Nearly every person in the world with internet access has used Google.  Since it was founded by Larry Page and Sergey Brin it has earned a market share of over 75% and become the first ever $100 billion brand all in just over 10 years. Who else can claim that kind of growth?

Although they are most renowned for providing search services, they provide far more than this. They offer free services such as Google docs and an email service Gmail; this is a challenge to its big rival Microsoft, who has hotmail. As well as this they have now moved into different markets, in which they believe they can be just as successful by primarily applying their ad based business model. In the past they have purchased already established brands such as YouTube.com and Blogger.com rather than building a similar service from scratch.

However they also are using their powerful brand with other online products including creating a web browser Google chrome and they have recently announced they will be releasing an operating system, Google chrome OS, seen as a real challenger to Microsoft windows.

Another new market they have entered into is the phone market with the release of G1 and HTC smart phone which includes Google’s own firmware called android. This is to challenge the popular iPhone and their app store. Google had also taken advantage of Apple’s app store by creating a number of applications to use on the iPhone and iTouch.  

Google are not however forgetting their online roots as they have recently started testing an update to their search engine, code named caffeine which users can preview.  Although developers have stated it won’t have an immediate noticeable affect, many people in the field believe searches will place more emphasis on social networks. Finally Google are soon to release their latest project Google Wave, labeled as a, “a personal communication and collaboration tool” and the “next generation of internet communication”.

Despite all this effort Google has been placing on developing new products and enhancing its brand, has it really all been plain sailing for them? Well basically no.

Despite all Google’s fans it is facing a backlash from its competition and has come in for a large amount of criticism.

One of the most important events in the search engine market has been the merger between Microsoft and Yahoo, whereby Microsoft’s Bing will power Yahoo! Search and Yahoo will control over premium search advertising on both Yahoo! Search and Bing. Although combining their market share together at the moment is relatively small with the amount of financial backing behind the two and interest around this deal, it could well be a challenger to Google’s dominance.

Google is also facing a number of lawsuits, which will result in taking up a lot of their time, energy and could possibly damage their brand equity. Google were recently ordered by the courts to reveal the identity of an anonymous blogger, from their site blooger.com which they adhered to. This was because the blogger, named as Rosemary Port wrote a blog with defamatory comments about a former Vogue model Liskula Cohen. However Port has now filed a lawsuit against Google for an astonishing $15m for revealing her identity. Perhaps an even bigger lawsuit in terms of opposition is the lawsuit involving Google vs. Microsoft, Yahoo, and Amazon who have joined the Open Book Alliance. Google wants to create what would be the world’s largest virtual library. However the Open Book Alliance wants any mass book digitisation and distribution to be open and competitive, as if Google win they will be the sole legal authority to scan and distribute digital books that are still in copyright but out of print.

Google are also facing problems in the mobile market, the new application Google voice which they have recently released has not been accepted by Apple,  currently some say it’s been rejected, whilst Apple say it still under review. Whatever the case it is still taking a lot longer than the usual 2 weeks application process. It can be easy to see why Apple do not want Google’s application on their device, Apple say the features of Google voice are too similar to their own, yet many say Google’s app offers better features and usability than the iPhone itself. Furthermore Google are a big competitor to Apple, although Apple would never admit this as the reason for rejecting a Google app due to stringent competition laws.

Finally despite feeling like every other organisation is against them and doing everything they can to hinder their activities. Google has also been criticised for many other things in the past, which have been deemed legal. These include censoring specific information on their Chinese website in accordance with the Chinese government. Many people oppose the regime in China and believe Google are supporting and facilitating this regime or at least ignoring their morals for the sake of profits. The Google street view which gives users a real view of a selected area has been criticised for invading people’s privacy and helping to give thieves useful insights into how secure a particular property is. Finally Google links to illegal sites including pornographic sites in countries where, pornography is banned and sites which allow users to download illegal material. The owners of torrent site thepiratebay.org were recently prosecuted for giving users access to copyrighted files which they can download for free, however Google also offers this service (albeit most likely not intentionally). Furthermore YouTube, which is Google owned also has copyrighted material on its site, which corporations have demanded be removed. Could a copyright lawsuit be the next big problem Google faces?

Despite all its success over the last ten years Google may well be soon in an even bigger torrid time than it has already had. It now needs to re-invent itself and come out of all this turmoil stronger.