eWeek : Google’s Strategy to Be Everything to Everyone = FAIL

eWeek has posted an interesting perspective on Google’s (true) business model. Some people call it innovation whereas this article calls it sort of the 1000 routes to advertising …

… Do you fear Google has its ladle in too many drinking wells online, so much so that it had diluted the company’s quality? Are Google’s only strengths search and advertising? These are important questions whose answers may well determine the company’s future.

Jean-Louis Gassée, general partner for Allegis Capital normally focuses on the mobile ecosystem, but he has just published a nifty little analysis of Google’s strategy of being everything to everyone, or as he calls it less eloquently: "Google’s SOE (Strategy of Everything)."

Gassée compares Google’s variegated Web services buckets as a periodic table. Actually, he uses Google’s own API/code table to make his argument:

Google periodic table.png
Click to view Google Periodic Table of Web Services

The breadth of Google’s Web coverage is as astounding as it is fallible. I believe Gassée is correct when he observes that quality falls when companies try to fill too many gaps in the ecosystem. More on that later. Let’s look at Google’s raison d’etre, as Gassée added this salient point:

Google’s one and only goal is to sell advertising. The path to this goal requires ”radiation pressure”: Google wants to make sure we don’t escape their ads. They want to insert themselves into all aspects of our lives, to find out much as they can about as many aspects, activities, and relationships as possible.

Continue at source : eWeek.com