• by Diane Mermigas , September 4, 2008

Don't bother looking for Google under your bedsheets tonight. It's not there, yet. But it's positioned to be just about everywhere else.

The marketplace dichotomy of an omnipresent Google cannot be underestimated. The decade-old company is on a parallel track to equally incentivize as well as intimidate global competition. The far-reaching implications are easily lost in the constant barrage of big, media-hyped announcements, like its beta Chrome browser. It is Google's latest maneuver in a well-honed strategy and ecosystem for seizing control of the digital world.

Google is computing in the clouds one day and redefining the Web experience by launching its own browser the next. It is reinventing advertising with an algorithmic model that matches target consumers armed with e-commerce tools with relevant goods and services, which Chrome can help deliver across all media platforms. It is wading deeper into the collaborative virtualization game forged by Facebook in the mainstream and Cisco System in the corporate stream--in which Chrome will also play a critical role.

Clearly, Google is leveraging its unique market strength. It has got the collective goods on everyone and everything (including search, Gmail, RSS feed, blogs, and documents), and will innovate ways of using data unlike anyone else. It is also working within corporations, organizations and--yes, even the Democratic and Republican conventions of late--to integrate virtual and physical worlds. No need to obsess over whether Google's trafficking of content with the likes of YouTube, Knol, and Google News makes it a media company. Google is way bigger than that.

In that broader context, Chrome is all about getting Google's free, open-source applications and software on every interactive and offline platform as an alternative to Windows and other operating systems. It will be supported by interactive marketing, e-commerce and a new wave of analytics.

Google's Android is likewise about to challenge the status quo in mobile phones, which CEO Eric Schmidt considers the ultimate targeted platform--personal and constant. All of Google's pending initiatives--from the white-space spectrum to storing the world's most critical information on thousands of cloud servers--supports the mind-boggling notion of an all-encompassing Googlized interactive world.

All of this is evident in Chrome, billed by industry observers as a bold challenge to Microsoft's newest IEB Internet Explorer (which has nearly 75% market share) and a notable attempt to maneuver the Web faster and more efficiently. In the browser war among monopolies, Microsoft is tied to computing devices; Google's got its head in the clouds.

The implications of how Google executes are huge. For instance, the Omnibox, in which users type in their search words and addresses, ultimately results in prescribed destinations that reflect not only Google's most popular sites but the user's own browsing history--much in the way it currently executes searches. The sphere of exposure is that limited. Not yet a Windows-killer, as some suggest, but a massive data cruncher that feeds on itself, from AdSense and Ad Word to Android and some transforming Google TV application. Despite the absence of short-term revenue and earnings gains, Bernstein Research analyst Jeffry Lindsay views Chrome as a "sound strategic push into a key set of upstream technologies."

At the moment, Google appears to have an unmatched handle on globalization, technological transformation, and facilitating the movement of data, transactions and entities across the digital interactive plane. It is a dominant filter, and it can play in nearly every space.

Lehman Brothers analyst Douglas Anmuth points out that Google's strategy "is now more than Web-centric and not just focused on search." It is the logical next step in the Internet's maturation process. Bundled into its imminent Android mobile platform, Chrome could help Google gain traction more quickly in Asia's new frontier and give it an applications development edge by working around Microsoft's Internet Explorer, Apple's Safari and Mozilla Firefox. Chrome has the potential to be a major game-changer.

Google is able to simultaneously do all this because of its nimble structure, processes and leadership. It is what every company wants to become in its ability to create and execute offensive strategies while maintaining the cutting edge for digital interactive consumers and businesses.

Its cunning "do no evil" mantra aside, Google is a multinational conglomerate in the clutches of a global economic downturn and the adverse impact of a depreciating U.S. dollar overseas. It can grow organically and exponentially with its interactive orientation and no legacy speed bumps. Google's biggest threat is the unforeseen disruptive technologies seized by existing rivals or new competitors. Rapid growth eventually slows as a result of the law of large numbers, offset by developing new businesses--like mobile, display advertising and Chrome (two years and more than 43 languages in the making). Analysts Wednesday warned about reticence of consumer, advertiser and publisher acceptance, especially in a challenged economy.

So, should we fear Google because it can literally rule the world? Should we be inspired by, capitalize on and emulate Google as a template and provider of tools for new business? It might be too late for those questions. Google's checkmate was three moves ago.