Friday, February 12, 2010

Google Changing into a Multinational Company

Google as A Trailblazer
Google has evolved a lot this past decade. Since it has started its business, revolutionizing the way information is consumed and boosting the Internet use, Google has always been a trailblazers in most the activities it set.

Even though it came into a populated market, like for instance the email account market, it changed users behaviour, by empowering emails account with extensive memory capacity, a great search engine, and an easy way to connect with other services, like instant messaging.

But now the Internet market is becoming mature, especially in the 1.0 aspect, where Google is a leader, with its search engine. Now, in order to seek for fast growth, they must go on some unknown market, and most of the time, already battle competition.

Google Expanding In New Markets

This is what happened with Google Android, where the smartphone market was already existing with major actors like Nokia, Blackberry, and that has already experienced a major change with the arrival of the Iphone.

Now I have seen that Google is launching Google buzz. The idea is to create a new Google experience, that will be empowered by instant information, usable whenever needed, especially thanks to mobile devices. The main idea is to counterattack Facebook and Twitter, which main interest is based on instant and close information.

But to be honest with you, I am not sure once more Google buzz will encounter a great success. Here are the main reasons why:
Google is entering a market far from its core know how. Google knows how to search and display information, that is for sure. But Google has never been a social platform.
Google is entering a fast growing market, yes, but it is facing companies that are already well settled on it, especially Facebook. What really matters in this market, is to get the critical mass that will allow the company to become a leader. The more people are using your social service, the more interesting it is becoming. And hence, if you are late, it is difficult to get back. And Google is late for sure.

Using traditional advertising for those kind of services has never shown any kind of success. Hence, Microsoft have tried several times to market products with TV and billboards advertising, but it doesn’t seem to work, especially to convince opinion leaders that play a key role in those kind of launches.

Google Adopting New Traditional Global Companies Processes
Actually, Google has become so huge, that it has totally changed the way it does business. Hence, it becomes to have global companies processes, even with marketing. Now Google to launch Google chrome in France used a massive billboard campaign in the metro, they start TV advertising. The problem that might come with this mid age crisis, is their ability to keep their pioneer mindset, and to keep going on with innovation, and not “fake innovation”, as mature international companies” often do.

What do you think about it? Do you really believe that Google has changed?