Google truly ran the gamut this year. More features, more applications, more products – high intrigue and corporate wrangling vied with a swing of over $450 in their market share and the near destruction of their arch rival Yahoo.
The year started with the search giant watching the drama unfold between Yahoo and Microsoft. By the end of the year, Google had managed to derail the proposed deal with one of its own – which in turn bit the dust under too much DOJ scrutiny.
YouTube has been a hotbed of debate, actually turning a few nickels profit for the first time ever, as Google figured out how to (finally) deal with the problems of piracy and monetization all in one blow. Several big names have split away, however, seeing the opportunity for more profits elsewhere – but YouTube is here to stay. More ads are in evidence, but so are more features such as the long awaited HD.
The gambits by Google that were expected to have much more impact than they did were surprising. Chrome, the Google open platform browser, was viewed with suspicion. Knol, the more personal and user friendly Wikipedia, experienced a flurry of interest that as quickly faded. Most shocking of all was the much awaited G1 phone, which has not quite lived up to sales expectations – prompting Google to use them as Christmas bonuses for staff and employees worldwide.
One the good news front, Google still reigns supreme, with a monster’s share of the search and market shares. Their search is refined even more, and the indexing of flash sites has improved. They can now offer many new features in the search results themselves, including improved snippets, thumbnails and options to jump to inner pages. AdWords also received a revamp, to the initial dismay of some advertisers but the ultimate good of the program as a whole.
The penalty questions still abound, and Google has attempted to clarify search relevance without completely revealing their algorithm, so SEO is bound to be around for a while yet. As the search giant continues in its quest to gather all the information in the world under one roof, the competition will only get stronger.
What is in store for 2009? Google hints at even more plans for increasing search capabilities and new features for webmasters. They are still number one, and the whole world knows to ‘Google it’!