Google really are 1 step ahead of any company online. Trust be they will be here and doing well as long as the Internet exists.
Even if they get end-users to Bing (which advertising will do), if users can't find what they are looking for there, they will then go to another search engine that can give them relevant results. And right now, Bing is no where remotely close to relevant (see this post). Google ended up crushing the search engine giant at the time (Yahoo) simply by giving relevant results, not by advertising. I have no personal tie to Google, and the *instant* another search engine starts giving me more relevant results for what I'm searching for, I would start using them more. Bing isn't that search engine imo.
Google has at least a decade left. I don't think one company is going to take them down overnight, or in a month, or a year. It will be a slow erosion of their services because of better options. Right now, search is largely a problem that can be solved with a lot of computing power, bandwidth to crawl, and the right algorithms to sort, store and recall. Google has all these things, and it would take any single company a long time to get the resources that google has. Even gmails spam filter (pretty much the only reason left to stick with gmail) is a product of these vast amounts of data google has been collecting.
The problem other competitors have with trying to "take down" Google is that Google actually does a very good job at most things... Search: As far as I'm concerned Google is absolutely the most relevant search engine and on top of that is years ahead of the closest competitor as far as features go. Advertising: Even if you take out the fact Google has 100x more advertisers than any other platform, the platform itself is very nice, easy to use and actually WORKS. Yahoo Publisher Network is the 2nd best platform and it's no where remotely close to AdSense for determining context of a page, features or ease of use (I consider myself relatively tech-savvy, and every time I think I'll give YPN another shot, I log into my YPN account and after 15m of frustration trying to actually DO anything, I just close it and decide I don't have the time to screw around with this any longer). Kind of funny YPN has to ask you what your pages are about (they can't figure out even how to determine true relevancy yet). Microsoft adCenter just flat out sucks and they can't even figure out how to make their site work with the common browsers yet. Microsoft pubCenter (their AdSense equivalent) has been in "beta" for many years now and they are in worse shape than YPN. If they could even figure out how to be semi-relevant, they would launch it. I'm sure upper management at Microsoft are fuming... not like they don't want to launch it. Email: By far the best free email platform out there imo. More features than anything else, more accessibility, more storage space, etc. Arguably their free version is better than other's paid versions. Did you know you can use the Gmail backend to host your company emails (no @gmail.com), for free? I do that for digitalpoint.com. Give me an admin interface for creating/managing all the email accounts within digitalpoint.com even. http://www.google.com/apps/intl/en/business/index.html Telephony: Google Voice is pretty freaking bad ass I must say. Microsoft doesn't have anything like this as far as I know. Blogging: Blogger is pretty nice (I don't use it, but it's nice for what it does). Does Microsoft even have anything like this? Maps: Google maps blows away Yahoo and Microsoft's mapping offerings. Projects: Google Projects is an amazing CVS system that Microsoft and Yahoo don't have a clue about. Video: Uh... ever hear of YouTube or Google Video? The #1 and #2 video sites owned by Google. Analytics: Google Analytics is an amazing free service built upon Urchin after they acquired the company. Microsoft and Yahoo have nothing like it. Mobile: I'd still put Google Android on par with Windows Mobile, but Google Android is growing faster than Windows Mobile, and look like they will overtake them soon. Browsers: Google Chrome is much better than Internet Explorer imo, although to be fair Google Chrome is built upon the Apple WebKit, so Apple should get some credit there too. And to be fair, I also think there are Google products/services that aren't that great... Social Networking: Orkut is well... stupid. Chat: MSN Messenger beats Google Talk imo. Google also has some very interesting things in the pipeline that could be good (or could be lame)... Google Wave and Google OS most notably. Microsoft (and anyone else) have a long, long, long... LONG way to go before they can catch Google. Advertising isn't going to do it... they need to actually make products/services that are better than Google's offering, which they haven't been able to do yet. As it is right now, Google could probably sit back and do absolutely nothing (which of course they won't do), and it would probably be 10 years before any company could start to get their offerings up to the quality of Google's. So yeah... for what they do, I'd say Google is about 10 years ahead of the others (and that gap has only been widening).
No, not really. They have some kind of web page / blogging app, but it sucks compared to blogger. There are some other companies that have a good hold in the hosted blogging space (like wordpress, squarespace, tumblr, and a few other high-end pay services) though. I think the other guys, especially the pay services, are superior to blogger in the quality of their products.
Right... I'm not saying Blogger is the best blogging platform out there (as I mentioned, I don't use it myself), but compared to the big companies that are gunning for Google (Microsoft, Yahoo, etc.) it's still the best Blogging platform offering.
Good write up Shawn. You do have to hand it to Microsoft though. Their original mission was "A computer on every desk and in every home, running Microsoft software!" They've had a good go at that and their Xbox 360 is (for me anyway) the best games console available today. Not bad for a college drop out that went from working in his garage with nothing... to eventually go on to create a multi-billion pound empire! Superior to Blogger? Don't be silly. Come back when your superior blogging platforms can hit the Alexa top 10.
Yeah, I'll give them credit where it's due... The Xbox is the best thing they've made to date. I even gave them credit for it in my robots.txt file (it's been there a long time, nothing I added because of this thread).
obviously, they have their own way that's why there this so called algorithm. also, users are the one responsible providing quality sites and stuffs, Google is just a medium to share it with everyone.
while microsoft doesn't have products to compete with Google, there are a ton of free apps out there that are better than what Google offers. And it's only a mtter of time before microsoft of someone else buys them up. Zoho is a fantastic set of free web based free apps apps that blow away everything Google has. Weebly is the most advanced 'drag and drop' blog/webpage creator I've ever seen. Most of Google's apps are beginning to look and act a little dated. They still has a huge lead on their competitors in the search engine department, but they better not rest on their laurels. I can see a company swooping in and picking up some of these more advanced apps and mounting a challenge.
I think that the big 2 or 3, plus maybe a few others, will be around for a while yet. I've never been one to go in for toys or eye candy ... and as a result, I've only just touched base with some of the offerings that Yahoo, MSN (Bing), Google have. Though I rely very heavily on my domain mail, I think Gmail is good, though Gmail gets me more spam than Yahoo does .. and WMT at Google does alright too .. everything else I just don't have an interest in. Same goes for MSN (Bing) .. I've used a few of their options too ... I don't do adwords/sense .. I don't go in for the analytics .. or any of that. Google, Yahoo, MSN (Bing) are there for me .. I'm not there for them. These would be tools to use when the notion suits me, and that's about it. I search all 3, because no search is ever equal, IMO. I'll find some things in Yahoo easier than I can with Google and vice versa .. If/When, Yahoo and MSN (Bing) team up, we'll be down to only two (major) search engines ... How many search engines did we have just 10 short years ago again? .. Lack of search diversity cannot be good for the net I think ..