So 2009 has almost come to a close and as the trend at this time of year seems to be reflection and review of the year gone by, we at Web Wise Business have been considering the past year of Google's continued growth and development and what seems to be on the horizon for the search giant in 2010.

 

2009 was clearly a year of expansion into a variety of "new" markets for Google. Making a significant number of new product announcements, and sizeable tweaks and adjustments to existing products, Google continued to frighten a number of businesses by using it's brand recognition and loyalty to begin stepping on toes in the mobile phone, navigation and social communication sectors in particular.

 

 

 

Google's Android mobile phone operating system has seen the company burst into a market going through some pretty significant change with the development of next generation handsets such as the iPhone turning mobile phones into even more essential multimedia devices by enabling the ability to access all sorts of handy applications. From the initial launch of the first Android phone with the T-Mobile network late last year, Google has refined the system further into Android 2.0, launched on the Motorola Droid in November, and yet further still into the imminent Android 2.1 Nexus One handset, produced by HTC but sold by Google and due for release in early 2010.

 

The release of the new Android 2.1 handset will see Google attempt to take a further bite out of Apple's dominance of the next generation mobile market. With apps such as the exciting augmented reality Google Goggle's, which layers information over the camera viewer display on the phone, taking search to a new level beyond typing and voice recognition, Android 2.1 handsets look set to pose some serious competition for mobile manufacturers. For a quick visual explanation of how it works, see the video below. 

 

 

 

Further to frightening competition in the mobile phone market, Google also sent shivers up the spines of navigation companies such as TomTom, Garmin and TeleNav in 2009. For example, TomTom released an app for the mobile handsets this year, turning them into a version of their existing satellite navigation units for around £55. Google decided to get into the market in November with turn-by-turn GPS functionality for Google maps on Android 2.0 handsets. However, instead of charging a reasonable sum for the functionality, Google decided to go a bit cheaper than TomTom et al and make their application completely free.

 

Companies such as TeleNav have already acknowledged the move as a serious threat to their business and while the one spot of light for navigation companies at the moment is that Google's application only runs on Android handsets, realistically it can't be long now before this changes.

 

 

 

While Google already own a number of social media sites (Orkut, Blogger etc), the announcement of Google Wave looked set to see the search giant move into similar realms of one of 2009's most talked about sites, Twitter, by becoming involved in global social communication on a new platform in much the same way Twitter created a new platform for communication through micro-blogging.

 

With huge hype surrounding the coming of Google Wave and a 120 minute launch video, the online world waited with baited breath for it's release. Through an invite only process Wave gradually became available to users, however the response was underwhelming as many found the interface almost unusable and with no easy way to see what other people outside your network were discussing, quickly gave up on it.

 

 

 

The consensus is that the product was released to the public well before it had a properly tested and designed user interface and without clear and concise explanation of how to use Wave and why you should want to use it (note to Wave team - 120 minute video descriptions aren't concise!).

 

That said, Google are clearly willing to spend a lot of time and resource in the area. Wave has certainly provided one interesting use, the creation of fun time lines, such as the one above, which provides a summary of the key events of 2009.

 

 

 

So what will Google get involved with in 2010?

 

Well, as was widely reported throughout 2009, people are spending more time and money shopping online. While Google are unlikely to become an online retailer any time soon (though never say never!), there is already clearly a market for price and quality comparison, stock and location availability and product review sites and Google have already been involved in this area for some time with it's Product Search functionality.

 

However, with dedicated consumer sites such as Milo.com, which provides information about what is on store shelves locally and helps you find the best prices, attracting over 1 million visitors monthly and some serious investment, Google have decided to begin including similar features and functionality in it's Product Search offering in an attempt to expand it's market share in this area.

 

 

 

This follows a developing trend with the major search engines (primarily Google and Microsoft's Bing) towards keeping users on the search engine itself rather than the traditional approach of helping users leave the search engine for websites most relevant to what they are searching for.

 

This trend is most notable in the example image below. When searching for an NFL team (American Football), much of the information (the team's record, last score, next opponent, time and date of next game etc) most people making this search are probably looking for is presented on the search page, meaning the team's website probably misses out on a significant amount of traffic from these searches.

 

 

 

 

On Bing also, those searching for tracking information about their packages are able to circumvent much of sites such as UPS's, and therefore UPS's marketing, by being presented with the "enter tracking code" box in the search result rather than having to click through to the site.

 

This trend towards keeping users on site rather than doing what search engines traditionally set out to do, help you get to the sites you want, could be motivated by a desire to make more money from pay-per-click advertising on search result pages. After all, the more time a user spends searching, the more ad impressions they rack up and the more likely they are to click on an advert.

 

Expect to see more of this kind of thing in 2010.

 

 

 

As with all of the above, the brand recognition and loyalty that Google has, coupled with it's dominance of the search engine market and the user and marketing information it controls and can manipulate as a result of this dominance, makes Google a very significant competitor in any market it chooses to enter. 2010 will no doubt see ventures into a number of new areas if the past is anything to go by, but there is likely to come a point in the not too distant future when Google will see some serious political push-back due to it's almost unstoppable growth and monopoly of markets.