Google Loosing Influence?

The crazy, chaotic, idealistic times of the world wide web are ending. Once upon a time, the internet was open and shared by everyone, but now a new closed internet is emerging. Apple, Amazon and Facebook are putting up fences - and Google is increasingly being left outside.

The old Internet on which Google has thrived is still here, without a doubt, but it truly is shrinking. Often these days, we sign up for Facebook or Amazon's private element of the world wide web. Sometimes, we utilize a smartphone and download an App rather than using Google search. It's still the early days of this long-term trend, but some believe that this gap in performance will widen over the coming year - and that Google's long slow decline has now begun.

To make Google's predicament worse, it has little to do with technology and everything to do with business models. You can purchase or copy technology, but changing a business enterprise model is one of the toughest things for any company. Google's business model, and nearly all its revenue and profits, is reliant on the open internet. Whenever we search, Google pockets billions from advertising. So as the old Internet is changing, Google's original style of making business is losing value.

Facebook has erected a cyber-fence around its 800 million-plus users and refuses to share much of its important data with Google. This means that Google's searches are not as valuable for advertisers as they used to be since the Internet was open and when Facebook was much smaller than its today.

Apple stands out as the most definitive. None of the data Apple's customers generate is available to Google, even though they use the internet frequently. Apple is a very definite example of the new closed internet trend that is increasing.

The danger to Google is that as social networking, smartphones and tablets are increasingly dominating the Internet, Google's chance to earn advertising revenues from searching will shrink as will its influence. Most commentators concentrate on the rapid expansion of Google's smartphone operating system, Android, along with the undeniable fact that it holds greater business in comparison to the iPhone. However this analysis misses the point: The Android may have market share, but more than 50% of mobile searches come from iPhone users. Google could possibly have developed Android but, unlike Apple's iPhone, it doesn't really control it.

Google is still a force. Even its disappointing earnings are huge. But it is suspected that its big earning power has reached its peak with the emerging closed internet.