Google: your supplier, your utility or your one and only customer?

While you have been having fun thinking up SoMe, I’ve thinking about something much more dry or serious.

We all know that Microsoft landed in the court facing charges of monopoly. Google will be there eventually too, not because they are bad or evil, but because our economic system requires us to keep an eagle eye on the “big boys”.

While monopoly is illegal in our system, hegemony is not. At the NLabNetworks meeting in Leicester a few weeks ago, CJ asked a good question. If you could only have three social media tools, which ones would you choose? I was amused that no one listed Google. We are so accustomed to Google that we forget it is there. Go out onto the streets and ask people where Google gets its money from. People will be puzzled, not because they don’t know, but because they never thought to ask. That’s hegemony. Not only are we big and successful, but everyone assumes our way is the right way of doing things.

So how has this affected your business?

We all use Google, to be sure. Its a great way to brainstorm and make up a short list. What I mean is how has Google changed your business model and are those changes good for you in the long term?

It seems to me that Google is no longer supplier or even utility. It has become a customer. The one and only customer. Everything we do is geared up to pleasing Google, getting Google’s attention, and looking like Google.

Is Google even a utility? Or is it just a service on the utility of internet? Will Google come and go like other great firms, but a little faster, because on the internet firms come and go more quickly?

So what is the alternative? I’ll point you to a post which prompted this thinking and try to put my money where my mouth is on Thursday.

July 29, 2008 | Filed Under Jo Jordan, Uncategorized | Leave a Comment