Bill Gates, Woz (well, we know the other half of that partnership was a killer from the get-go), Larry and Sergey.
As Google winds its way through the regulatory maze once faced by Microsoft, IBM and others, one of the issues it faces in Europe is the charge that its search protocol essentially steals credit for work done by others. In an academic setting this would be called plagiarism and the culprit would lose both honor and his or her position. In business, this is called competition.
That Google has even offered this concession suggests that it recognizes some advantages are simply not worth the effort to maintain them. There is a school of thought - a powerful one, in fact - that says sharing credit strengthens both the brand and the prospects for business growth. The concept of a 'network effect' was at the heart of early internet growth strategy. By and large, it worked. But the more atavistic human desire to get bigger than the other guys soon took hold.
That strategy has continued to dominate. Sharing remains a central tenet of development, with the app phenomenon in mobile being perhaps the most recent successful manifestation. But credit or branding remains a contentious issue. One senses that Google realizes it has already won that battle so is now in a position to make concessions no longer crucial to its dominance - or its contest with Apple, Amazon, Facebook and others.
Whether this will be sufficient for European regulators or even be considered real remains to be seen. But the fact that Google is contemplating such a move provides insights into how the business marketing strategy continues to evolve. JL
Richard Waters and Alex Barker report in the Financial Times:
Google has made a bid to avoid an antitrust war with Brussels by offering to label information from its in-house services that are included in its search results pages, according to people familiar with the search giant’s submission. Under the proposal, Google would put its brand on any of its own maps, stock quotes, airline flight details or other pieces of information returned with search results. It is an attempt to resolve regulators’ fears that Google is unfairly squeezing out other specialist information services on the web.
However, the idea has drawn complaints privately from some of the company’s fiercest competitors, who said Google could still rob rivals of online traffic by promoting its own services more prominently than others.
“Google would still be able to put its competitors on page 35 [of its search results], so any solution would have to go much further,” said Ben Edelman, an associate professor at Harvard University and critic of the company’s search and advertising practices.
Some opponents have called on Google to subject its in-house services to the same search criteria as those applied to other sites on the Web, ensuring that it cannot unfairly corner the online audience.
The Google proposal was made in recent weeks in response to a call from Joaquín Almunia, the EU’s competition commissioner, for concessions that would address concerns raised in an investigation of the company that began nearly three years ago.
The talks remain in flux and it is unclear whether the detailed package of concessions will satisfy Mr Almunia. Although he agreed the broad outlines of a pre-charge settlement with Google, he recently warned they are “not there yet” and made it clear that negotiations could not drag on. A decision on formal charges is expected before the end of the year.
Google’s practice of injecting answers from its other services directly into prominent places in its search results pages – for instance, by putting a stock quote from Google Finance at the top of the page, where most users click first – is the thorniest of four issues that Mr Almunia singled out in May.
Other issues include practices that Mr Almunia said limited the ability of advertisers to move their advertising campaigns on to other search engines and the “scraping” of content such as user reviews from rival sites.
With more than 95 per cent of internet searches in Europe conducted on its site, the company’s dominance has made prominent placement in its search rankings a powerful determinant of success or failure for other online companies. For its part, the company has argued that it has no lock on its users, who are free to click on other services if they are unhappy with its service.
Google refused to comment on the labelling solution, but said: “We continue to work cooperatively with the European Commission.”
Whether Brussels pushes for more sweeping restrictions to Google’s preferential search practices is also being closely watched in the US, since any remedies could come to serve as a model if the Federal Trade Commission decides after its own investigation into similar concerns that Google breaches US law. A commission spokesperson declined to comment.
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