Google is a huge Internet business. They are most famous for their Google search engine which is by far the most popular in the world (with over 70% of searches in most jurisdictions). Users have become attached to the clean, functional home page which simply contains the word Google (sometimes holidays are celebrated with a funky, artistic version of this logo) and a search box. Logged in users are sometimes presented with additional tools at the top but it’s a far cry from the huge amount of news, photos and other advertising ‘web portals’ such as Yahoo! present to their users along with the search bar.
As their search dominance has settled and further growth would prove challenging, Google has moved to become dominant in other areas of Internet commerce and is already the dominant player in online advertising (AdWords) and a huge player in e-mail, social networking, maps and local business search. Their documents platform threatens the incumbent Office and cloud operators making Google one of the most powerful e-commerce firms in the World.
Challenges to marketers caused by this dominance are many. The biggest is the ever increasing amount of search real estate that is taken up by Google’s paid advertising blocks and their own web applications. Check out any local search these days and the organic results are buried below the local map widget that Google has coded. Yahoo! Finance is critically acclaimed as one of the best finance portal’s online but searches for share prices will often result in Google’s own widget, graph and link showing in preference. As time goes on, marketers can expect further encroaches onto territory they would have previously controlled with their websites.