As I mentioned before, it’s clear that the culture of business/partner development is blossoming at Google. A quick trawl of jobs they’ve posted in the space certainly supports the trend. But the most positions available in any department (save engineering, of course) is still sales. (They’re also hiring more lawyers, as one might expect…)
Speaking of Biz Dev…
As I mentioned before, it's clear that the culture of business/partner development is blossoming at Google. A quick trawl of jobs they've posted in the space certainly supports the trend. But the most positions available in any department (save engineering, of course) is still sales. (They're also hiring more lawyers,…
John – some have speculated that Google may follow one of two courses as it grows – (a) the Microsoft strategy of crush all those who might compete or use their products as a jumping off point for their product and increase their own sales/market share, etc. or (b) the eBay economy way, wherein eBay encourages third party providers, etc. that do anything to make eBay better for users (PayPal notwithstanding, I guess). It appears from some of the job descriptions you linked to that Google will emulate the eBay model (and the search API would be evidence of that also).
What do you think?
But Google clearly does not have the one, critical bit of leverage Microsoft does: “ownership” of the operating system. I get to Google via any Web browser; any other search (and other things) service is as readily accessible.
Google’s position is only as secure as its technology (considerable) and its brand (huge)… it spent money and mental capital well, but it’s not got anything like a monopoly position to work from.
I wasn’t referring to the monopoly aspect of MS as much as the style of building out a “platform” – collaborative (like open source) vs. monolithic (we will do it all and don’t want anyone meddling in our opportunties).
While G certainly doesn’t have a monopoly on search, if you want to develop a product for say, managing paid search advertising, G is the biggest game in town and a great place to get traction. So, let’s say you do keyword bid management for G AdWords – the question is – does G encourage that as a third party provider, or discourage it by incorporating it into their product, making it difficult for third party providers to get G data into their application, etc.
Overture developed an API to assist third party developers of these types of products (but they also developed their own bid/keyword management system – competing at the same time).
To date Google hasn’t created an API for AdWords (although there is a rumor that one is in the works, and that the Google Certified AdWords Professional program is a precursor to that). To many the jury is still out on whether Google will encourage these types of third party product or try to “keep everything for itself”. Wondering what opinions are out there.