The European Commission has accused Google of unfair advantage
over ad competitors.^26 With a 90 percent share of EU search, and
headquarters not in the EU, Google is a—rightfully—attractive target
for people who are charged with policing the market.
Google divinely replied to a recent statement of objections: “We
believe that our innovations and product improvements have
increased choice for European consumers and promote
competition.”^27
So, despite its enormous market dominance—the greatest of any of
the Four—Google is also uniquely vulnerable. Perhaps that’s why, of
the Four, Google seems the most retiring, the most likely to remove
itself from the limelight. “Gods don’t take curtain calls,” John Updike
famously wrote of Ted Williams’s refusal to come out of the dugout to
acknowledge the crowd after his last at bat. Lately, Google seems to
prefer to keep its cap low over its eyes, rather than doff it.
The genius of Google was there from day one, in September 1998,
when Stanford students Sergey Brin and Larry Page designed a new
web tool, called a search engine, that could skip across the internet in
search of keywords. But the crucial step was the hiring as CEO of Eric
Schmidt, a scientist turned businessman who had paid his dues at Sun
Microsystems and Novell. Both of those firms had taken on Microsoft
—and lost. Schmidt swore that would never happen again. Schmidt
possessed a key attribute among great business leaders—an enormous
chip on his shoulder—and, as Bill Gates became his great white whale,
Schmidt turned his obsession into a strategy... and Google his
Pequod, targeted to harpoon Moby-Dick.
It’s easy to forget now that until Google came along, Microsoft had
never really been defeated—in fact, it was considered the original
horseman. Hundreds of companies had tried—even Netscape, with
one of the most original products in tech history—and died. Microsoft
is resurgent, demonstrating elephants can dance.
Google may have had just one product (that made money), but it
was world changing, and the company did everything right. The goofy
name and simple homepage, the honest search, uninfluenced by
advertisers, the apparent lack of interest in moving into other markets,
and the likable founders all conspired to make Google appealing to
everyday users and apparently unthreatening to potential competitors