Google Inc., which is a company offering a range of products including emails, social networking, software products, video services, advertising, and online mapping, has had many partnerships with various companies, some of which have been deadlocked either by their own incompetence or complains by other stakeholders fearing unfair play. An example is a partnership entered between them and Yahoo Inc where Google would sell some of their displayed ads on Yahoo’s site, which sparked an argument that it would stamp further their dominance in the advertising industry, increase the cost of online advertising and reduce the options for the advertisers to placing online ads. This was a warning given by the Association of National Advertisers in their letter to the officials of the US Justice Department. (Tessler, 2008).
Google has also been accused of violating copyright during the offer of its services, for example, by The New York Times on caching their content during a web crawl and also redirecting users to other websites by secretive search formulas for its own benefit (Olsen, 2003). It was also accused of non-authoritatively copying and scanning of books by the Authors Guild on 20 September 2005. An innovative Search within search which allowed users to search what they want within a given website was criticized by some online publishers and retailers that some users would be “siphoned away” since Google used brands-prominence to sell ads typically to competing companies and also has been accused of diminishing the role of the web publisher to assist users in finding potential information in this innovated service. (Bob, 2008).
There is a criticism of their product Google Analytics which is the company’s online traffic analyzing services. Although many people rushed to sign up for it, it has been criticized for collecting inaccurate data and the complexity which would be involved in correcting such a mess. One of the failures that have been termed as the biggest for the company involves its product Google Analytics. The product code to Google Analytics is written in the JavaScript language, which means that Google Analytics will not recognize those using browsers that do not support JavaScript or have been disabled or blocked by such utilities as NoScript. The Analytics has been blamed for inaccessibility or lack of popularity since it uses Macromedia Flash, yet many people like those among Solaris, GNU/Linux, *BSD do not have or don’t want the Flash Player. New sign-ups have also been restricted, and also the creation of a new account by the existing users barred on Google Analytics (Matzan, 2005).
While Google has made several big moves to partner with mobile providers like China Mobile and Vodafone, companies in the US have been reluctant to enter such deals because they do not easily view Google as a partner-a problem that has been attributed to the failure of Google. Google has formed partnerships with companies, yet it has been accused of “trying to strike deals with operators behind closed doors,” whereas it rails against phone companies (Reardon and Mills, 2007). For example, as a result, some the US companies like Verizon Wireless have a reluctance to adding Google’s mobile services directly to their service menus. The company’s Product Manager, Sumit Agarwal, believes that the companies in the US will embrace them as partners. Last year, in a bid to venture more into the wireless business, it signed a deal with Sprint Nextel, which will enable Nextel’s integration of its mobile service with Google’s 4G WiMax network. Its partnership with other companies may be hampered by the speculations of whether it would build its own wireless network after plans to bid on a 700MHz wireless spectrum auction and a possibility of coming up with a Google Phone or continuing with more partnerships.
Google partnerships have resulted in a debate where certain companies fear that they will be outdone by such partnerships. The competition also by other well-known companies has hindered penetration in the market where the partnership has been established. For example, Microsoft, which owns both the OS/Desktop and Web application, has been touted to have a better market penetration than the integration between separate companies-Google and Apple-in their integration to offer the same services. Therefore, in some way, whereas Google may have several partnerships, it may have failed by not considering such factors or trashing them, for example, the likelihood of being outdone by other experts like Gates of Microsoft who “is one step ahead” and already well established (Ravi, 2006). Google would concentrate on partnering with companies in ventures where there is a likelihood of 100% win, although these may be hard to locate and determine.
References
Bob Tedeschi. A New Tool from Google Alarms Sites. 2008. The New York Times. Web.
Matzan Jem. Google’s First Big Failure. 2007. The Jem Report. JEM Electronic Media (2005). Web.
Olsen Stefanie. Google Cache raises copyright concerns. 2003. CBS Interactive Inc. 2008. CNET News.
Reardon Marguerite & Mills Elinor. Google bets on mobile market. CNET News. 2007. Web.
Ravi. 300 Miles of Pure Insanity. 2006. Web.
Tessler Joelle. Justice expected to weigh in on Google, Yahoo deal. 2008. Seattle Post- Intelligencer. Washington. Web.