{"id":1991,"date":"2009-12-04T15:29:49","date_gmt":"2009-12-04T14:29:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.itwriting.com\/blog\/1991-fear-of-google.html"},"modified":"2009-12-04T15:29:49","modified_gmt":"2009-12-04T14:29:49","slug":"fear-of-google","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.itwriting.com\/blog\/1991-fear-of-google.html","title":{"rendered":"Fear of Google"},"content":{"rendered":"

Shares in Rightmove, a UK web site for house sales, have dropped  by move then 10% over the last couple of days, following a report<\/a> by the Financial Times that \u201cGoogle is in talks with British estate agents to launch an online property portal.\u201d<\/p>\n

I do not know what chances of success this venture has. Google does not instantly dominate any market into which it moves; the combination of Google Checkout and Google Shopping hasn\u2019t killed off PayPal\/eBay or Amazon as yet. <\/p>\n

What interests me though is the impact of the rumour. It is not  only Google\u2019s size and profitability; it is the fact that Google is for many (most?) people the portal to the Web, giving it huge power to reach any Web-based market.<\/p>\n

The restraining factor is that it is difficult for Google to exploit that power without falling foul of legislation that protects free markets. When I search for a product on Google, I don\u2019t see any evidence that it favours its own shopping site, for example; though having said that I am only one click away from the Shopping link at the top of the page that searches only Google\u2019s site.<\/p>\n

Still, drawing the line between what is and is not reasonable is hard to do. For example, what if Google had a \u201csearch for houses on sale here\u201d link in Google Maps?<\/p>\n

If Android and later Chrome OS succeed, Google may become the portal to more than just the Web. Its services will have geo-location data as well. Its data-gathering algorithms might learn our shopping and eating out preferences and guide us with uncanny prescience towards things that we enjoy.<\/p>\n

I am not surprised that Google rumours have the power to move markets.<\/p>\n

Technorati Tags: google<\/a>,search<\/a>,rightmove<\/a>,paypal<\/a>,amazon<\/a>,ebay<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Shares in Rightmove, a UK web site for house sales, have dropped  by move then 10% over the last couple of days, following a report by the Financial Times that \u201cGoogle is in talks with British estate agents to launch an online property portal.\u201d I do not know what chances of success this venture has. … Continue reading Fear of Google<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36,44,74],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1991","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-google","category-internet","category-search"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.itwriting.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1991","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.itwriting.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.itwriting.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.itwriting.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.itwriting.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1991"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.itwriting.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1991\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.itwriting.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1991"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.itwriting.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1991"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.itwriting.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1991"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}