BusinessWeek pick up the theme of Google taking on the world. With the ability to track shipments and airplanes in real time via Google, the search engine keeps eyeballs on its website longer. But “Google is providing this new shipment tracking service even though it doesn’t have a partnership with FedEx. Rather, Google engineers have reprogrammed it to query FedEx directly with the information a user enters and provide the hyperlink direct to the customer’s information.”
But, BusinessWeek point out, “with every new service, Google takes a slice of someone else’s pie. Its ability to find pizza places within any given Zip code ultimately eliminates the use of YellowPages. Using it to find word definitions diminishes the business proposition of online dictionaries.”
The argument goes that “Google becomes the omnipresent middleman and a clear and present danger to just about any company that relies on the Internet for commerce.” But where is the revenue? I think BusinessWeek is right in saying the money will be in providing the gateway to those sites. Most folk I know go to Google first, indeed have it as their homepage. The more you can access from that fast-loading, uncluttered page, the more you’ll use it as your homepage. Who cares where you go next?
It has nothing to do with stickiness in the way we used to think of it. Google doesn’t need people to stay at Google. But folk like UPS and FedEx need to have the link with Google — especially if their competitors have it. For them Google becomes their customers’ first stop. Whether it’s cinema tickets, airline tickets, packages or whatever, Google will act as a kind of fast-searching gatekeeper for other sites. Those other sites may not have much choice — they don’t already, with the site: hack on Google working as a better search engine for individual sites than the site’s search page — but they’ll all draw benefit. And presumably Google will collect a toll, in advertising or something else.
It’s the New Portal: Empty , except for what you need, and fast.