Google is Everywhere

How does a company based upon a relatively simple service premise become so influential, such that its mere presence in a tangential category or industry creates changes that the current market leaders couldn’t or wouldn’t have ever anticipated?

On the surface, Google is a provider of information through its search services, a lot like an electronic version of an everyday library. However, the reason it has over $200 billion in market capitalization is because of advertising. And because it’s delivering very effective advertising, traditional advertisers such as TV channels and newspapers are either shifting their business models or slowly dying on the vine, all because of search.

Also, since the future of search will be moving from desktop computers to more mobile devices, Google is interested in the mobile marketplace. Which explains why this information provider is now developing an open source mobile software platform (Android) and bidding in the upcoming FCC wireless spectrum auction against such telecom giants as AT&T and Verizon. And because of its mere interest in this tangential market, Verizon just announced a previously unthinkable (for them at least) opening of its wireless networks to competitors’ mobile devices and software.

In addition, as this information provider has moved from search to advertising to telecommunications and many other ventures, its servers which power its services are consuming energy in incredible amounts. In fact, it is building facilities next to power generation sources just so it can be first in line for raw energy. So now Google is very concerned about an area that has previously been the focus of public and private utilities, as it explores such things as renewable energy through its RE<C initiative. And, as John Battelle cites in his Search blog, energy consumption could represent 20 to 30 percent of Google’s cost of goods sold in 2008.

So where does Google go from here? What’s interesting is that if Google can’t stimulate the innovation necessary in green power generation, than its interest in the politics of energy will also increase. What happens to the price of oil based upon events in the Middle East could suddenly be of great interest to Google. Next stop, Washington D.C.

All because a once little search engine went from providing information, to advertising, to telecommunications, to the energy that powers it all.

Not so much like library anymore.