Google’s stock closed last week at $637.39, Wall Street thinks Google’s third quarter earnings announcement may come in 50 cents higher per share than last quarter, the company gets two-thirds of the web searches and 40 percent of the ad revenue. They’re screwed.
Google Is Weak Because It Is Strong
I don’t remember reading the ‘weakness due to strength’ argument in Suzuki, but that was a long time ago. Google has a commanding position in search and advertising, and they are doing everything in their power to become entrenched enough that no one can do to them what they did to AltaVista and the rest of the search world.
If you read current wisdom, in this case the Bloomberg report about Google’s vulnerability to a precarious ad market, you might think Eric Schmidt is on his way to mixing half-caff double tall vanilla lattes for a living. The report cited the focus smaller competitors have on where an advertiser wants to appear on a given website.
“After beating down rivals, Google’s dominant position in the $40.6 billion online advertising market is showing cracks,” they said. Instead of Google deciding what ad and advertiser appears in a given spot, firms like Quigo provide the ad-serving technology while the publisher sells the spots.
Google’s growth, and that of the ad industry, seems to be slowing down, even as billions of dollars remain in play. The competitive marketplace has allowed some nimble players to grab business away from Google and Yahoo.
But Google and the big Internet firms have been looking to local and mobile search advertising, both of which have been gaining in importance. The Washington Post may be swapping Quigo for Google, but they are just one site out of the billions of possible, search-driven destinations a Google can deliver.
