Over the past week or so I've written about several start-ups, and more than a few established companies, that are hoping to push Google off its lofty pedestal.  Google has proven that search + advertising is a very lucrative market and now everyone wants a piece of the action.  While browsing around John Battelle's Searcblog I ran across a post that linked to another post at Skrentablog called "Winner-Take-All: Google and the Third Age of Computing."

In his article, Rich Skrenta, CEO of Topix.net, provides numerous observations and some great insight into what he calls the Google-owned Third Age of Computing.

According to Skrenta, IBM owned the first stage and Microsoft the second.  Since 2001, Google has been the king of computing and thus the name of his article.  Google, he says, is the start page for 70-80% of the internet and it is because of this that they hold so much power.  When you think about it, he's completely right.  When people need to find a new website (or even one they've been to but can't remember), where do they turn?  To a search engine.  And for the majority of internet users today, that search engine is Google.  Skrenta goes as far as to say that Google could potentially own all of the page views on the internet that matter.  As they expand into more and more markets, customers have to go shorter and shorter distances to do what they want.

If I'm an average internet user and I'm having coffee in the morning before work, I can pull up Google and do just about everything I need to do.  I can check the news, read my email, see how my stock portfolio performed the previous day, and even read the draft of a paper I'm working on for work.  All of that can be done without ever leaving Google… and more.  When I get home from work I can check my email again, watch some online video to unwind, read my favorite blogs, and even post to my own blog.  All of that, again, can be done without leaving Google.

Skrenta goes on to say that users will pick the better product when confronted with a possible change that involves no "cost".  Here, cost doesn't have to be monetary.  Switching email providers or domains can also be considered a cost.  As Skrenta points out, switching search engines is a "no cost" situation.  Google generally provides the best search results as of this writing.  But even if a competitor  created an equally good product, they'd still have to compete with Google's brand image.  And people love Google.  They're familiar with it.  Heck… it's a verb in the dictionary these days.  Even with a well-done product, few companies could compete with Google in the brand column.

Skrenta's suggestion is one he echos from the IBM-owned first age of computing:  "Google is not your competition;  Google is the environment".  He says that companies ought to stop clamouring to topple Google and simply focus on what is undeniable fact.  By aligning themselves with Google, companies stand to be far more profitable than they would be from a direct head-to-head assault.  Yahoo, be points out, could earn a cool $1.5 billion from letting Google take over it's advertising system.  It's the same approach Ask.com uses.  Ask.com uses Google to power the majority of it's search advertising.  At the same time, they have their own system that could, in theory, slowly take over more and more of that responsibility as it gains traction.  In the meantime, Ask is most likely making a pretty penny from the partnership with Google.

In conclusion, Skrenta talks about Microsoft's lack of control over the internet.  I agree wholeheartedly with what he says:  new systems bring new rules, and with them, new rulers.  The best thing for most companies would be to take advantage of the Google situation and partner with the search giant.  Will Google eventually be over-thrown?  History says yes.  It could be tomorrow.  But there's a chance we're going to be Googling for a while.