By Lisa Barone, Bruce Clay Consulting

Is Google Too Powerful?

If you’re asking yourself this question, you may as well just quit your bellyaching. It doesn’t matter how powerful Google is, which areas they’ve dominated and which ones they still have yet to conquer. Google’s not the point; you are, as are the decisions you make regarding your marketing campaigns.

Let’s be honest. Google is no longer just a search engine; they’re an agency service provider. Just accept that. It’s probably this change of focus that has people up in arms in the first place because advertisers and users feel almost lied to. Five years ago we were told that Google was a search engine and would organize all of the world’s information for us to make it easy to find. They were an engine that just dabbled in advertising. They even put it in their corporate philosophy: “Google does not do horoscopes, financial advice or chat.” However, today they’re everywhere and the natural tendency is to feel like Google is overtaking our lives. But they’re not.

Like I said, today Google is a service provider. They can promise and plead that their core agenda is still search, but it’s not. They’ve got search in the bag. They just bought their dominance in display advertising through DoubleClick, they’re strengthening radio through their partnership with Clear Channel Communications, they’re testing targeted TV ads, and they have a payment system in Google Checkout where advertisers and consumers can to go to pay for the Google services they’ve just invested in. They’ve basically created a clean Google circle.

But that doesn’t mean you have to live there. You have choices.

I don’t know if you’ve checked a calendar lately but it’s not the 1990s. We’re not living in the same era where one company ruled the entire industry and you didn’t have a choice in which products you used. There are alternatives to Google, but you have to be savvy enough to learn how to leverage them effectively. The question today isn’t how powerful Google is, it’s how you as a search marketer are going to deal with their presence. How will you structure your campaigns to get the most out of them given the current market? Will you become Google-loyal or will you find less-crowded avenues?

Google’s gotten a lot of flack lately; their competitors are even arguing for anti-trust investigations to be held. There’s one reason why the antitrust scrutiny is unwarranted — because Microsoft had the opportunity to buy DoubleClick. It’s that simple. All they had to do was outbid Google; they chose not to. It wasn’t an issue of money, Google just wanted it more. So instead of Microsoft controlling display advertising, now Google does. That’s not monopolization, that’s fair competition and simple business. You could break the rest of Google’s acquisitions down the same way.

And even though $3.1 billion was a lot to pay for DoubleClick, it was worth the investment. Google now gets all of DoubleClick’s data, they’ve strengthened their advertising efforts (which will equal into increased revenue), and better yet, they’ve blocked Microsoft from making the same deal. With DoubleClick, Google wraps up online search and advertising and can now focus their efforts on extending their off-line campaigns, like radio, TV, video and maybe even print. It’s not an issue of being too powerful or too monopolizing, it’s an issue of being smart.

But, let’s be fair, Google hasn’t been perfect. You can’t call Google “too powerful” because with the exception of search and online advertising, they’ve somewhat failed at everything else they’ve tried their hand. They failed at print, they failed with video ads, their first attempts at radio failed, and I know I personally don’t have too much faith in their launch into TV. Google’s still losing out to the big newspapers, the major cable stations, the radio advertisers, content producers, etc. Didn’t the creators of Dodgeball just quit because they felt Google wasn’t developing the service adequately? Didn’t the founders of dMarc resign for the same reason? There are just as many Google haters as there are Google supporters. This isn’t a company that’s “too powerful”. It looks more like a company still growing and trying to figure out what works.

You need to be doing the same thing. Decide what’s right for you.

Google’s an undeniable force. It’s very easy for marketers to use them as their one-stop-shop. If you feel like you only need to be in Google because of its strong hold on the market, then stop worrying about the other engines. If your traffic only comes from Google, maybe you don’t even need to spend your time worrying about Yahoo, Live.com and the other engines. Concentrate your efforts, both online and off, on Google. There’s nothing wrong with doing that, but you can’t do that and then complain Google is too powerful. You made the choice to make them your steady.

If you’re one of those people who feel Google is too powerful, then start branching off. Take the road less traveled. I don’t think you can’t get away with not optimizing your site for Google, but experiment with different online ad programs. Try out the new Panama platform or see what adCenter is all about. Online advertising doesn’t have to equate with AdWords.

If you’re running offline marketing campaigns, don’t sign up for Google’s TV beta or for their radio ads. Stick with the traditional forms of media. If you open your eyes, you’ll see that Google’s not the only game in town. They may be the strongest right now in some areas, but they’re not the all-powerful cyborg that people are making them out to be. And there is strength in numbers. If people stop using Google, their power will fade. Don’t worry about the power of Google, worry about the power of your campaigns and finding the tools that give you the most for your efforts.

Google is only as powerful as we allow them to be and can only be as powerful as the market can bear. They’ll reach their tipping point just like those who have come before them, they’re not invincible to that. I don’t agree with the bandwagon that Google has become too powerful. If you feel like you’re living in a Google World, it’s self-imposed captivity and it’s time for you to start break out and start determining what’s right for your marketing efforts.

Lisa Barone, an Senior Writer at Bruce Clay, Inc., a provider of search engine marketing services, and a writer for the Bruce Clay blog.

Tags: brain, exchange, google, doubleclick, contextweb

This entry was posted on Thursday, April 19th, 2007 at 7:42 am. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.