“Don’t be evil.”
—Google’s former motto
“Do the right thing.”
—Google’s current motto
“You don’t have to be the first at what you do, you have to be the best at what you do.”
—What my mate told me a Google founder once said
WINNING
Google is the undeniable leader in global (ok, Western) paid search — and some other things too! The company was founded in 1998 by Larry Page and Sergey Brin, two Stanford Ph.D students at the time. The two co-founders developed the PageRank technology which ranked search results by relevance to the user’s query.
By 2000 it launched AdWords (now, Ads), allowing advertisers to place ads alongside search results. By the end of 2004, Google had unseated every other competitor and was first with ~36% market share. Yahoo! was second with 24%, and MSN was third with 16%.
Google it!
Since 2004, Google just kept taking market share while everyone else kept falling in the rankings. This video shows just how vibrant and competitive the search market was since 1994, and how monopolistic it has become since.
The problem with too much winning is that you get governments fighting you, in the case of Google this comes in the form of Antitrust suits.
Google market share in search is steadily above 90% worldwide, while Microsoft Bing is at 3.6%…
US Vs Google, Lawsuit #1
In October 2020, the US DoJ filed an antitrust lawsuit against Google on the grounds the company abused a monopoly position in the general search markets.
The trial started last September, and the DoJ alleged that Google struck anticompetitive deals with Apple and others for prime placement of its search engine to maintain this dominant position. Google says their dominant position is a result of its superior product.
My thinking is, if Google was such a superior product it wouldn’t have to pay Apple $20bln a year for this prime placement! Let’s not get into the nitty gritty of the case, but my idea is Google’s position isn’t great right now!
The trial concluded in November 2023 and closing arguments were heard this month (May 2024). The Judge has reserved judgment and we await for his findings when they do come out. Whatever the outcome, experts say there will be an appeal.