Inside the Black Box
THESE days, Google seems to be doing everything, everywhere. It takes pictures of your house from outer space, copies rare Sanskrit books in India, charms its way onto Madison Avenue, picks fights with Hollywood and tries to undercut Microsoft's software dominance.
Context & Ripple Effects
Google’s continuing search-engine adjustments sit alongside a broader push into mapping imagery, book digitization, advertising, entertainment disputes and software. The significance is not any one product: Google is placing its search business in direct contact with several incumbent industries at once.
First-order effects
- Microsoft faces a more direct challenger as Google seeks to extend its reach into software, while Hollywood confronts Google as a counterpart in content disputes.
- Madison Avenue gains a larger Google presence, and Google’s imagery and digitization efforts widen the company’s role in organizing physical places and published material.
Second-order effects
- Google’s expansion forces Microsoft, Hollywood and advertising firms to contend with a company whose search audience can support moves into their adjacent markets.
- Publishers and rights holders face greater pressure to define how digitized works and entertainment content can be used by a company building services across search, media and advertising.
Third-order effects
- If this multi-market strategy holds, competition will increasingly turn on control of the systems that locate, digitize and monetize information, rather than on search quality alone.
The trend: Google is evolving from a search provider into a cross-market information platform, bringing its audience and data capabilities into software, media and advertising.