iGoogle, you Google
Friday, October 17th, 2008 by Jon Clements 
With so much doom hanging over the economy, who would you expect to be doing well?
No surprises then that Google has posted outstanding third quarter figures, with revenues up 31% to a dizzying £3.2bn (though dwarfed by bank handouts from you and I) and profits up 26%.
And everyone’s favourite search engine is now providing 63% of online searches in the USA (August figures), which is double that of its closest competition.
Which somewhat supports Jeff Jarvis’ notion on Buzz Machine that the “Google economy is just different”.
Jarvis says that Google typifies the “small-is-the-new-big” economy in which the myriad of advertisers of all sizes using its services now adds up to a critical mass. This mirrors the inter-relationship between Google and online communities, whereby Google recognises the critical mass of activity generated by social media, including blog posts, user-generated comments, content sharing and bookmarking sites such as Digg, etc.
If people you need to reach are using the Internet to research before they buy or make decisions about something, the equation is this:
a) The majority of people are using Google to search the Internet.
b) Google’s techno wizardry ranks quality online destinations according to their level of activity and interactivity.
c) Therefore, you might need to include some form of social media activity as part of your communications.
To paraphrase the old Clinton campaign slogan, it’s the Google economy, stupid!
