Google Case

As you look into the future, what do you think represents a bigger threat to Google: established companies like Microsoft or smaller, entrepreneurial companies? Explain.

I think the biggest threats to Google can be both established companies like Microsoft as well as the smaller entrepreneurial companies. According to an article at www.seomoz.og, companies such as Microsoft are very rich in cash. They also have the know-how and the talent to develop new technologies that can serve of a threat to Google. Also other search competitors

such as Baidu are creating major competition to Google. The other threat is a potential small startup that develops the technology and beats Google. It can get taken over by a giant backer flushed with cash such Microsoft and then use the backing to put Google behind.

According to the Google CEO Eric Shmidt in his interview with Fortune magazine the biggest threat to Google is the internal threat. As he states, the "simple one is the threat of distraction. I'll give you an example. You could imagine that Google Apps [the company's Web-based package of word-processing, spreadsheet and e-mail programs that mimics Microsoft's

Office franchise] taking over 90 percent of our time. We don't allow that because we're disciplined about spending a lot of time on our core businesses. We hope at some point Google Apps will become a core business, but today it's not, so that's a threat of distraction. " (Fortune, 2008). Also, Google's fast growth and overtake of the search engine market can potentially turn governments against it worldwide as they are looked upon as being a monopoly.