Introduction: According to an article published by foreign media today, Facebook submitted its IPO (initial public offering) prospectus on Wednesday and received great attention from the market. Although the revenue and profit are far more than Facebook, Google's brilliance is still hidden by Facebook. Industry insiders believe that for Google, now is the best time to adjust its positioning.
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Under the current circumstances, Google should transform as soon as possible. Two recent news stories about Google are no accident. Google had only one task in the past, that is, to transmit users to other websites at the fastest speed through advertising. However, Google is looking for new revenue sources, hoping to generate revenue from users using Google's services. At present, it is difficult to judge what kind of company Google will become after such transformation.
Through two initiatives, "Google 2.0" is gradually taking shape. First, Google recently announced that it will integrate content from the social network Google+into its search engine. This means that Google combines its core products with the most important strategic projects. The outside world had expected Google to do this before, but probably did not fully understand the impact of this move.
Displaying Google+content through a search engine will make Google+known to more users. If the Android platform is taken into account, more functions can be achieved. For example, users can use Android phones to take photos, and then use Google search engine on their PCs to search for photos that have been uploaded to Google+. The user does not need to do any manual operation.
Considering that some users may not want to add personal content to the search engine, Google also promotes Google+'s celebrity and enterprise pages through the search engine. Twitter has done this before.
On the other hand, Google made a comprehensive adjustment to its privacy policy last week, eliminating the boundaries between various services in the past, and bringing users a new and unified Google. From March, a unified simplified clause will replace more than 70 privacy policies for different services. In the above scenes of taking photos with Android phones, it is obvious that Google has broken the barriers between different services, allowing information to flow freely among Google's multiple services. The unification of privacy policy will complete this process and make it more clear.
In this way, Google will also obtain a huge database of user information, which will be conducive to the company's advertising business. For example, if a user logs in to YouTube and watches a video, the user's choice of video will affect the type of ads that appear in the search results.
Under normal circumstances, such a huge adjustment made by leading Internet companies will be considered as strengthening their market leadership. However, in the context of Facebook's upcoming IPO, Google's move feels defensive. After all, Facebook has the largest personal information database and is willing to provide such a database to advertisers.
Google's use of search engine to promote other online services often causes antitrust concerns, but the online behavior change promoted by Facebook has reduced such concerns. If Google hopes not to be abandoned by users, it must make changes. The antitrust supervision department will pay close attention to it, but will follow the principle of "first act, then explain". This is a more reasonable way.
At present, it is still uncertain what kind of company Google will become in the future. Google's approach has also received responses from some major competitors. For example, Microsoft is trying to integrate a variety of different services, and Bill Gates also proposed the concept of "integrated innovation" before retiring from Microsoft.
Google has also gradually moved closer to Apple in the change, emphasizing the excellent design and ease of use of products. Many consumer technology companies are doing the same. However, due to the lack of close connection with product design, development and engineering manufacturing similar to Apple, many companies' imitation of Apple is only superficial.
What Google needs to do in the future also includes promoting the development of Google+, a social network, and successfully completing the acquisition of Motorola Mobile. If this transaction is approved by the regulatory authority, Google will enter the hardware business, so as to better provide users with a seamless experience.
Eight years ago, Google said during its IPO that its mission was to "organize global information so that information can be widely accessed and used". This statement does not include the future direction of Google.
