From Marketing Pilgrim: “Google Can’t Grow New Products, Hence the Acquisitions“:

Google has struggled to build anything that comes close to the dominance it has in the search space (64.8% share). We all look on Google as being a company that builds great products, and even I’m among those that warn industries to prepare for when Google enters your market, yet what has Google dominated outside of search?

I agree 100%. Despite it’s multiple products and expanding service offerings, Google still remains a one-trick pony. Google really only owns one business: search (and the advertising that goes along with it). Well… unless you consider the properties it has acquired.

The thing that makes Google different from other players that dominate only one market is the market they control. Sure… MySpace owns social networking… Yahoo! owns email and Finance. Dominating those niches is an excellent business model and can make for a very successful company.

Google, on the other hand, dominates the umbrella that all of those niches sit under. Google dominates the primary means by which the majority of the world gets to these other companies and services. Google, in most regards, is the gatekeeper to the rest of the Internet.

Maybe Google doesn’t dominate every industry that it enters (although I think that will begin to change, given time). It doesn’t need to, though. As history has shown, Google’s control of the search industry has provided the company with massive fortunes and broad-ranging power that ventures well outside the realm of simple search.

Of course, like any business, they are interested in expanding their reach and influence into other worlds. Even though they are but one player in the mass of advertising options out there, they’d love to grow to slowly encompass it all (and may very well succeed at that in the future). I’m not suggesting they shouldn’t and won’t look to other markets to expand. I’m simply say they don’t really have to. For now, anyway.

So I guess my question then becomes: should Google worry about whether or not it controls the radio station when it’s the one holding the keys to the car?