Previous comments in the thread has said a lot about the wrong assumptions in them reasoning, won’t repeat them, but a lot of people also get the one-trick-pony aspect of Google wrong in two ways:

1. They use a massive common computing infrastructure, which makes the cost of doing all these products/projects much cheaper than what it is for other companies, while helping them accomplish massive scale.

2. You – the person is at the center of the universe for Google. The products are different ways of reaching you. As long as they can reach you and learn more from you/about you, they are successful. That with (1) added to the equation means that they don’t really have to worry about whether the entire product line is #1 in their respective market places. As long as the uptake is there, it is good enough. If it goes all the way to the top, it is a nice bonus to have.

Google is not a traditional company, so you can’t analyze it like one either.

On the localization front they already do a lot. In fact, the amusing part is that they don’t draw a lot of attention to themselves where they do a lot of good work on the ground in places like India. They have been working with local information in India for over two years now, but you won’t find much information about that. Where that information gets into your system is when you search for a piece of information online.

Lastly, it is a common error to not make a distinction between total users and active users. Most of the MSFT and Y! user numbers are based on that figure. Which one would you prefer – a smaller user base with above 90% of active users or a larger user base with about 40% of active users? Which of the two would represent a more engaged and valuable user base for you?

Thanks,
Shyam

p.s: Blogger was acquisition, which as a platform has not done too well.

And buying good ideas is no wrong also as you mentioned the the deal of Google and You tube. Its business big fish always eyes for small fish!! And as you also agree with the growth of You tube, which is still growing will keep Google above its peers. And it is the first thing which comes in mind of any body to look for video of some thing happened around the world. This I can speak because I had this opportunity to travel around the world and meet people from different part of World. Also presently I am studying in Cyprus pursuing my MBA from CIIM, where not only the students are international but also the professors who come are from best of USA and UK universities.
And be it marketing or human resource or any current event that takes place is being searched on Google and video on You Tube.

Taking the issue of the web mail (Gmail), officially it was started on April 1st, 2004 but was made free for all to sign up only a couple of years back and not from the inception of it, so having a 12% market share is not bad and is still growing as and when more people are getting aware of ( it being free to all) and finding it user friendly and new features which are being developed are making it competitive day by day, as lately new feature I found was Video chat which was not there few months back.

Orkut is the only feature which has lost it ground from one of the major users of it i.e. USA but Google also smartly has shifted its head of operations of Orkut to Brazil, citizens of Brazil, over the years have become the major user’s of Orkut and is being followed by Indians.

Well to conclude, as there are lot of evidence of Google growing and multiplying with time it will be wrong to say that Google has hit the growth ceiling.

Well trust the argument or thoughts i have put forward is of some use to your Question. This is some thing which I was able to collect from my past experience and present class room studies done on various different companies and there finance studies.

Arihant Nahar

Agree with most of the comments, except Ashish – who seems to have gone overboard giving carte blanche to google
Operators could easily choke google, they control the proverbial chicken-neck

mohit is right, that we need to see the business side of things. google innovations are great, nobody can deny that
but acquisition spree can make google spread too thin. also what needs to be thought is whether individually those acquisitons make business sense. the money burned to keep YouTube content runnig outpaces the revenue it gets, so individually its not making sense. Any such business can be a strategic reason only till a point in time…….

My take- You have raised a relevant point and an interesting title for the story! But your articulation doesn’t prove it!

I also believe that Google’s strategy to acquire great startups (like YouTube etc.) is a fine way to grow. This reduces your go-to-market time and effort.

I also admit to the fact that localization is important- but why do you think Google cannot localize? Infact if you see late happenings in China- you can find how Google has customized itself in China and as a result has almost doubled it’s share there!

I would put this in another way- IS GOOGLE POISED TO FACE A CHALLENGE SOON? There is an interesting article on this issue at http://www.atomthought.com (Is It easier to beat a GOOGLE than a FACEBOOK?)

A recent book my McKinsey (http://www.mckinsey.com/ideas/books/GranularityOfGrowth/) summarizes what companies like Google can do to sustain their growth, apart from market momentum (new internet users in developing countries), innovation (new websites/gadgets), M&A (orkut, youtube), and conventional share gain (stealing users from Yahoo, MSN, askjeeves etc)

The immense cash reserves built by Google can easily sustain its growth. refer – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matthew_effect) ; its cliched but true.

Also Google is the front runner/activist for the free for personal use concept, in the longer run this gives them immense potential for marketing newer products.

What we are witnessing with Google is the making of a truly global superbrand (and the office pics we get as forwards make it one of the most sought after co’s on campus!)

Andriod is just the tip of its iceberg, the real game will be the change in telecom business model at infrastructure level. Its already started providing free wireless Internet through Adhoc WLAN network at Mountain View California. Incidentally, WLAN is also now recognized as a telecom radio protocol see 3GPP TS 23.234 for example.

The Next Gen Telecom networks will all converge to IP. And, already Google is creeping into to telecom through its VAS partnerships with the existing operators.

So, Google is next upset the Apple cart(el) of Telecom operators.

Google is an amazing company in a variety of ways. Even so, it is a more mature business these days and with that reality, it seems clear that the company cannot grow at the rate of a startup.

The loyalty factor with Google is huge and coupled with its strong core business of providing quality search results; it enjoys its strong market base. No other company has been as successful in getting that level of market penetration, but that said, I also believe people are not as loyal as they once were.

Because of this, one huge idea could impact them almost overnight. While when that idea will come is up for debate, it will come. Perhaps the idea will be in the form of technology or a core difference from their basic business model. My bet is that Google spends quite a bit of time keeping track of such ideas and sites as targets for acquisition based on past behavior. They certainly have the reach to see early successes though their core business. This has to be a concern for them when something so basic as Facebook can gain legs overnight and grow to 150 million+ users. When things like that happen, the Google control of online mindshare erodes, which cannot be a good thing for them.

The examples you cite really define what people think of when they are looking for the “next big thing”, in that they touch a chord for huge numbers of people. With technology being so cold, people warm up to sites which remove the coldness barriers and provide some tool they can easily use to meet one or more human needs or in the case of a site which becomes highly adopted by business, their business needs.

I don’t think Google is going away anytime soon and it will continue to grow (if for no other reason, then its momentum from goodwill) at a fairly steady rate. It is kind of the IBM of the 2000s, everyone knows about it and it has a general perception of being a safe choice. Because of its size and wealth it has a huge advantage from having the “if you beat us, we can buy you” capacity, which arguably makes it not much different than Microsoft in the 1990s.

I still believe that there are better ways to handle business search as I don’t think that one size fits all where it comes to search and perhaps one day I’ll get a chance to prove that belief.

1. Apart from Search, Google has no products those are leaders in the respective categories.

2. The possible reason for this, according to you, is the lack of consumer insights.

3. If Google continues to add the list of services, its growth prospects may get severely challenged.

As we all know, Google is one of the biggest media company in the world and generates revenue through advertising. No one can question their leadership in search advertising. We know their search technology and algorithm is superior any other and hence enjoy a giant share in the search marketing space.

Agree with you that their other products / services don’t enjoy the same success, but the introduction of those and acquisitions (Youtube, Picassa, KeyHole, etc) are strategic ones. For Google, these needn’t necessarily to be great products, but they consider it as tools to collect a vast and depth consumer profile data to serve ads better . Take a look at their products. It addresses and targets different types of consumers (demographic, psychographic, socio economical, etc) and all these are linked trough just one Gmail ID. The result is, no one in this world has such an in depth data on online user base. Google uses all their products to build this intelligence and as a result of this, no media company in the world can ever take them on internet and Google will continue to be the leader in that space.

Just think about the data that you gave away to Google through your Gmail, Orkut, Maps, calender, Picassa, Gtalk, etc,. They know who you are, where are you, what are you doing, why are you there, your social life, and almost all.

I believe that it is hard for Google to stop growing even if they wish!

This is why I don’t think Google is at its growth ceiling. They have various cross vertical user applications though not everything yet). The only thing left for them to do (in my opinion), is putting all these applications on a single platform. But, I think they are still far from reaching the final stage of building this single platform for all their applications and services.