|
 RSS Feed
I was recently reading an article (thanks to Joe) that was painting a scenario where Google could reach $100 billion in revenue. They identified telecommunication, enterprise software applications, entertainment/media, publishing, e-payments and next gen search as new markets for Google to conquer. While these markets may easily exceed the $100 billion market value, the question is if Google can capture that revenue. Even with a run rate of $15.9 billion we are hearing about how difficult it is to hire employees matching the talent level and motivation of the current group. Also, some of these markets may require new capabilities, especially on the sales side, for Google. There are many inherent delivery risks in these segments that may reduce the probability of success. The other challenge is in extrapolating the ad based business model into new areas. Finally, there is a perception that the company is becoming too big and powerful and this may reduce its brand power in many of these markets.
s
Every time Google does something that is not search related it creates waves. In this case, it is about an infrastructure project aimed to lay communication cables under the pacific ocean. Does that mean that they will get into the communication business? I doubt that. Instead, we should look at their mission statement --Google's mission is to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful. Given that, it is sometimes necessary to have control over the infrastructure to provide good quality service to the segments that they consider important. Typically, partners in the ecosystem own the complementary assets and companies just make use of them to provide their services. Google and Apple are using a different approach by owning/controlling these complementary assets.
s
Here is good list of resources. I use many videos from these sources in my class room and to educate myself on business concepts. I wonder if companies are using these extenal resources and blending them with their own internal materials to create educational materials for their employees?
Comments (0 )
s
Not satisfied with customer relationship management and related functions, Salesforce.com is now trying to be a generic platform provider (called force.com) for applications. In this version, they have removed a previous limitation and have created a toolkit that will allow developers to build customized user interfaces to their programs. As a platform provider, their strategy is to create value by attracting more customers and developers to their platform. If they were not able to do this for CRM, how can they accomplish this for generic applications? Why would developers want to launch unrelated (to CRM) applications on this platform? The second (and related) challenge is in appropriating value. I guess their plan is to charge users for accessing their platform like an operating system provider. Is this a case of a packaged software provider being too ambitious?
Comments (0 )
s
Today's Boston Globe has a nice piece on Facebook. According to the article, they now have 39 million users and 3000 applications that run on the platform. In order to let third parties add value to the platform, Facebook opened the APIs for application development in May. The hope is that these applications will draw/keep users to the platform and in return more developers write to the platform hoping to attract more users. In effect, open architectures generate virtuous cycles.
Comments (1 )
s
This piece in knowledge@wharton brings out some interesting issues in choosing a closed vs. open architecture for a product. While Apple starts out by using a closed architecture to enable good user experience, it inevitable opens the architecture once the product matures. Microsoft, on the other hand, encourages third party innovation by opening its architecture and providing development toolkits. This strategy encourages innovation and product variety and in some instances compromised the user experience. Good read.
Comments (0 )
s
Is the Google phone coming soon? Based on this piece in the Boston Globe the answer is yes. Like the iPhone Google will closely control the manufacturing of the device by third parties. Unlike the iPhone that works only on one service provider (AT&T), the Google phone is open to all providers. The operating system will be developed by Google and open to third parties that would like to develop products for it (unlike the iPhone). Like the mashup environment, third parties would be able to create, experiment, test, launch and track applications. Another interesting aspect would the presence of advertising. Unlike the regular Google ads, this could incorporate location and time in ad provisioning.
Comments (0 )
s
Error sending email
Email sent successfully
|