A "Fast Company" article about Google's culture and strategy is a worthwhile read, if you wonder how Google might change under Larry Page's leadership. It's also an illustration of how a major application provider's business strategy will continue to be unnerving for Internet and mobile access providers.
Basically, a mobile or broadband access provider has to work pretty diligently to position its service as somewhat better than all the others. Google believes it benefits whenever the entire universe of access providers get better. Consider Google's entry into the browser and mobile operating system businesses. Many wondered what benefit Google could reap.
Google needed its own web browser, some would say, simply as a means to provoke Microsoft, Apple, and other browser makers into reigniting innovation in what had become a rather-stodgy market. Everyone's efforts collectively improve the web as a whole, which is good for Google and its ad business.
Even if its rivals merely copied Chrome's advancements, Google believed it would still benefit. That same strategy might be said to underpin Google's Android effort, and the Chrome operating system effort, as well.
The financial payoff for Google does not come from licensing revenue or other direct monetization schemes. Instead, Google benefits because its ad business works better when the entire ecosystem being more capable.
That is a strategy an access provider cannot really match. Access providers invest only to make their access offerings better. But that helps Google. It's just one example of why so much of the new value and revenue in the broader Internet ecosystem flows to application providers, not access providers.
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