“Google arguably enjoys more multi-dimensional dominating efficiencies and network effects of network effects of any company ever—obviously greater than Standard Oil, IBM, AT&T, or Microsoft ever were ever able to achieve in their day.

The five main anti-competitive strategies in Google’s predatory playbook to foreclose competition are…

1. Cartelize most search competitors into financially-dependent ‘partnerships;’
2. Pay website traffic leaders predatory supra competitive fees to lock up traffic share;
3. Buy/co-opt any potential first-mover product/service that could obsolete category’s boundaries;
4. Commoditize search complements to neutralize potential competiton; and
5. Leverage information asymmetry to create entry barriers for competitive platforms.”

Scott Cleland
Googleopoly.net
(source)

"It is time to find a new balance in marketing, to bring the pendulum back toward the center.

Marketers can start this process by embracing the fact that analytically led marketing is here to stay. It isn’t a trend and it isn’t an option… But analytics must be married with content, the traditional bastion of marketers. And content has never been more important… Analytics and content are therefore intrinsically linked and cannot function properly without one another… Yet they are often siloed by organizational and technical obstacles. It is no longer sufficient to be good at content and analytics separately. It is time to move marketing to the next level, to bring content and analytics together. It is time for smart content.”

Joe Stanhope
Director of global product marketing
Alterian
(via Chief Marketer Mag)

“The issue we have with navigational search is that… it completely obliterates the value we’re creating from other digital marketing we’re doing… The idea that search is this magical fountain of customer acquisition—In many cases it’s not.”

Young-Bean Song
Microsoft
(via ClickZ)

“Why do Websites for magazines and newspapers always make you click through multiple pages to read one article online? Why does the publishing industry do this?  It’s simply about pumping more banner ads and offers into your face. Nothing more, nothing less…

Is it possible that those two extra clicks of the mouse generate enough page impressions and banner ads served that it’s worth the frustration to their readers? The answer must be yes.”

Mitch Joel

“The Social Economy is defined by the exchange of ideas and information online, and in the real world, and is indexed by the dividends earned through new opportunities and alliances.

Relationships are the new currency of the Social Economy as they fuel and extend interaction, insight, and loyalty, and in turn, contribute to the social capital of the individuals who actively invest in their personal branding portfolio.”

Brian Solis

“With increasingly rapid cycle times in technology, competitive benchmarking is becoming less useful. If none of your competitors has made a tough decision to reorganize a department, shift financial resources to new ways of doing things in marketing or customer service, how can you improve via benchmarking? Stated a different way, if your process is broken and all of your competitor’s processes are broken, you can’t possibly create market leadership by benchmarking. You have to hire the best and most brilliant people who hold little if any limiting beliefs and give them the authority to innovate based on what customers want.

Serving those needs in the Peter Drucker fashion is the only way to create true market leadership. This does not mean that competitive analysis is dead. It does mean that the benchmarks you need to pay attention to are the breakthroughs regardless of industry.”

David Dalka
Marketing Strategy Consultant