Oh My God! They Killed Google!

As you probably know by now, I’m Swedish. About half of you, dear readers, are not. This means that I get to read some things that you cannot (at least without a sketchy Google translation). Among those things are most texts by Peter Wolodarski. That’s too bad for you, because Peter, who is the political editor of a large Swedish newspaper, has a mind as sharp as his pen. And that pen is pretty sharp.

Anyway, in this morning’s newspaper, Peter wrote about Google and their rise to almost unsurpassable power. He writes about how it has similarities with what we saw in Microsoft a decade earlier, and how there is great danger in such concentration of power.

Now, for full disclosure, I love Google. I think they deserve my love and I think that what they have achieved in terms of using the world’s resources more efficiently is astounding. I’m one of those who could pretty much live my online life, as Peter writes, through Google products alone. But of course, being a firm believer in free markets and healthy competition, I also see the dangers Peter writes about. Having one overwhelmingly strong player dominating a market is just not good for us in the long run. Power corrupts, but also, overwhelming power makes the holder lazy.

But let’s look at why this happens? Is it a coincidence that we’ve seen two empires of this caliber rise in just two decades (yes, I know Microsoft is older, but the severity of the power imbalance peaked in decade 0-10 B.G, Before Google). I think not. What we are seeing here is the efficiency of digital communications technology in action. Microsoft’s grip on the market was in some ways built on old business logic, with Explorer bundled with Windows for example. But the counterattack (by Mozilla/Firefox) could not have happened without the web. Competing with Microsoft’s distribution would just not have been feasible.

Same thing goes for Google. Since all it’s products (well, almost all) are web based, distribution is lightning fast, as long as the products are good enough. The market, in essence, becomes super efficient. Is that perhaps why we can see enormous empires rise at these unprecedented speeds? I think so. Because as a good product spreads by lightning speed, it reinforces itself, and iterates itself to gianthood. This is how Google conquered the world. But will they retain their ownership, become corrupted and get lazy? I’m doubt it. Because just as fast as they have risen, somebody else can rise. And when somebody else rises, they can hit you from all kinds of angles. Have you ever thought about for instance how the rebel browser Firefox, the browser that smacked Microsoft’s “unbeatable” Explorer on the head, is financed? Through donations? Well – yes – about 20% perhaps. But the other 80% are financed by, you guessed it… Google! It’s what they pay for putting their search engine as the standard one in the top right corner.

So while one can certainly be worried about the power and potential corruption of Google, there is still a kind of terror balance in the world. What Google needs to worry about and make sure they stay ahead of is not any visible opponent. It’s the invisible potential opponent which lies still latent in the mind of some brilliant and defiant young kid who will not let himself be bought. Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg being of course the outstanding example of such talent in developed state.

If the power of Google was unquestionable and absolute, Facebook wouldn’t have happend, we would all be using Orkut now instead. The same goes for Twitter, we would all have been using Jaiku (remember?). Both Facebook and Twitter reached the tipping point of exponential growth and became unstoppable for the same reason Google became unstoppable. And this is what we’ll be seing more of in the future. There is no way to stop this wave. All we can do is ride it like hell.