Competitors and threats

Google have had its impact in the industry with more than 150 products and will continue to grow with its ever increasing portfolio of the products. This is likely to happen but for these 10 companies which have posed some serious competition to Google.

1. Apple : Being from partners to rivals, Apple is one of the toughest opponents for Google in the year 2010. Today, Apple and Google have been locking their horns in the field of Smartphone, Mobile App Store, OS, Mobile Ad, and Online Music and so on. Likewise, Apple is more than up to the task of battling Google in these areas as well as browsers, where Google Chrome competes against Apple Safari. But battle between will intensify, as the market for the digital music and SmartPhones is all set for growth in 2010. Google’s music search along with its partner MySpace and Pandora are looking to compete with Apple’s iTunes, which was the No 1 music retailer in United States in 2009. Further, Google’s Android will have tough time as Apple’s iPhones continues to grab hold of the market all round the globe.

2. Microsoft: has one of the most dominant impact in the IT industry. So without a doubt it is Google’s biggest adversary in 2010 and these two giants will be locking their horns for market supremacy in areas such as search, collaboration tools and browsers. Talking of these two giants, Google has reigned as leaders in search, but with release of BING in May 2009, Microsoft has raised few questions amongst in Google’s management team. With features such as ranking search results based on relevancy to other users, Microsoft has linked Bing-related deals with Twitter, Facebook and Yahoo.

Microsoft have enhanced Bing, adding image search and mapping. But in response Google have unveiled real time search. In December, Google also added a photo search capability, a dictionary and a translator that finds relevant content in 40 languages. Entering 2010, Google still dominates search, with more than 70% of the market. Apart from search, the battle is likely to focus on cloud based collaboration tool.

Google Apps is designed to undercut sales of Microsoft products, including Exchange and SharePoint. Microsoft has responded with Office Web Apps, free Web-based versions of Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote that are due out in 2010. Last but not the least; the browser war between these two is giants are likely to heat up in 2010. So 2010 awaits the answer if ever so popular Microsoft’s premier browser’s market share could be brought down by Google’s Chrome.

3. Amazon: In 2009, Google’s effort of scanning millions of out-of-print books and incorporating them in online search did gain up some momentum and helped themselves to publish over 500000 digital books for free to customers of Sony Reader and Barnes & Noble Nook, which is due in January. Further, there claims of opening up Google Editions, an e-book store, has opened up new rivalry with Amazon.

Amazon with its Kindle e-book reader is one of the leaders in e-book reader’s market. The other area where Google is taking on Amazon is in cloud computing. Google’s Apps Engine, a newbie cloud computing platform that allows developers to create their own Web applications and run them on Google’s infrastructure will be competing with Amazon’s Elastic Computing Cloud (EC2) which has already grab hold of market with its several upgrade after its release in 2006. So it will be a great battle to watch when these two giants fight for market supremacy on Cloud computing and E-book readership.

4. Facebook: probably the most popular stuff in the internet right now, has attracted 350 million active users in just six years and is subject of interest for the guys at Google too. In 2010, Google and Facebook rivalry is likely to heat up based on question that about the way people will find their information in future. With ever increasing use of social networking and the rise of Facebook, Google’s worry seems to be a viable one.

Orkut offers Google Friend Connect, a tool for Web publishers to add social networking content to their sites, in direct competition with similarly named Facebook Connect. Meanwhile, Facebook has sought out relationships with several arch-enemies of Google, including Microsoft and Yahoo. So its for sure that this battle is worth taking a note off in 2010.

5. Mozilla: With release of Google Chrome, Google has stepped into ever so popular browse battle. Mozilla has been in the markets for years and now this step from Google is likely to create the conflict of interest between these two.

Of late, the war between the two has heated up even more. The battle has now gone to the default search. Mozilla now has shown intent to kick Google out from its default search engine status. The latest rumours on the internet show that Mozilla is now eyeing to get a deal with Microsoft to make Bing as its default search engine in Firefox.

This may not impact Google immediately but eventually this move, if comes true, is likely to decrease Google’s share of the search market. Hence, Google now has Mozilla on a double war zone; first the obvious browser war and now the war over default searches.

6. Yahoo: When it comes to search, one of Google’s biggest competitors besides Microsoft is Yahoo. Yahoo has been in the market with variety of products in areas of email, Messenger, News, Search and Analytics services. So without doubt it will be a fearsome competitor for Google. In 2009, Yahoo made some improvements by integrating search with its rich content. Users can watch videos or stream music straight from the Yahoo search results page.

Yahoo also helps users find travel deals and compare product prices. Further, Yahoo has recently added Twitter to its search Page and if a joint search and advertising deal between Yahoo and Microsoft is approved by federal regulators, this could prove costly to Google. So the 2010 is the year to watch as other competitor look to outperform Google in the market with different joint forces being formed by their rivals..

7. Nokia: Today, Nokia has had grab hold of the mobile phone market with 4 out of 10 mobiles sold. With increase in the use of smart phones, the IT giants Google will be in rivalry with Nokia in periphery of operating systems for Smartphones. Symbian Open source operating system will be competing with Google’s Android. Nokia with recent deals with Microsoft is all set to bring Office Mobile to Symbian devices. With claim of releasing improved version of Symbian in 2010 means Google Android will have to face tough battle. But, Google’s Android is poised for major developments in 2010 and with commitments from Acer, Sony Ericcson, HTC and Motorola, this will be a worthwhile battle to watch in 2010 and years to come.

So, at this point one may feel Google has tough battle to fight in 2010. Most of the arch rivals are gearing up to poise serious threats either single handed or with collaboration. So, 10 line ups of interesting battle is all set to keep the 2010 interesting enough for us to watch and keep the Google on their toes