We're talking about 5000 Opteron processors and 3.5 petabytes of disk storage that can be dropped-off overnight by a tractor-trailer rig. The idea is to plant one of these puppies anywhere Google owns access to fiber, basically turning the entire Internet into a giant processing and storage grid.

6.     6- The giant Google PC will be able to run Office applications, deliver Internet TV, and perform transactions. "Where some other outfit might put a router, Google is putting an entire data center, and the results are profound". The data center will be close to you, so the latency will be reduced, you don't need to install anything, the service is free, it works fast and it requires only a Google Account.

7.      7- Google retains a lock on the biggest slice of the Web search market, sometimes to the surprise of observers. Over the company's seven-year life, Internet users have typed billions of words and questions into the company's small, spare rectangular search bar.

8.      8- And Google's (GOOG ) share has only widened in the last 18 months. Since its IPO last year, Google's share of U.S. searches inched up to 37% of the market, while its profits exploded more than sixfold, to $343 million.

9.     9-  Messrs Brin and Page came up with what was for some time the best algorithm for searching web pages.

10. 10- Eric Schmidt, whom they hired as chief executive in 2001, figured out how to “monetise” Google's popularity by selling small and unobtrusive advertisements on related topics, so-called “sponsored links”, alongside the search results.

Threats of Google

Many comments dealt with Google’s weakness and the possible threat’s to Google’s market dominance . we are now trying to identify these threats and weaknesses.

There are 4 types of threats and weaknesses have been identified .

1. legal threats

·         Antitrust suits against Google

·         Copyright infringement suits

2. internal weakness

·         Inability to hire or retain key people

·         Inability to scale operational processes

·         Top management issues

3.strategic threats :

·         Acquisition difficulties

·         Competition  with incumbents

·         Disruptive innovations

·         Inability to control point of entry

4. other threats

·         Interruption or failure of Google’s services

·         Privacy concerns

Open source’s ecosystem threats 

Competitors of Google in 2010

Google is one name in the Technology arena that is well poised to rule. Talking of past decade, it’s been all the way up for Google and undoubtedly they have been ruling the internet economy. Google have had its impact in the industry with more than 150 products and will continue to grow with its ever increasing portfolio of the products. This is likely to happen but for these 10 companies which have posed some serious competition to Google.

1. Apple

Being from partners to rivals, Apple is one of the toughest opponents for Google in the year 2010. Today, Apple and Google have been locking their horns in the field of Smartphone, Mobile App Store, OS, Mobile Ad, and Online Music and so on. Likewise, Apple is more than up to the task of battling Google in these areas as well as browsers, where Google Chrome competes against Apple Safari. But battle between will intensify, as the market for the digital music and SmartPhones is all set for growth in 2010. Google’s music search along with its partner MySpace and Pandora are looking to compete with Apple’s iTunes, which was the No 1 music retailer in United States in 2009. Further, Google’s Android will have tough time as Apple’s iPhones continues to grab hold of the market all round the globe.

2. Microsoft

Microsoft has one of the most dominant impact in the IT industry. So without a doubt it is Google’s biggest adversary in 2010 and these two giants will be locking their horns for market supremacy in areas such as search, collaboration tools and browsers. Talking of these two giants, Google has reigned as leaders in search, but with release of BING in May 2009, Microsoft has raised few questions amongst in Google’s management team. With features such as ranking search results based on relevancy to other users, Microsoft has linked Bing-related deals with Twitter, Facebook and Yahoo.

Microsoft have enhanced Bing, adding image search and mapping. But in response Google have unveiled real time search. In December, Google also added a photo search capability, a dictionary and a translator that finds relevant content in 40 languages. Entering 2010, Google still dominates search, with more than 70% of the market. Apart from search, the battle is likely to focus on cloud based collaboration tool.

Google Apps is designed to undercut sales of Microsoft products, including Exchange and SharePoint. Microsoft has responded with Office Web Apps, free Web-based versions of Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote that are due out in 2010. Last but not the least; the browser war between these two is giants are likely to heat up in 2010. So 2010 awaits the answer if ever so popular Microsoft’s premier browser’s market share could be brought down by Google’s Chrome.

3. Amazon

In 2009, Google’s effort of scanning millions of out-of-print books and incorporating them in online search did gain up some momentum and helped themselves to publish over 500000 digital books for free to customers of Sony Reader and Barnes & Noble Nook, which is due in January. Further, there claims of opening up Google Editions, an e-book store, has opened up new rivalry with Amazon.

Amazon with its Kindle e-book reader is one of the leaders in e-book reader’s market. The other area where Google is taking on Amazon is in cloud computing. Google’s Apps Engine, a newbie cloud computing platform that allows developers to create their own Web applications and run them on Google’s infrastructure will be competing with Amazon’s Elastic Computing Cloud (EC2) which has already grab hold of market with its several upgrade after its release in 2006. So it will be a great battle to watch when these two giants fight for market supremacy on Cloud computing and E-book readership.

4. Facebook

Facebook, probably the most popular stuff in the internet right now, has attracted 350 million active users in just six years and is subject of interest for the guys at Google too. In 2010, Google and Facebook rivalry is likely to heat up based on question that about the way people will find their information in future. With ever increasing use of social networking and the rise of Facebook, Google’s worry seems to be a viable one.

Orkut offers Google Friend Connect, a tool for Web publishers to add social networking content to their sites, in direct competition with similarly named Facebook Connect. Meanwhile, Facebook has sought out relationships with several arch-enemies of Google, including Microsoft and Yahoo. So its for sure that this battle is worth taking a note off in 2010.

5. Twitter

No doubt if Facebook is in rise, than it’s no difference with Twitter. If social networking is the way to go, then Google will certainly find Twitter in its way. Twitter, a micro-blogging site, has in a way revolutionized the way we communicate these days.

So, Google’s Friend Connect will face tough competitions for Twitter’s Connect in 2010 as Twitter looks to move up the rank in the areas of Social Networking. Other areas where these two find themselves competing are Real time search. Google’s real time search and Twitter’s will be trying to outperform each other in 2010. So, this battle will be a good one to watch for in 2010.

6. Mozilla

With release of Google Chrome, Google has stepped into ever so popular browse battle. Mozilla has been in the markets for years and now this step from Google is likely to create the conflict of interest between these two.

Of late, the war between the two has heated up even more. The battle has now gone to the default search. Mozilla now has shown intent to kick Google out from its default search engine status. The latest rumours on the internet show that Mozilla is now eyeing to get a deal with Microsoft to make Bing as its default search engine in Firefox.

This may not impact Google immediately but eventually this move, if comes true, is likely to decrease Google’s share of the search market. Hence, Google now has Mozilla on a double war zone; first the obvious browser war and now the war over default searches.

7. Yahoo

When it comes to search, one of Google’s biggest competitors besides Microsoft is Yahoo. Yahoo has been in the market with variety of products in areas of email, Messenger, News, Search and Analytics services. So without doubt it will be a fearsome competitor for Google. In 2009, Yahoo made some improvements by integrating search with its rich content. Users can watch videos or stream music straight from the Yahoo search results page.

Yahoo also helps users find travel deals and compare product prices. Further, Yahoo has recently added Twitter to its search Page and if a joint search and advertising deal between Yahoo and Microsoft is approved by federal regulators, this could prove costly to Google. So the 2010 is the year to watch as other competitor look to outperform Google in the market with different joint forces being formed by their rivals.

8. Cisco

Google definitely has a tough challenge against Cisco. With years of experience on web based collaborative platfomr, WebEx, and superior VOIP service, Cisco poses a threat to Google’s Wave and Voice. In addition to this, Cisco also is looking to enhance its video conferencing quality by focusing on collaboration through intenret video, desktop video and consumer Telepresence.

In addition to this, Cisco’s presence in Cloud is another leading edge it has over Google. As Google is looking to take everything to the web, it certainly will face a good competition from Cisco on this front.

Moreover, according to Networkworld, Cisco is looking to enter into Smartphone market in the very near future (actually by mid-2010). Its recent acquisition of Pure Digital and Flip shows Cisco’s intent to take video to the mobile phone. Thus, we might see Cisco giving a hard time to Google’s Nexus One in the coming days.

9. IBM

By now it’s quite crystal clear that 2010 will the year where big internet giants will be trying to gain whole lot of market share that will be up for grab in areas of collaboration tools. So, 2010 is likely to reopen Google’s rivalry with IBM with the release of new collaboration tools such as Google Wave. Google has stepped into the battle field with its low cost hosted collaboration tools such as Google Apps. Google will compete against IBM’s Lotus Lives, which has attracted more than 2 million businesses in the last two years.

10. Nokia

Today, Nokia has had grab hold of the mobile phone market with 4 out of 10 mobiles sold. With increase in the use of smart phones, the IT giants Google will be in rivalry with Nokia in periphery of operating systems for Smartphones. Symbian Open source operating system will be competing with Google’s Android. Nokia with recent deals with Microsoft is all set to bring Office Mobile to Symbian devices. With claim of releasing improved version of Symbian in 2010 means Google Android will have to face tough battle. But, Google’s Android is poised for major developments in 2010 and with commitments from Acer, Sony Ericcson, HTC and Motorola, this will be a worthwhile battle to watch in 2010 and years to come.

So, at this point one may feel Google has tough battle to fight in 2010. Most of the arch rivals are gearing up to poise serious threats either single handed or with collaboration. So, 10 line ups of interesting battle is all set to keep the 2010 interesting enough for us to watch and keep the Google on their toes.

How does Google make money?

One of the question I often have to answer is: “How does Google make money?”. They don’t sell any product, everything you use from them is free and on top of that they seem to be very active in the “open source” community. So how the hell can they cash-in?

Advertisement

Advertisement, that’s how Google is making its money. Every time you do a search on Google, you’ve probably noticed that there was a section called “Sponsored Links”. Every time you click on one of those links, Google charge a certain amount of money to the website for the click. When you go on a website you’ll notice advertising from Google too. Daily Common Sense has ads from Google. Same thing happens here, when you click, Google charge a certain amount of money to the website you clicked on and part of that money is given to the webmaster publishing the ads. This is called AdSense and is an enormous source of income for Google.

How much does Google charge for a click?

The price advertisers pay for a click depends on a lot of factors and this is where Google is playing smart. They use some sort of bidding system. When you want to advertise with Google, you select keywords you are targeting. Let’s say I own an online guitar store and I want to bring potential customers to my website. I’m going to bid on the keywords “guitar” and “buy guitar” for example. The price I’m going to pay will depend if there is other companies bidding for that keyword. The more companies are fighting for a keyword, the more I’m going to pay for a single click to my website. The price can vary from 0.01$ to 100$ and more. Not to bad for a click hey? You can imagine that for highly competitive keywords like finance and health it can cost quite a lot of money for a company to advertise with Google.

No production cost

Google doesn’t sell any tangible product and that’s the beauty of their business. They sell something that doesn’t really exist. They really sell traffic. It mostly comes down to this: They get paid for sending traffic to other websites. That’s why Google seems to be everywhere now: They have to show substantial growth to their stakeholders and to do that they have to drive more and more traffic to provide more and more advertisement. That’s also the reason they’ll be jumping in the cell phone industry, so they can make a bit of money from all the web traffic that next generation cell phones are going to drive in the next couple of years.

The history of Google

Google began in 1996 as a project by Larry Page and Sergey Brin. Larry and Sergey were both studying at Stanford University California. In their research project they came up with a plan to make a search engine that ranked websites according to the number of other websites that linked to that site (and ultimately came up with the Google we have today). Before Google, search engines had ranked sites simply by the number of times the search term searched for appeared on the webpage, and the duo set out to make a more "aware" search engine.

The domain google.com was registered on September 14th 1997 and Google Corporation was formed a year later in September 1998.

Google started selling advertisements with its keyword searches in 2000, and so Google Adwords/Adsense was born. These advertisements used a system based on the pretence that you only paid for your advertising if some clicked on your ad link – hence the term Pay Per Click (PPC) was born.

The term PageRank was patented in September 2001 – this term is actually named after co-founder Larry Page and not, as some think, named because it is the rank of a page (webpage).

Also in 2001 co-founder Larry Page stood down as the CEO of Google and former CEO of Novel. Eric Schmidt. was appointed as the new CEO of Google.

Google moved its offices to its large Google estate (nicknamed GooglePlex) in Mountainview California in 2003, and is still based there today.

In 2004, Google launched its own free web-based email service, known as Gmail. This service was made to rival the free online mail services supplied by Yahoo and Microsoft (hotmail). This new free email service shook up the very foundation of free email with its enormous 1 GB of email storage which dwarfed its rivals' ten-fold.

In 2004 Google launched Google Earth. Google Earth is an amazing creation that is a map of the earth based on satellite imagery. This interactive globe of the world allows you to type in a search for any place in the world and you will automatically be taken to that part of the world. The cool part is that with Google Earth you can zoom right in to street level and actually see your own street and even your house!

An interesting fact in the history of Google is that in September 2005, Google made a new partnership with a very interesting company - NASA. This involved building a 1-million square foot research and development centre at NASA's Ames Research Center. This was interestingly followed a few months later by the launch of Google Mars and Google Moon: two Google maps style applications built on pictures of the moon and the planet Mars.

In 2006 Google launched Google Video. Google Video is a cool new search tool. As its title suggests Google video allows you to search the internet for videos. There are thousands of videos to make your search from; from personal homemade videos to TV shows made by the big television corporations.

In 2006 Google was added to the Oxford English dictionary as a verb – the verb "to Google" has become so popular that Google has even been worried that their brand name might lose their copyright and patent protections, and allow other companies to be able to legally use the Google brand in their own brand.

Today (Article written end of 2006) Google has a dominant controlling share of the search market. Google is the most widely used search engine on the internet with a 54% market share. Yahoo! Is Google's closest rival with 23%, less than half of Google's share, and MSN even falls far short of Yahoo!, lagging far behind in 3rd place with a 13% market share. If these figures aren't impressive enough for Google, independent estimates say that more than 80% of search referrals come from Google - Google receives about a billion search requests per day – and with estimates that Google makes 12 cents for every search you perform, you can see that Google corporation is a very lucrative business!

With the many many applications and products that Google has 

brought out, and the control it has over the internet it is 

possible that Google will become a very very influential part 

of all of lives in years to come.