Make your business immune to Google

Google - an uncrowned king in the web arena has been growing so rapidly. Google is not only a search, its more than a search. Time is gone when people used Google just to find information. Today we use Google to find information, services, locations, video, audio and much more. This does not end here. Google has provided us with myriad of other free services. YouTube and Google Drive are just two prominent examples. Look at the top black bar of your Google account and you should know what really Google is. The blog you are just reading is hosted on blogger - yet another service by Google.

It has always been a matter of great debate if Google is a monopoly? I can't say YES. There are options available for every service that Google provides. But Google definitely has an edge over others. Core reason for this the popularity and "easy to manage" characteristic, bringing all the best services under one account i.e your Google account. So Google has virtually monopolized the market space.

Online earning is in vogue these days. All of us want to make a buck while we sleep (this is a myth, it never happens). So what these online "businesses" do? They set up a web site. Either they want to earn out of ads or they just sell their products. Whatever may be the case, they want traffic. They want people to see their website at least.

If you are a publisher and want to earn from advertisement, you would want to get free traffic. So you will push hard to get a share of traffic from Google search. Your entire business rely on Google. It just takes Matt Cutts (a man who leads the Google webspam team) to tweak their search algorithm a bit to obliterate the entire business. While they look for the quality of site, but still you rely on them. What if Google search vanishes someday?

What next? Most sites are monetized with Google ads. Again these sites rely on Google as their revenue stream. If you are wanting to sell some product, you may use Adwords - again a Google service. Lastly, huge web sites like KhanAcademy.org use uses YouTube to host their videos. Even I use YouTube to host videos. What will eventually happen? What if YouTube decides to shut down? Game over na?!

This should not happen. It is a high time that one should start branding their sites. One should be able to survive without Google. I don't say that one should not use Google. But you should be able to do without them if needed. So just a contingency plan should be active at the back end.