Google?s results have beaten analysts? projections. It has reported a 25% jump in net revenues for the third quarter. For the first time, the search giant has also responded to Wall Street calls for declaring how its newer businesses like mobile and display advertising are doing. This is, however, a strictly one-off disclosure. Android, for example, is reported to be ?wildly successful?. The cute way in which Google gave Android away for free (which meant that the likes of Motorola and LG embraced it) will ultimately translate into users using more of Google?s mobile search applications.
This is an uncanny echo of how the Google search engine took off. It rocketed by offering information for free on the Internet and then started placing adverts beside the search results, which was not only a path-breaking revenue model but also one that remains the mainstay for the Google business. But what with the likes of Google TV, Google Health (which digitises medical records), Google Earth and Google Books grabbing an increasing number of headlines, some analysts fear that the company is diverging too much from its core business. The latest results suggest that, whatever Google is doing, it?s doing it right. But it?s becoming undeniably gargantuan.
There is a simple reason why Goliaths are unpopular. As a former Porsche boss wrote in The David Principle, giants tend to think they can simply flatten all around them and still thrive away. On the flip side, there are certain goods that only giants seem to be able to deliver. Google is interesting as its cool identikit has obviously been constructed in David?s image (replete with the catchy battle cry, ?Don?t be evil?), but it is obviously morphing into a Goliath now. While the company?s core search engine strength remains inviolate, it has been making muscular inroads into many other spaces.
By announcing a Google Price Index (GPI) this week, for example, the company appears to be taking on one of the most well-cocooned layers of US federal bureaucracy. With its army of online bytes, it promises to provide a real-time account of consumption practices. When the GPI is published, prepare for a battle royale that may put the privacy wars in the shade. This is no David we are watching any more. Yet, without the expansive reach and revenues to which it now lays claim, it?s doubtful that Google would have taken on China as it did earlier this year. After all, the only other entity to have performed an equivalent feat is the Nobel committee!
Also, think net neutrality. Netizens the world over have hitherto assumed that every packet of data will be treated the same way. This key principle is now under threat. Ironically taking shelter under the David mantle, counter-agents argue that open-access requirements damage the incentive to build newer, faster networks. Bearing in mind that the larger firms already enjoy faster Web access by bypassing the public Internet, what will happen when this battle gains ascendancy? Wouldn?t you like to have Google on your side? And this would only be because of its Goliath powers. Because what Google does, other players would also be likely to embrace. At that point, then, its giantness could actually answer the common man?s demands.
To focus on GPI for a bit, there is no doubt that the consumer data that Google could churn out whenever it decided to do so would be nippy like lightening. Time-lag wouldn?t be an issue. The company has already been publishing some findings concerning the physical world. To take one example, its researchers have tracked real time queries about flu outbreaks and passed these on to Nature. To take a second one, US government data on recession receding has been challenged by people tracking Google Trends pertaining to searches for ?food stamps?, ?I need a job? et al.
Google is now funding wind farms, electric cars, self-driving cars, trips to the moon, genetic profiling and who knows what else. The world has never known such a company. Zeus himself would have a hard time making sense of it.
?renuka.bisht@expressindia.com