Washington---As Google faces an antitrust probe from European regulators, some analysts are questioning whether the California tech giant's dominance has already peaked.
While Google remains one of the world's biggest companies with overwhelming dominance of Internet search, its prospects are less rosy in a tech landscape rapidly shifting to mobile devices and social media, say some industry watchers.
Debate heated up last year after a blog post titled "Peak Google" from technology analyst and consultant Ben Thompson, who argued that Google is losing momentum.
Thompson said Google may in the same boat as IBM in the 1980s and Microsoft around 2000 -- "a hugely profitable company bestride the tech industry that at the moment seems infallible, but that history will show to have peaked in dominance and relevancy."
Google has for years been the leader in Internet search and has turned advertising linked to those searches into a highly lucrative business.
But its shares have struggled since hitting an all-time high in early 2014 and it has little to show for ventures in other areas: self-driving cars, Google Glass, Internet balloons, health care, Google TV mobile payments, home automation and its Google+ social network, among others.
Even in online advertising, Thompson argues, Google is losing ground to rivals like Facebook which integrate ads in "the stream," sometimes called "native ads," in a different approach from that of Google.
"All of the things that make Google great at search and search advertising... are skills that don't really translate to the more touchy-feely qualities that make a social service or content site compelling," he said.
In the mobile world, its free Android operating system dominates the smartphone market -- another potential concern of EU regulators. But Google has failed to get a major revenue lift from Android.
That's because on mobile devices, users spend most of their time using apps, which leave Google out of the picture.
Roger Kay at Endpoint Technologies Associates said this shift cuts into Google's strength.
Growing use of apps such as Yelp or Open Table takes away from Google's ability to search and deliver advertising for those queries, he noted.
"Google's business model is very narrow. It's just a single pillar which is holding the company up," Kay told AFP.
AFP
