Amazon, Facebook, Apple and Google

As someone that works in search engine marketing it’s pretty important for me to track the health of Google. Over the years this has been easy as it has quickly grown and increased its dominance in Search and other areas of the internet. However, in the last couple of years some formidable opponents have stolen some valuable market share, namely Amazon, Facebook and Apple. They have mostly done this by keeping you off search engines and instead fencing you into their technology.

Amazon

Working in SEM it’s been pretty interesting to me what Amazon has done recently to counter Google’s prowess. The finance world seems to have taken notice as well with their shares rising 370% over the last 5 years. Further to them making their search bar the most prominent feature on their website in attempt in making their website a mini search engine thanks to the hundreds of thousands of products they have, they have also used Google’s own software against it. The search bar not only stops users from leaving the site to go back to Google to search for products it also helps them sell an estimated 108 million items a year.  Another brilliant tactic Amazon has deployed is taking Google’s freeware Android mobile operating software and modified to be used in its new tablet, Fire.  Basically taking it from Google for its own benefit and modifying it so you use Amazon and not Google Search; providing Google with no licensing fees or advertising revenue in return.

Facebook

With Facebook about to go public in a 5 billion dollar IPO, it’s clear that it’s here to stay and going to outlast previous social suitors trying to take over the world such as MySpace. Facebook is an interesting case, in the beginning when it was smaller than 900 million users (give or take 100 million users) you could find a lot of their information on Google Search.  However, now that is become the dominant social network on the internet, its virtual fences have been erected, locking itself out from Google (for the most part). Although Facebook has not gotten to the point of being your one point of call for all your online needs, it is getting there. With a huge cash infusion about to come in from the equity offering, look for thousands of acquisitions from the cashed up company in the future to help it expand its online offering. Who knows maybe in 2014 I will be search engine optimising Facebook search for my Australian clients instead of Google.       

Apple

The reason for Apple’s early downfall has become the same reason behind its current success. With valuations showing Apple worth more than Microsoft and Google combined, the proprietary start-up has turned into the monopoly empire. The reason is simple, Apple doesn’t share and it is the master of its own Universe.  Its iPhones, iPads, and computers are closed off to any other players including Google. This includes all the music, filmsm apps and user data that come with it.  With the addition of Siri which bypasses Google search, Apple really has their users locked into their world and their world only.

Google

With all this being said, one thing that can never be forgotten is that Google is also a multibillion dollar company with some of the smartest brains in the industry guiding its every move. With Android as the number mobile software in the world and Google+ growing by millions of users a month, Google has some formative weapons in the user war. Are these weapons enough for Google to fight off the competition in terms of online advertising revenue?  Only time will tell.