How would Google compete with Google?
So when someone came along who actually managed to compete with and even frighten Google — namely, Facebook — how is Google competing? By going open. There’s a lesson in that for the rest of us.
I keep saying that media companies should ask WWGD – what would Google do — in formulating their digital strategies. Well, in Google’s Open Social, we see that the best competition against a growing monopoly is openness.
So how should we compete with Google or at least challenge its monopoly? Openness. I’ve argued for sometime that we need an open-source ad infrastructure. If the rest of the world other than Google — that is, those who have the other half of advertising Google doesn’t yet have — can gather together and create standards, then Google would be faced with the same decision Facebook is now faced with: whether to use those standards. What organized Facebook’s foes? Ironically, it was Google. Who could organize the nonGoogle ad universe? I see no one on the horizon. That’s why Google keeps growing. We’re letting them.
Tags: ads, facebook, google, opensource
November 1st, 2007 at 10:06 am
[...] Something will put the fear of Armageddon into Google. Somewhere, someone is imagining a future status quo in which Google’s dominance is as long-gone as A&P’s is today. (That someone, by the way, is likely to end up very rich.) [...]
November 1st, 2007 at 3:30 pm
[...] Posted on November 1, 2007 by tomaltman This is a great article on Jeff Jarvis’s site about WWGD (what would google do) if they were competing against itself. So how should we compete with Google or at least challenge its monopoly? Openness. I’ve argued [...]
November 2nd, 2007 at 10:52 am
Open Social : Why Facebook Doesn’t Need To Worry…
The industry has been all abuzz over Open Social. EVERYONE seems to be viewing this as a showdown between Google–Friends and Facebook (and Microsoft). It isn’t! Facebook is a network of users. People are on Facebook because their friends are…
November 6th, 2007 at 9:49 am
[...] 5. Just like Google figured out OpenSocial was the way to compete in an ever-expanding universe of social networks, so journalism organizations need an “OpenStory” concept to allow them to compete in an ever-expanding universe of information Web sites perpetually fracturing and organizing attention. (Jeff Jarvis talks about this here.) [...]
January 3rd, 2008 at 7:07 am
[...] (be it from their advertising strategy or through the emergence of competitors such as Google and LinkedIn) - their need to stay ahead of the game remains essential for their success in what is [...]