The 27th of September this year (2012) marked Google’s 14th birthday. Many happy returns Google – thanks to you hundreds of people across the world are able to earn money without leaving their home! While Google may be celebrating and recovering for all that cake now though, they’re probably also looking forward toward the future and their future plans – and potentially this could be a tough year for the search giant.
Here we will look at some of the challenges they’ll be facing…
The Launch of Windows 8
– Google have had a huge amount of success with Android and technically own a larger market share than even Apple when it comes to smartphones.
However while this is a battle that Google is used to fighting, trouble is on the horizon with a capital M (no it’s not Mickey Mouse…).
Whether or not Windows 8 makes a big splash or shrinks away the way Windows Phone 7 seems to have will remain to be seen, but either way this is an important area for Google to focus on if they want to hang on to the great foothold they currently have on the mobile market.
Bing
– While Google by far owns the lion’s share of the market for search, there is still some competition there – again from the sleeping giant that is Microsoft.
Bing may not be able to compete with Google at this point in time, but statistics have shown that Bing stands a better chance than anyone else of eventually taking over.
Maps
– For the first time ever Google also have real competition on the maps front. Sure Apple will likely keep their maps limited to their own platforms but this could be yet more reason for people to choose iOS over Android and it will be interesting to see if it’s brought to Mac users in any form in the future.
Currently though it seems Google doesn’t have anything to worry about with most reports saying that the new iPhone maps are very buggy compared to Google’s established brand and that the 3D view though impressive still doesn’t necessarily blow street view out of the water….
Google Plus
– Google Plus wasn’t a roaring success but nor was it a dismal failure – instead landing somewhere in the middle as a kind of tool that webmasters can use to take advantage of social search more than anything else.
This is a critical period for Google now if they want to hang on to that good start and build on it. How they’ll entice more people over and improve the experience remains to be seen.
Reputation
– Over the last few years attitudes to Google seem to have soured somewhat. There was the debacle over their privacy policy changes which the European Council didn’t like, and there were the changes to the algorithm (the infamous Penguin and Panda) that lead many webmasters to accuse them of trying to derail the SEO industry for their own game.
Success it seems breeds contempt, and how Google handles itself over the next year might be critical in deciding how the company is viewed by the general public in the years to follow.
What are your thoughts, what do you think are the other challenges they will be facing ?
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