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Several months ago we ran a poll asking you who you felt were Google's biggest threats. Since I am offline today, I wanted to schedule a post with the results of this poll.
The results are obviously skewed to the readers here who are mostly technical in nature, but it makes the results interesting.
We had about 250 responses and the majority said that Bing, Facebook and Google themselves are Google's biggest threats.
Here is the break down of the results. Google's biggest threats are:
- Bing - 32%
- Facebook - 32%
- Google (Themselves) - 23.48%
- Other answer... - 6%
- Apple - 5%
- Yahoo - 1.21%
The other answers included government, Baidu, Blekko, ex-Googlers, and some comical ones.
Forum discussion continued at WebmasterWorld.
This post was written earlier and scheduled to be posted today.
Comments:
Paul
04/19/2011 12:33 pm
I think The threat of Facebook is totally determined by when only when and if FB goes public. The second they go public, investors will demand they add a search component since it is the most valuable advertising space. The day Facebook goes public is the day Google becomes the #2 search engine.
Ian Williams
04/19/2011 01:48 pm
I am still unconvinced by Facebook's 'threat', at least as currently stands (nod to Paul below). It has to work better as a paid advertising platform in order to monetize succesfully. Google at least have fingers in many pies. I would be looking at Microsoft/Apple possibly as the bigger threats.
Syed Khaled Hussaini
04/19/2011 04:04 pm
In terms of their core services, Facebook and Google are not direct competitors, but with the level of the Facebook's user engagement (page views) , user information they possess (incredible ways to target database) and just the viral nature of it, it remains to be the biggest threat to Google in my opinion. Facebook's ad platform is in the rough right now - the CPC is extremely low as BIG portion of spenders fail at getting ROI and only the creative campaign runners are seeing positive ROI on campaigns right now, however, once the platform is improved and revenues increased significantly... they'll quickly become a bigger threat to big G than most people can imagine. Its also worth noting that Search is becoming increasingly dependant on Social- Google needs Social signals for ranking more than ever. Yes, Twitter is good to some extent but it does need signals from the much bigger network - Facebook. Google is desperately trying to get into the social game with their first attempt by introducing Orkut, later acquiring Zingku (mobile social) and its failed attempt with Google Buzz, and now the introduction of +1", aren't all these good indicators of the fact that even Google looks at Facebook as its biggest threat? As for Apple, I think Google is a big threat to them, not the other way around. Just look at the growth of Android, Chrome, etc. Yes, Apple has seen great sales with iPad and iPhones..but what about OS reach which is the real key to mobile market? Android has taken over already and is growing at an alarming rate of 300,000 activations per day. Apple is growing roughly at a half pace of that.
Chris
04/19/2011 06:34 pm
I agree with the respondents that said Google is Google's biggest threat. They must continue to look ahead and do what they do best (search) instead of looking in the rearview mirror.
JTPratt Media
04/19/2011 10:21 pm
Facebook has my vote. I think they are in the best position to upset google in the next few years, and that they will launch a search product to directly compete with them.
Anirban Das
04/20/2011 06:34 am
I would say Bing and Facebook combination would be great threat for Google over the next few years,if Bing search engine having that much authority to dominate Google search metrics....in-terms of speed,features and accuracy(not sure after Panda)...