Google – doing no evil?

Greg Grimmer on Google: They say they want to make the world a better place; they say they want change to happen faster, yet the danger is the quicker the world changes – for the better or the worse – the more likely they are to be left behind…

Before I get into why this month’s column is going to be devoted to the UK’s biggest recipient of advertising revenue, I would like to make some things clear:

• I use the Google search engine on a daily basis
• I like and respect the company
• I have friends that work at Google
• I do not even find the Google Doodles as trite and annoying as some of my media colleagues

However, I do worry about Google… no, correct that, I worry for them.

Why I hear you ask? You are a small pawn; they are the mighty behemoth with a market cap of $224 billion dollars; and global revenues of $43 billion – almost entirely generated from happy advertising customers. They have a cash pile of $41 billion – and they could buy almost any other company on the planet.

So why do I worry about them? And why now?

Well at the weekend I was watching commercial television. This is an activity that most of my Google employee friends would regard as an antiquated, if not heretic, pastime. I am, however, pleased to report that I was watching a linear broadcast of the Vuelta De Espana on ITV4 together with a number of teenage boys (all of who are proud owners of at least one pocket networked device – BBM not Android I’m afraid Larry).

While watching, the latest tear-jerker episode in the Google Chrome campaign from BBH New York appeared, in what these teenagers quaintly called a “commercial break”.

For those that have missed this ad, it is the latest in the fantastically well written, beautifully directed and well thought through demonstration of all things Google – available on a freemium basis to those wanting to make more of the web.

Or alternatively, as described by Adweek: “Google’s cavalier attitude toward privacy makes its latest spot for Chrome feel kind of awkward, as the subject matter veers dangerously close to cyberstalking.”

It was the latter opinion that held sway among the testosterone-heavy audience that I shared this particular commercial message with.

This took me aback as I thought that being of Generation Z they would regard Google and its myriad of techie products as still being the epitome of cool. But the shared experience that linear television advertising offers caused them to herd together and proclaim their distaste for the content of the film and pour scorn on the brand that bought this message to them .

In an impromptu qualitative research group I followed up on their impulsive reaction, learnt some new teenage txt spk (LBOSIMM – little bit of sick in my mouth) and found that they are the technology savvy group that every newspaper article has blathered on about since the year 2000.

They are not slaves to the Google drug. They all have a very disparate suite of technology at their disposal. Facebook is still their default web application of choice; BBM still the killer app in the PAYG mobile market; and even Firefox has more fans than Chrome, at least in this sample. Gmail had some fans – ‘but email? Get with it Dad!’. Google Plus? Never heard of it… I might as well have asked about Google Wave, Buzz or Froogle.

Now YouTube is the phenomenal success story within the Google portfolio – although it was of course through an acquisition. It still has support among virtually every demographic (including those pesky teenagers) and as my contacts at Google insist on telling me, the numbers don’t lie – four billion views a day and 72 hours of video uploaded every minute.

Mobile traffic is up 300% in the last year – and crucially for the ecosystem, 30,000 content partners doubled their ad revenue for the last four years running. These numbers are impressive.

But perhaps most interestingly among the Generation Z gang was the preference for the traditional broadcaster’s video players – 4oD , BBC iPlayer and so on – ahead of watching longer form clips on YouTube (though this may change as devices improve and 4G arrives).

So no wonder the Googlers are never happy with their lot. They worry about the very future they want to create.

They say they want to make the world a better place; they say they want change to happen faster (they obviously assume those two things are not mutually exclusive), yet the danger is the quicker the world changes – for the better or the worse – the more likely they are to be left behind.

No wonder they fret about the continued ‘unexplained’ success of linear TV (despite their own marketers being happy to extol its virtues and invest in its business model).

No wonder they fear Facebook’s domination of user time spent on the web when their strategy is the complete reverse – to get people off their own properties in record time.

No wonder they feel a dagger in the heart every time a tweet is sent and a new ‘trend’ is both created and discovered.

The sales and marketing teams now (by the way, I do like their advertising) seem to get the advertising world far better than in their earlier incarnations. Both Sir Martin Sorrell and Maurice Levy have extolled the virtues of the their global team’s stance of working with rather than against agencies (and compared favorably to the aforementioned Facebook) – however, I still worry for them in regard to longer term corporate aims.

I am reminded of a time when I was fortunate enough to be invited to a Google Zeitgeist conference and watched Larry Page tell Eric Schmidt off for referring to Google’s Chinese policy as being nothing that the US Government had not done thirty years earlier. A high moral point for the man who wants to give us a better world.