It's Google's world, and we're just living in it:
[E]conomists and analysts point out that Google does indeed have network advantages that present formidable obstacles to rivals. The "experience effects," they say, of users and advertisers familiar with Google's services make them less likely to switch. There is, for example, a sizable cottage industry of experts who tailor Web sites to get higher rankings on search engines, which drive user traffic and thus ad revenues. These experts understandably focus their efforts on the market leader, Google -- another network effect, analysts say.
Google enjoys tremendous "network effects," says the article, because of the way that subsidiary technologies are shaped to place nice with Google. Perhaps the only other market force with similar sway today is the federal government, which can bend the tech sector to its will by being such a gigantic consumer of products.
Ah, I should mention that we're running a poll over on TechPresident, on the subject of "Does a Connected World Need a Connected POTUS?" (POTUS being shorthand for President of the United States). As I discuss in my introductory remarks to the poll, in my mind the question goes far beyond whether or not Candidate X carries his or her own Blackberry. Where once nation states were the organizing unit that presidents had to worry about, I think that you can fairly convincingly argue that we're today as much (if not more) organized around networks.
Now, does a politician really need to understand online social networks or wifi networks to understand how to handle a terrorist network like Al Qaeda? Dunno. Thank god we're running a poll. But consider that the response to 9/11 by some politicians was to storm into Iraq while the response of others was to focus on cutting off the global financial spiderweb that powers Al Qaeda. One, I'd argue, is a response rooted in a nation-state mindset, and the other is one that is at least informed by an understanding of the importance and power of networks.
Anyhoo, take the poll and let's get a discussion going in the comments.
