How Has the Marketing Space Evolved Since the Formation of Google? Is Google Innovative?

Google Inc. was founded by Larry Page and Sergey Brin in 1998 and in just three years, Google was recognised as the world’s top search engine. They were able to surpass their competitors who at the time were Yahoo, Lycos, Altavista, Excite and Infoseek (Google Marketing Strtegy - Analysis, 2015)To understand how Google exceeded their rivalries at that time, it is necessary to understand the marketing space then. The internet was facing a number of problems of its own. Search engine pages would take a long time to load due to the slow internet connections and cluttered home pages as well as the search results were not always relevant or interesting to the user. Google recognised these setbacks in the industry and through their innovative thinking was able to introduce a new algorithm which gave more relevant and interesting results to the user and their simple home page loaded quicker than their competitors. They were able to identify these short comings in the search engine industry and took advantage of it. Their distinctive, highly innovative and very risky business model was proven to be a success.

Google became the leaders in the search engine industry and have been able to maintain their dominance in the industry. In an article written earlier this year, Google was described as “the undisputed leader in most of the markets” (Garner, 2015) However, internet companies such as Yahoo, Microsoft, Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn all received a strong revenue growth rate where their market shares in the internet advertising industry are increasing which is impending Google’s dominance. According to a report from eMarketer, mobile will account for 85.9% of digital ad search dollars by 2018. Google’s share will fall to 64.2%, down from 82.8% in 2012 due to increasing popular search options like Microsoft, Bing, Yahoo, Amazon, Kayak, Indeed, and Shazam.

Therefore, for Google to preserve its leadership position in the industry, they have to increase their innovation even more, not just in their management structure or thinking outside the box. In a Jon Friedman article, according to Roger Kay, technology analyst with Endpoint Technologies Associates, “Google did so well in the search field because nobody understood the process. Now people understand how Google is monetizing search functions. But it doesn't mean that Google can't also decide to build a risk-reduction component into its business model." (Friedman, 2015)

Google is doing exactly that and is going beyond its comfort zone in order for them to reduce their risk. Jon Friedman describes Google as restless, innovative and secretive. (Friedman, 2015) This is evident in their Google Glass concept that released with much public anticipation but was cancelled within two years or where Google assisted YouTube in becoming a social media-driven obsession and in the mean time they developed Android mobile OS. Google has surpassed the normal market