IDC's theory is that Google is looking to be a services rather than a technology organization. "One of the things we did was to poke around and see what domain names they own, and it's possible that they will be getting into banking, auctions, micropayments--all of that would make sense," said Susan Feldman, research VP of content technologies for IDC, who also expects to see Google getting into hosted application services. "We could see them acting as a middleman to a whole range of companies, providing a range of services through partnerships with content producers and application vendors."
And, of course, the risk of getting into hosted applications is that there are plenty of companies out there who already possess a lot more experience, said Forrester's Li, who also expects to see collaboration software, office suites, and other applications coming from Google, with or without partners. "The downside is that they would be facing a host of competition from vendors with much more expertise in how to design, build, and market applications," she said.
"They seem to be pursuing every business opportunity they can think of," said Rich Skrenta, CEO of Topix, a firm that focused on local search. "I really wonder about Google in five years: will it primarily be a search company, or a collection of freaky stuff?"
Mighty Microsoft
We've seen this scenario before. An upstart appears, with a better or perceived better technology, is seen as cool and exciting, and word gets out that we finally have a Microsoft killer on our hands. After all--or so the prevailing wisdom goes--Microsoft has become large and bloated, and unable to compete effectively. Then Microsoft pulls out the stops and the competitor dies.
