Google Is All About Information

That's assuming Google ever was a search company. Google has seemingly eclectic interests: blogging, e-mail, instant messaging, maps and topography, photos, productivity applications, RSS feeds, search (ranging from desktop to Web to universities and more), social networking, 3-D modeling and video viewing, among many others.

Many Google products have very little to do with search. But they do share information in common, whether produced commercially or personally. Search is really a means to an end, and that end is access to information. From the perspective of information access, Google's interest in wireless spectrum makes sense.

Search is a good way for Google to make money, but it's a bad business model. Search vendors have come and gone; Google is by no means the first. As Microsoft's recent Live Search Club shows, search share is easily moved among providers. Type a new Web address, baby, and it's goodbye Google. Search isn't Google's core business; it's informational access. Search is the monetization of that information access.

Where there aren't pipes to the information, Google will open them up. Google's deal for providing free Wi-Fi in San Francisco is an example of opening up pipes to informational access around which the company can sell advertising, contextual search and search keywords. Google's interest in wireless spectrum is another.

What Google doesn't yet have is the means for customer lock-in, whether by choice or force of technology. But the more ways Google can open up information access and supporting sticky applications, the less likely information seekers are to use another vendor. FYI: Context for sticky is the way certain applications and services cling to people. Windows is the best modern example. Switching costs—emotional, financial or logistical—are too high for most businesses or consumers. Windows is very sticky.

A History Lesson
Where Google is going, and what that means to Microsoft, is best understood by looking to the past.

IBM wore the informational king's crown during the days of mainframe dominance. Big Blue controlled access to vast amounts of information, and its tightly integrated mainframes and operating systems acted as powerful customer lock-in mechanisms.

The PC revolution created new information repositories. The PC appealed because it opened up computing and information utility to more businesses (and consumers, too). Microsoft snatched IBM's crown, by way of operating system lock-in and later productivity file formats. Office's success led more and more companies to store valuable information in Microsoft proprietary, binary formats. During the PC era, Microsoft has gained a certain informational access dominance, because its technologies are necessarily computing utilities.

The Internet is Microsoft's big problem, and it's growing larger as Google exercises more control over information access. But Google's efforts appear like control because informational utility increases so dramatically. Like the PC made information available to more people, so does the Internet. The promise: access anytime, anywhere and on anything. Google has greatly extended informational utility through its success delivering meaningful search. Suddenly, there are many new avenues to informational repositories that aren't locked to Microsoft technologies or file formats.

The Web platform is obviously bigger than Google. In warfare, armies seek to control the main thoroughfares. The side that controls access can cut off enemy supply lines and establish broader reach. Google understands the value of getting people to the information they need, easily and anywhere. If Google ever achieves the kind of lock-in IBM or Microsoft achieved, it will be by controlling informational access—the pipes.

Book, library, patent and Web search, San Francisco Wi-Fi access, and the wireless spectrum proposal all share in common this opening up the pipes to information. Around this information, Google can sell advertising and search services. Where Google provides the physical pipes—wireless being an important example—it can extend utility around the information, such as more localized search for the end user and more localized advertising and contextual keywords or search for marketers.

The Ends Justify the Means
Search is a means to the end. Information is the end. Google-Microsoft competition isn't about operating systems, productivity suites, search tool bars or Web browsers. The competition is about information, who provides access to it and who can make the most money from the access.

Microsoft's advantage is incumbency and the hundreds of millions of businesses and consumers using its software. Microsoft's weakness is its 20th-century business model, where it collects money when businesses or consumers buy its software or upgrades. The process is one of pulling sales.

Google's advantages include a more flexible recurring revenue model and the Web platform's broad informational reach. Google's many handicaps include Microsoft's software dominance.

Change is in the winds, and it's inevitable. The PC platform is declining, but there will be a long period of overlap with the Web platform—just as mainframes and PCs coexisted for many years. Right now, Google is a major contender to inherit the informational crown. It's not about search. Google's ambitions are much larger than search.

Related Posts:

• Microsoft Clubs Its Way to Search Gains, Microsoft Watch, July 16, 2007
• Microsoft Works in the Clouds, Microsoft Watch, July 11, 2007
• Which Comes First, Software or Services, Microsoft Watch, July 10, 2007
• Why Google Succeeds, Part 2, Microsoft Watch, June 15, 2007
• Why Google Succeeds, Part 1, Microsoft Watch, June 15, 2007
• Microsoft MIXes It Up, Microsoft Watch, April 30, 2007
• The Google Quandary, Microsoft Watch, April 24, 2007
• The Google Problem, Microsoft Watch, May 31, 2007
• Who Pays for Software Plus Services, Microsoft Watch, March 15, 2007
• Google Catfight About 30 Years in the Making, Microsoft Watch, March 6, 2007
• What Is Microsoft's Services Platform?, Microsoft Watch, March 1, 2007
• Why Google Matters to Microsoft, Microsoft Watch, Feb. 22, 2007
• Google and Long Tail Computing, Microsoft Watch, Feb. 22, 2007