Fri, 31 Aug 2007 08:47:15 by Matt Hopkins

The Economist has a cover story on Google and the challenges it faces because of its incredible power and the speed at which it reached it.
The article discusses how despite its "do no evil" mantra, it is creating enemies - mostly from those who feel threatened:
Such an ascent is enough to evoke concerns-both paranoid and justified. The list of constituencies that hate or fear Google grows by the week. Television networks, book publishers and newspaper owners feel that Google has grown by using their content without paying for it. Telecoms firms such as America's AT&T and Verizon are miffed that Google prospers, in their eyes, by free-riding on the bandwidth that they provide; and it is about to bid against them in a forthcoming auction for radio spectrum. Many small firms hate Google because they relied on exploiting its search formulas to win prime positions in its rankings, but dropped to the internet's equivalent of Hades after Google tweaked these algorithms.
Despite a bit of criticism - the article calls Google arrogant (I've used this phrase myself at times) - it is also balanced. Pointing out that Google is more akin to a bank and the banking industry than it is to the software world in which it is usually placed as it has to deal with a new form of "treasure" (information) and similar privacy issues.
The main recommendation for the author is that Google needs to become more transparent and to stop hiding behind a "do no evil" mantra in which they are trying to convince the world that they are not "in it" for the money - only the "common good". Everyone knows that profits are on the agenda and that by being pretending otherwise could really backfire on them.
Matt Hopkins Managing Director |