Google is changing. Can you keep up?
Here’s the deal. I just ran across an article at Wired Magazine and it’s all about Larry Page taking over as CEO at Google. It’s a pretty long read but an entertaining read. Don’t worry, I’m going to summarize my opinion of this story for you as it relates to Google, search, and making money online.
First of all, Larry is made out to be one creative fellow. He’s got some quirks about him that would make many “stick in the a$$” types cringe. But that creativity is what has made Google the behemoth it is.
Before Larry took over CEO Eric Schmidt had the helm and was navigating this beast in an ocean of sea monsters and unseen land masses. He was able to take a company from $100 Million to $30 Billion during his tenure. Now that he has been replaced, what does that mean.
Before I get to my opinion here is a short excerpt…
A few ingredients in Larry Page’s stew of traits stand out unmistakably. He is brainy, he is confident, he is parsimonious with social interaction. But the dominant flavor in the dish is his boundless ambition, both to excel individually and to improve the conditions of the planet at large. He sees the historic technology boom as a chance to realize such ambitions and sees those who fail to do so as shamelessly squandering the opportunity. To Page, the only true failure is not attempting the audacious. “Even if you fail at your ambitious thing, it’s very hard to fail completely,” he says. “That’s the thing that people don’t get.”
Original Content: http://www.wired.com/magazine/2011/03/mf_larrypage/all/1
In my opinion, you can expect massive change over the coming years with Google. If Larry has the right people supporting him and the guidance of a mentor then he will do fine and Google will continue to dominate.
But if things get crazy, Google could be in for a big fall. This could be an opportunity for other search engines to rise up and begin a massive take over. No one knows where Larry is going to take the company. And that ultimately could effect search as we know it.
One thing is for sure. Larry likes speed. He likes speed to implement and speed to load. So it makes sense that keep a minimalistic and ease of use approach you do will benefit your website in the eyes of Google. Is that the end-all-be-all? Of course not but it is a massive consideration when you see the nuances Larry has about speed.
One complaint of the current, supersized version of Google Inc. is that bureaucracy slows down progress. Expect that to change, because speed is one of Page’s primary obsessions. “He’s always measuring everything,” early Googler Megan Smith says. She was once walking with Page down a street in Morocco when he suddenly dragged her into an Internet cafè9. Immediately, he began timing how long it took web pages to load into a browser there.
Original Content: http://www.wired.com/magazine/2011/03/mf_larrypage/all/1
When you read things like this you begin to understand what Google, a.k.a. Larry Page, is looking for in his company and what he wants to see in your website. Yes, it is reading between the lines but it gets to core of what the founders wanted to see.
Another area that you have to consider is what the founders see themselves and their company as. They do see Google as the one company that can collect, categorize, and deliver query on data. They want to make that data available to as many people as possible. You can see that in the digitalization of books and the project that got them into hot water with publishers.
But there is one thing that comes out and screams at you when you read between the lines. Google wants to dominate and control the way THEY see fit. They ARE the gods of internet collection and search.
You get can gleam that from this short description…
In 2008, Google participated in an FCC auction for radio spectrum to be used for mobile broadband. By the terms of the auction, if the spectrum was sold above a certain price, the winner would have to allow other companies to run devices on their networks—something Google strongly favored but that telecom companies dearly hoped to avoid. Google executives worried that the telecoms would conspire to keep bidding below that baseline price. So the company got involved in a high-stakes game of chicken. Google would bid on the spectrum, high enough to get it over the threshold, and then bow out. It left Google potentially vulnerable; if nobody else topped its bid, the company would be stuck with a multibillion-dollar piece of spectrum that it was unequipped to exploit. “Google definitely wanted to lose,” the company’s chief economist, Hal Varian, says. To Google’s great relief, Verizon did top its bid, and the company was off the hook.
Original Content: http://www.wired.com/magazine/2011/03/mf_larrypage/all/1
So, what does all this mean to you?
It means you need to change with the Google. You need to be just as nimble if not more so. It also means you should look at other ways to get traffic to your website.
You never know when things might change. They could change for you favor. They could change for your negative. But what is certain… if you have other sources of online traffic then you shouldn’t have to worry about the big G as much as most people.
Think about that. Are you getting the majority of your web traffic from just once source. I’d be willing to bet that most people are. That should be a consideration for your marketing and your lead generation strategies both online and offline.
Now, go get some web traffic and start making some cash online.
Jay
