We all know Google is huge and their wide range of services are bound to have a fair share of competitors, but you may be surprised just how wide-ranging Google considers its competition to be.
Here below we have included a quote from Google’s latest SEC filing with some very interesting information about what Google has to say about its competition.
(SEC filings are public financial documents and contain a wealth of information for those willing to wade through them. For example, much of the information in our Google infographic was extracted from SEC filings. All publicly traded companies are required to file these documents.)
Google’s own words about its competition
So who and what does Google consider to be its competition these days? Here are Google’s very own words, quoted directly from their latest SEC filing. Emphasis added by us:
We face formidable competition in every aspect of our business, particularly from companies that seek to connect people with information on the web and provide them with relevant advertising. We face competition from:
- Traditional search engines, such as Yahoo! Inc. and Microsoft Corporation’s Bing.
- Vertical search engines and e-commerce sites, such as WebMD (for health queries), Kayak (travel queries), Monster.com (job queries), and Amazon.com and eBay (commerce). We compete with these sites because they, like us, are trying to attract users to their web sites to search for product or service information, and some users will navigate directly to those sites rather than go through Google.
- Social networks, such as Facebook, Yelp, or Twitter. Some users are relying more on social networks for product or service referrals, rather than seeking information through traditional search engines.
- Other forms of advertising. We compete against traditional forms of advertising—such as television, radio, newspapers, magazines, billboards, and yellow pages—for ad dollars.
- Mobile applications. As the mobile application ecosystem develops further, users are increasingly accessing e-commerce and other sites through those companies’ stand-alone mobile applications, instead of through search engines.
- Providers of online products and services. We also provide a number of online products and services, including Gmail, YouTube, and Google Docs, that compete directly with new and established companies that offer communication, information, and entertainment services integrated into their products or media properties.
Conclusion
In a nutshell, Google competes with most of the internet. Pretty tough competition… Google’s management team must be feeling those gray hairs coming fast.
Data source: Google’s latest SEC filing (form 10-K).
