Google's Web 2.0 Core Competencies
Embrace the Web as a Platform and Create Rich Internet Applications
Jun 12, 2007
They started out as a small company that provided a search engine for the web. Today, 9 years later, they are one of the leading internet companies offering services that rival Microsoft and others. Why has Google become one of the largest and most profitable internet companies today? To understand their success, we only need look to the core competencies of Web 2.0 and how Google has embraced them.
Leveraging the "Long Tail"
Go to almost any website today and you see a section for “Ads by Google”. A person can earn revenue by enabling Google to place contextually targeted ads on their website. This is called leveraging the "long-tail" of the internet. The "long-tail” refers to understanding and leveraging the fact that most of the web’s content is made up of small sites. Google AdSense also enables companies to advertise to large numbers of internet users – this is the “long-tail” instead of a smaller subset of larger companies (the “head”), using a basic AdWords campaign at an affordable price.
Control Data Sources
Google Maps is another example of a Web 2. 0 core competency: the ability to control data sources that get better as people use them. The Web 2.0 era is all about services, not software. So if there isn't money to be made by selling software, then the money is in the data that is created and stored by offering services. Google Maps gets their satellite data from Navteq, but enables users of its mapping functionality to add to it to store things like company information or apartment rental information. Google stores all this data and thus becomes the primary data source.
Rich Internet Applications
Google Maps, along with Gmail and Google's word processing, spreadsheet and calendaring applications are great examples of Rich Internet Applications, another core competency of Web 2.0. Utilizing light weight programming models like AJAX, Google delivers functionality through the web very similar to the products Microsoft sells (MS Office). Google also provides a Reader for subscribing to RSS feeds.
Harness the Collective Intelligence
Another core competency of a Web 2.0 company is the ability to "harness the collective intelligence". One way Google does this is through its pagerank search algorithms. Google determines the true value of a link on the web, through its link structure. It's not just about a page being there and people clicking on it, it's about who links to this page and how those sites are. Their approach to pagerank has made Google the top search engine on the web. Another way they harness collective intelligence is through their purchase of Blogger.com. Google owns one of the largest free blogging sites on the internet and it's well known that blogs help increase a site's pagerank dramatically.
The Perpetual Beta
One final example of how Google demonstrates its Web 2.0 competencies is through how it delivers its software. Most Google applications are in perpetual beta, constantly being updated to provide new functionality and to be accessible through many different devices. Gmail is accessible through the mobile phone, the blackberry; the Google reader now has a gadget that enables users to download their subscribed RSS feeds to read offline, anytime, anywhere. This ability to deliver software to many types of devices is a core competency of a Web 2.0 company.
They aren't the only the company that is a great example of using Web 2.0 technologies and design patterns, but Google is definitely the one to watch closely to see what's next for the Internet.
