Google's Love For Small Businesses

bariswheel writes "The Fearless Frog is at it again: In his latest post, Cringely aims to slap some sense into Microsoft, Apple, and IBM altogether. From the article: 'What counts is that for Microsoft the platform is the PC while for Google the platform is the Internet and nobody can hope to control the Internet -- not Microsoft OR Google. Google is making a ton of money from people [small/medium sized businesses] who never were even in business before. This is not only a fundamental change in how advertising is done; it is a fundamental change in how BUSINESS is done.'"

Comments

Re:Obsession with small business

[Otter]

OK, someone's got to go to look up the real number ... here ya go:

Small businesses play an important part in the United States economy. There are about 22.4 million non-farm firms in the U.S, according to 2001 data. Small businesses represent more than 99 percent of all employers. They also employ 51 percent of private-sector workers, 51 percent of workers on public assistance, and 38 percent of workers in high-tech jobs.

Not the 85% of all workers some guy was claiming, but much higher than I would have guessed.

Our savior Google?

[SideshowBob]

So America's savior is a company that is entirely dependent on advertising revenue? Does Cringely remember 1999? Has he read anything about Google's problems with spammers hacking the PageRank algorithms, and polluting Google's cache with useless auto-generated sites?

No offense to Google - I'm a regular user - but I'm not pinning the entire nation's future to this one tech company. That's absurd hyperbole. Something that we know to expect from Cringely (and Dvorak, et al.)

Re:Google loves small businesses

[mustafap]

>[Yeah, it's an old one, but do I get bonus points for spelling 'ketchup' correctly?]

No.

Marketing vs. Advertising

[morcego]

You are making a very mistaked assumption. What you are calling "marketing" is actually "advertising". And advertising is only a tiny fraction of marketing.

Without marketing, you would have no product (or service). At all.

And yes, the kind of advertisement we have these days also annoys me. And yes, I too think they spend too much money on it.

Re:Obsession with small business

[calstraycat]

Burger King or McDonald's is a perfect example of a small business.

Huh? Are you serious?

Those have to be the absolute worst examples of small businesses because, well, they're not small businesses. They are local outlets of huge corporations. Pay scales, work rules and benefits are not determined by the local franchise owner. They are dictated by the corporation.

A perfect example of a small business would be a small construction contractor, a small, privately operated, tax accounting office or a family-run restaurant.

If you are going to argue that big corporations treat employees better than small businesses at least compare a real small business to a large corporation. Comparing McDonalds to Google is comparing two large corporations and therefore does not serve your argument.