Recession Is The Competitor Google Needs?

from the economically-different dept

Mon, Jan 26th 2009 12:42pm — Mike Masnick

Rob Hof points us to an interesting idea proposed by Andy Beal: that while competition from Microsoft and Yahoo wasn't putting very much pressure on Google to keep innovating in ways to keep users happy, the worldwide financial recession is serving that purpose instead. Financial crises can certainly drive companies to be more innovative, though it's certainly not a pleasant experience. Of course, innovating through a recession is also a lot trickier than innovating against a competitor in good times. It takes some different skills than innovating against competitors. They do both involve focusing on customer needs, but those needs change in the down times. The challenge for Google (or, well, anyone) is recognizing that shift in consumer needs and making sure that any changes are designed to serve those new needs, rather than just the old ones.

Filed Under: competiton, recession
Companies: google

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Anonymous, 27 Jan 2009 @ 3:35am

Prime example of shit no one cares about
this story has been up for how long now, and I still got first post?
sad.
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PJ Brunet, 27 Jan 2009 @ 11:07am

Interesting that 30% revenues come from Adsense. I think this shows the combined strength of independent webmasters.
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Gene Cavanaugh, 27 Jan 2009 @ 4:01pm

Innovating through a recession
"Innovating", in the sense of building defenses against competitors, involves making litigation expensive - it does not necessarily involve invention, or anything useful to the public.
Innovating through a recession, on the other hand, means making consumers desire your product - totally different! It does involve invention, it does involve things useful to the public.
The two things are not only different, they are diametrically opposed. That's WHY I specialize in small entities - I make litigation inexpensive, so all that is left is invention.
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