Market Impact of Google :

Google has been a name of fear in several fields of worlds

market. Since its birth it has been growing rapidly and expanding
its territory in different market areas. This company has gained
enormous power in terms of money and technology that it can
enter in to any market it wants and then take the lead of that
particular market in a very short time. For example, this company
had nothing to do with automobile industries before. There were a
lot of well-established automobile industries like BMW, Mercedes,
GM, Ford, Volkswagen and Porsche etc. However, Google has
come with the idea of self-driving cars on highway road which is
projected to be the successful investment for Google in near
future which means this is a threat to all other existing automobile
industries .On the other hand, Googles monopoly in advertising is
also matter of concern for the regulators as well as its
competitors.

Impact on competitors:
Search Engines:
Google became the Internets biggest company by dominating
what has become the webs biggest market segment online
search and paid text links. Google claims a dominating 56%
market share in search (Nielsen/NetRatings, May 2007) , but that
hasnt stopped dozens (probably hundreds) of companies from
trying to grab a piece of the action. Most of the major search
engines also come with their own advertising system, while a few
startups actually rely on Google to serve up paid text ads. The
competitors of Google as a search engines are Yahoo, MSN,
Ask.com, Eurekster, Quintura, Mahalo, Powerset, Wikisari etc .
Image Search - In addition to text queries, Google faces a variety
of competitors in image search, including all of the usual suspects
plus upstarts like Pixsy, Picsearch, and Yotophoto. Google proved
victorious in a court battle over the thumbnailing of images.
Though less than a decade ago Yahoo owned search, the current
era of search is for google. Google is always innovative in search

and it will continue to be doing so because of the competition and

well-funded start-ups .

Advertising
With AdWords the most dominant player in paid search, Google is
looking to take the same system of aligning buyers and sellers to
other forms of advertising, including web banner ads, radio, print,
and mobile. Through acquisitions and several homegrown initiatives,
the company is now lined up against dozens of other companies competing for ad
dollars both online and off.
Contextual Advertising
Thousands of companies have built a business around Googles contextual
advertising platform that matches text ads to web site content. While AdSense
dominates this market, all of the big players have competing offerings, as well as a
few specialty outfits. In its most recent quarter, AdSense accounted for $1.35
billion in revenue for Google.
Until someone proves they can pay more than Google and still make a profit,
AdSense will likely be the preferred contextual ad provider for Web publishers.
However, there are only so many ads to go around, so there is also a place for
competitors with strong offerings.
Online Display Advertising
With its acquisition of DoubleClick in April, Google set off a buying spree in the
online ad space. In the weeks that followed, Yahoo snapped up Right Media,
Microsoft bought aQuantive, and 24/7 Real Media was taken out by WPP Group.
In addition to the DoubleClick purchase, Google has increasingly been integrating
graphical advertising into its AdSense platform for web publishers. While it
remains to be seen how exactly Google will integrate DoubleClick, the company is
positioned to take a big slice of the online display advertising market, alongside the
competitors:

Right Media Acquired by Yahoo for $680 million, Right Media offers web
publishers both a web-based ad management system and a marketplace called
RMX Direct where advertisers can compete for publisher inventory.
aQuantive The biggest acquisition in the history of Microsoft, aQuantive is the
parent company of several online advertising outfits, including Razorfish, Atlas,
and drive. The company offers both technology for managing advertising and
services for aligning buyers with web publishers.
Advertising.com AOL was actually one of the first big players to move in on
display ad networks, acquiring Advertising.com in 2004 for $435 million, a steal
given the price tags of recent online advertising deals. Advertising.com claims their
network of publishers reaches more than 85% of online users.
Value click The biggest remaining independent ad network, Valueclick owns a
wide variety of online ad properties, including Fastclick (banner ads), Commission
Junction (affiliate advertising), and PriceRunner (comparison shopping). Wall
Street currently values the company at $3 billion.
Tribal Fusion Tribal Fusion is an ad network serving an estimated 19 billion
monthly impressions. They provide advertisers with a variety of topical channels
on which to target their ads.
24/7 Real Media A provider of both technology and one of the Webs largest
banner advertising networks, 24/7 Real Media was acquired by global advertising
agency WPP Group in May for $649 million. The company was founded all the
way back in 1994.
DoubleClick works with most of the webs largest publishers, providing Google
with new relationships to not only sell display ads, but increase AdWords usage.
Googles main competitors have tried to keep up, but the company has clearly
positioned itself to take the lead in this category.
Other Ad Formats Broadcast, Print, In-Game
In print, Google has extended its AdWords platform to allow internet user to bid on
ads in major newspapers. In broadcast, Google acquired dMarc, a company that
aligns radio advertisers and stations. For in-game advertising, the company
acquired AdScape, a small startup. Competitors abound in all three segments,

primarily in the form of the status quo of buying ads directly from the newspapers
and radio stations with whom users want to advertise. As the manufacturer of
Xbox, Microsoft has a leg up on in-game advertising. Meanwhile, print and
broadcast are notoriously slow to adopt new technologies, so it will likely take
Google some time to gain traction in this area, although acquiring dMarc certainly
gave them a head start. With Google clearly intent on spreading its advertising
platform to the offline world, more acquisitions are likely in the space.

Video
Google responded to the rather lackluster performance of homegrown Google
Video by purchasing market leader YouTube for $1.6 billion in November 2006.
While Google also inherited the legal headaches including a $1 billion lawsuit
from Viacom, the purchase instantly made Google the #1 player in online video by
a landslide. Nonetheless, dozens of companies have received funding in this space,
and the other big players have also launched competing products:
While Google will spend plenty of time in the court room over copyright issues on
YouTube, the company has the financial strength to fight off just about any lawsuit
thrown its way and preserve a dominant position in online video. Meanwhile, niche
players like Blip.tv have an opportunity to take advantage of the growing market
for high quality user generated content.
Blogging
Google was ahead of the game with blogging, acquiring Pyra Labs, parent
company of Blogger, back in 2003. Last month, Google acquired FeedBurner,
which is far away the dominant player in RSS feed management. Rounding out
Googles efforts to dominate the blogosphere is Blog Search, which the company
developed in-house. While FeedBurner is the industry standard for feed
management, there are dozens of blog software and search options. News out of
Blogger has been nearly non-existent since Google acquired it, and Blog Search is
not nearly as reliable as Googles main search engine. FeedBurner is dominant in
RSS, but advertisers still have plenty of options for feed-based advertising. The
blogosphere remains a healthy area for competition.

Mobile
Recently making headlines with its purchase of GrandCentral, mobile is an area
Google has had its eyes on for a while. Google Labs features GOOG411, which
goes up against a variety of companies looking to transition paid 411 services into
an advertising-based model, while the company has also made acquisitions in the
space including AdScape Media and Dodgeball.
Adoption of the mobile Internet in the US trails Europe and Asia, leaving the space
wide open. Yahoo has a head start here, while specialists like InfoSpace and the
VoIP value-added service companies know the market better than anyone.
However, GOOG411 and Google SMS (search by text message) offer a compelling
user experience that is perfect for advertising.
Start pages
Google Personalized Home has become iGoogle, going up against the likes of My
Yahoo!, Netvibes, PageFlakes, and dozens of other companies that want users to
start their online experience with them.
If it wasnt clear already, iGoogle solidifies Googles quest to be more than a
search engine and take up more minutes of the users online time. While the
startups have proven most innovative in this space, Google can use its massive
reach and brand cache to convert users to iGoogle. However, Yahoo has the
advantage of more than a decade of start page experience, and convincing the
average user to invest a few hours in changing services isnt easy.
Communications
While Gmail dubiously maintains its Beta tag, Googles email service put the
company on the map in being much more than a search engine and going after the
big boys. The company has also launched Gtalk in an effort to join the instant
messaging space, though the product lags behind competitors in adoption.
Maintaining webmail and instant messaging services requires massive amounts of
manpower and hardware, making it for the most part a four-way race between the
big boys: Yahoo, Microsoft, and AOL.
Google is a serious player in communications. The other three players have a head
start thanks to longevity, but Gmail has become the email provider of choice for

professionals, thanks to a clean interface, effective spam filtering, and offering the
most storage space. Meanwhile, Gtalk faces a slightly bigger challenge, since users
have entrenched buddy lists with the other services that make changing a hassle.
Social Networking
While it can be argued that YouTube is one of the worlds biggest social
networking sites in addition to being the #1 video site, Google has been relatively
quiet in the space. Friendster passed on a rumored $30 million Google bid back at
the dawn of the social networking boom, while homegrown Orkut has enjoyed
some success, primarily in South America. Readers of Mashable are no strangers to
the hundreds of social networks looking to gain users, or at least, get acquired by
Google. Facebook The hottest social network of 07, Yahoo reportedly passed on
buying Facebook for $1 billion last year, a bargain by todays standards. With the
Facebook Platform all the rage right now and an advertising deal with Microsoft,
Google may be starting to feel it backed the wrong horse
MySpace News Corp made the savvy purchase of MySpace for $580 million
back in 2005, just when the social networking leader was at the height of its
exponential growth. The site has lost its swagger to Facebook in recent months, but
still remains the biggest by far.
Bebo Extremely popular in the UK, Bebo has been on the rise in 07. It has also
been the subject of acquisition rumors with Yahoo. The site receives praise for its
privacy options.
AIM Pages AOL made the logical move of extending AIM to include social
networking through AIM Pages, enjoying moderate but not phenomenal success.
Windows Live Spaces Microsofts social networking play is very youth-oriented,
providing simple blogs and profiles to MSN users.
Yahoo! 360 Yahoos biggest social networking effort has been criticized for not
doing enough to integrate other Yahoo services and overlapping too much with
other Yahoo products. The lack of success may be why Yahoo is always at the top
of the rumored buyers list when other social networks go up for sale.

The social networking space has proven fickle in its early history, with Friendster
the early leader, MySpace the current dominant player, and Facebook on the rise
looking to unseat MySpace. With YouTube already under its roof and one of the
deepest pocketbooks in the industry, Google can sit back and wait for the right time
to acquire one of the top social networks.
Photo sharing
Google was relatively early to jump on the photo sharing bandwagon with the 2004
acquisition of Picasa, but the service has since been surpassed by rivals that do a
better job of integrating with blogs and social networks. Here are the prime
players:
Flickr One of the darlings of Web 2.0, Yahoo deserves praise for acquiring Flickr
in early 2005 before valuations became far steeper. The site is a favorite of techies
and serious photographers, and is moving towards mainstream adoption as Yahoo
closes Yahoo Photos in favor of Flickr.
Photobucket By offering a free place to store photos that can be embedded on
social networks, Photobucket became one of the most highly trafficked sites on the
Web. While MySpace briefly blocked Photobucket, it recently decided to acquire
the company for an estimated $250 million.
Zooomr This startup receives a lot of hype, but is also becoming the choice of
some high end photographers and giving Flickr some competition. We compared
the two in Face-off: Flickr versus Zooomr Mark III after Zooomrs latest round
of enhancements.
BayImg The Pirate Bay provides free uncensored image hosting for files up to
100MB. Given the big players need to appease advertisers by removing offensive
content, its an interesting alternative that has some traction.
With a fairly dominant image search product, Google doesnt really need to move
into the high maintenance area of photo storage and sharing. However, with the
company expanding into display advertising, which is favored on many photo
sharing sites, Google may become interested should the right company become
available.

Office suit
With the acquisition of Writely, which has since been merged into Google Docs &
Spreadsheets, and the launch of a PowerPoint competitor imminent, version 1 of
the Google office suite is nearly complete. While the company has a long way to
go to match the feature set of the ever dominant Microsoft Office, it has Redmond
moving fast to market web-based versions of its core products. Several startups are
also working on word processing, spreadsheet, and presentation software to
compete with Microsoft.
Microsoft With Word, Excel, Powerpoint, and Outlook the entrenched franchises
of nearly every personal computer on earth, Microsoft Office is a mighty foe to
take on. While it is by no means Googles core business yet, they are clearly
putting pressure on Microsoft to remain innovative in the office arena.
Zoho This well-funded startup has a full office suite of its own, with products
including Zoho Writer, Zoho Sheet, and Zoho Show. Many of the companys
products are free.
Open Office The free, open source office project that originates with Microsoft
foe Sun Microsystems includes word processing, spreadsheets, presentations and
more, and is designed to be compatible with as many operating systems and
programs as possible.
Microsofts dominance in office software stems from dominance in operating
systems, a market it still controls. However, Google Docs & Spreadsheets'
webbased, collaborative approach is very lightweight and useful for certain tasks.
While it will take years to build a product that offers the full functionality of
Microsoft Office, Google is the best-positioned company by far to build a viable
competitor if it wants to.
Reference: www.mashable.com

Impact on Regulators:
The European Commission escalated its five-year investigation of the tech giant
this week by formally charging the company with more prominently displaying
Google Shopping services over those of other e-commerce sites on its search
engine, which allegedly damages competition. Europes antitrust regulator also

opened a separate investigation into whether Google is thwarting competition in

the mobile sector by pressuring companies to use its Android operating system.
Google has 10 weeks to respond to the charges.
If the investigation confirms the tech giant violated competition law then Google
would have to face the legal consequences and change the way it does business in
Europe, said a press release from European Union Competition Commissioner
Margrethe Vestager.
The cases have wide-ranging implications because Googles services are used by
millions of people. Googles Android operating system was used by 81 percent of
the smartphone market in 2014, according to the International Data Corporation
market research firm.
If Google is found guilty then oversight from the European Union may stifle the
development of software for devices using Android, but regulators could also make
it easier for certain sites to get more attention on the tech giants search engine. If
regulators fail to prove Google broke European antitrust laws then the governing
body may decide to create new rules to govern its networks, which could
complicate the development of Internet services between the U.S. and Europe.
The European Commission may have not be able to prove Google has broken
antitrust law, however, giving the tech company a good chance to successfully
appeal the case, says Frank Fine, senior counsel at DeHeng law offices in Brussels.
There are competing search engines available from companies like Apple and
Microsoft, so regulators may not be able to prove Google search is an essential
facility or that the free search engine is a marketplace under Europes antitrust
law, says Fine, who heads his firms antitrust practice.
Reaction of Google:
In 2013 Google avoided an antitrust investigation in the U.S. by voluntarily taking
measures such as loosening its advertising and patent licensing policies. European
regulators have rejected the tech giants previous offers to make voluntary changes
to its search engine and the company is likely to wait for a chance to appeal the
case rather than make another offer.
The case with European regulators may also pressure the company into slowing its
operations, including acquisitions of startups that could help it develop new

products, says Scott Kessler, head of Technology Sector Equity Research at S&P
Capital IQ. Regulatory scrutiny of Google slowed its purchase of device maker
Motorola Mobility in 2012 because of concern that it would enable the tech giant
to dominate the mobile sector, Kessler explains.
Google in a blog post has vowed to make its case against European regulators in
the coming weeks.
Google displays advertisements and links to its own services on its search engine,
and if that process is artificially abused that can damage competition- Vestager.
Abusing a search engine can mean other businesses and consumers may not
necessarily see the most relevant response to the search results .
Reference : http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2015/04/17