Robin Good: If you haven't read Tom Foremski take on Google strategy earlier on this year, he is back with more info and an even more comprehensive report. He writes:
"I haven’t come across any analysts or journalists looking into this major shift in Google’s business strategy.
I haven’t seen any financial analysts explaining how Google has been able to grow revenues so quickly — yet some of the answers are hiding in plain sight — in Google’s financial reports.
Google’s strategy is to set itself up as the largest affiliate and displace the hundreds of thousands of small businesses that make money from affiliate marketing.
It wants to be the main affiliate for online sales of branded products and that’s why its organic search results heavily favor large companies — the brand owners.
But this strategy comes at a significant cost — lost jobs as it displaces the smaller firms. It’s not a cost to Google but it is to society.
That’s not a good scenario in today’s hard economic times, it’s a PR nightmare for Google to be seen as anti-small business and causing job losses.
...
Google is also working hard to keep the US government out of its business.
This year it dramatically stepped up its lobbying efforts, hiring more firms and spending a record amount on political influence.
Jessica Guyen reported in the The Los Angeles Times:
Google spent $5.9 million from Jan. 1 through Sept. 30, a 51% jump from a year ago. To put that in perspective, Google spent $5.2 million total on lobbying last year.
Google has doubled its spending on lobbying in the last two years. It has also formed a political action committee to give donations to candidates and it has hired influential lobbyists such as Richard Gephardt, a former House Democratic leader.
So who will come to the aid of small businesses? By the time the government figures out what’s going on, and politicians extract themselves out of the pocket of lobbyists, it’ll be too late."
Informative, insightful. 9/10