It’s hard to imagine an Internet without Google, but that’s exactly what things were like ten years ago:
MOUNTAIN VIEW, California (AP) — When Larry Page and Sergey Brin founded Google Inc. on September 7, 1998, they had little more than their ingenuity, four computers and an investor’s $100,000 bet on their belief that an Internet search engine could change the world.
It sounded preposterous 10 years ago, but look now: Google draws upon a gargantuan computer network, nearly 20,000 employees and a $150 billion market value to redefine media, marketing and technology.
And, of course, there are plenty of people complaining that they have become “too successful”:
Google’s expanding control over the flow of Internet traffic and advertising already is raising monopoly concerns.
The intensifying regulatory and political scrutiny on Google’s expansion could present more roadblocks in the future. Even now, there’s a chance U.S. antitrust regulators will challenge Google’s plans to sell ads for Yahoo Inc., a fading Internet star whose recent struggles have been magnified by Google’s success.
Privacy watchdogs also have sharpened their attacks on Google’s retention of potentially sensitive information about the 650 million people who use its search engine and other Internet services like YouTube, Maps and Gmail. If the harping eventually inspires rules that restrict Google’s data collection, it could make its search engine less relevant and its ad network less profitable.
To protect its interests, Google has hired lobbyists to bend the ears of lawmakers and ramped up its public relations staff to sway opinion as management gears up to conquer new frontiers.
Which is something that Microsoft, as opposed to the forces that arrayed against it in the early 1990s, was very slow to do. As a result, their opponents had the ear of Congressman, Senators, and regulators while Microsoft sat up in Redmond making stuff people wanted to buy. We know how that turned out, and, apparently, Google isn’t repeating Microsoft’s mistake.
