Google is the name given to anyone who is looking for information, products or service providers. With almost 9 billion search queries per day and a global market share of almost 92 percent, the search engine developed by Larry Page and Sergey Brin in the mid-1990s is the most important access point to the World Wide Web. Exactly 25 years ago today, Google went online with the first search index at google.com – and since then has not only revolutionized media use and information dissemination, but also made an important contribution to the development of the online print industry.
If you don’t show up on the Internet, you don’t exist. Sounds brutal, but it’s true. At least as far as companies are concerned. Because public perception is strongly influenced by what Google – and other search engines such as Bing, Yandex, Baidu and Co. – spit out for the respective queries and search terms. This applies not only to craft businesses, which are displayed by Google at least via a company entry, or even better via a website, but even more so to those service providers and producers whose business model is based on the digital sales channel. And that also means online print shops.
A curse and a blessing at the same time
Competition on the Internet is huge and extends far beyond regional borders. This is precisely why it is so important to be found on the WWW. The benchmark for how visible a company is online is usually Google. Because Google is virtually everywhere and has created completely new business areas in the last 25 years, such as online marketing including SEO and SEA. Many companies have long since experienced for themselves that the search algorithm and the advertising and evaluation mechanisms that the US company has built up over time can not only be a blessing, but also a curse.
Without a marketing budget, in-depth know-how and clever marketing campaigns, nothing works anymore. On the contrary, the search engine’s regularly changing algorithm means that advertising strategies have to be continuously adapted. Marketing one’s own service and brand has become much more multi-layered and complex since Google. Online print shops such as Flyeralarm, Onlineprinters and Vista, or specialist providers such as print-emotion or labelprint24, can also tell you a thing or two about this. If you don’t stay on the ball and react flexibly to the respective innovations, you will disappear in the sheer volume of data on the Internet. The declared goal of marketeers, at least as far as the online media discipline is concerned, is therefore at least a listing on the first search results page, and for as many relevant keywords and search terms as possible.
Google’s brand value
In the meantime, Google is much more than “just” a search engine, even if this still represents the core business of the group. But in addition to Internet search, there are now numerous additional functions and services: the Gmail e-mail service, the Google Maps navigation system, the Google Drive cloud storage service, the Google Translator for translations, Google Docs for cloud-based storage and work on documents, and Google Analytics for evaluating website performance. And even those are just a handful of examples, because platforms like YouTube and Android also belong to the Alphabet parent company, which was created in 2015 as a result of Google’s restructuring.
Google is everywhere – and, according to Statista, ranks second among the world’s top companies, valued by brand value, behind Apple, with just under $578 billion. If you want to know more about Google’s history and are also interested in the question of what significance German entrepreneurs have had for the global corporation, you will find interesting insights in a detailed article by OMR.
AI challenges Google
However, one thing stands out when taking a closer look at the Statista figures: Compared to the year 2022, Google has lost an estimated 30% in its brand value – similar to Amazon, by the way. In addition to the growing importance of social networks as modern advertising platforms, the topic of artificial intelligence may also have played an important role. Because with the hype around ChatGPT at the end of 2022 and in the first months of this year, there were numerous voices that already saw Google’s market power crumbling due to the voice assistant. In the meantime, the situation has changed, because since May 2023, Google has started to catch up with OpenAI development with its AI chatbot Bard. And it remains exciting to see how the market will evolve based on the new AI-driven services.
