A couple of months ago, I laid out Google’s emerging strategy to compete with everyone and everything, and to do it all solo. Unlike competitors (even large ones such as Microsoft and Facebook) that must ally to compete with Google, the Big G is determined to fight everyone and win.
All of which is cool. But the question is, “Can Google pull it off?”
For any other company, you’d quickly conclude that these ambitions are completely out-sized to their capabilities. I mean, who could afford such a strategy? Um, Google can.
Google’s core advertising business throws off more cash than the giant even knows what to do with. Google can decide that it wants to win the social network race, so it can toss cash into Google Wave, Google Buzz, and now Google+–just keep throwing social networks at the wall until one sticks.
So, Google has the money–in fact, they have a lot of cash around, which is not always the sign of success. Sometimes wallowing in cash is the sign of a company that does not know how to invest its cash any better than having it sit in the bank. Sometimes it is a sign that money is coming in so fast that management doesn’t know what to do with it.
Which brings us to the point.
It might be possible that Google can spend enough money to hire enough people to do everything that Sergey and Larry want to do, but are there enough ideas? Can management’s attention be spread this thin? Can even those Google geniuses manage all of these different initiatives?
I’ve worked for and with many large companies. Google is starting to show signs of big company disease. You can find your own examples, but does anyone really know why Google needs to have the Android and the Chrome operating systems? I mean, one runs phones, the other runs computers, and, uh, they both run tablets. What’s wrong with this picture?
Since Larry Page ascended to the CEO chair, he’s garnered much praise from eliminating failing projects to bring needed focus to Google. But the number of projects he has not eliminated would choke a horse–even a Clydesdale like Google. With Microsoft, Facebook, Apple, Amazon, and other companies all starting to encroach on each others’ businesses, it will be interesting to see if even the seemingly endless resources of Google will be enough to maat even one-third of the ideas they have on the board.
My money is on Google having an impact, but ultimately being only part of the ecosystem, eventually needing to partner with other companies to win in new areas. What do you think?
