Next: Google, the bank?

by Angus Kidman

Monday, 27 November 2006

Page 2 of 2

According to Google's senior vice president for engineering and research Alan Eustace, the company's fundamental business strategy is "to organise the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful". While that may sound relatively benign, previous extensions into new markets have often proved controversial.

Google's dominance of the search market has seen it expand into a large range of other markets, terrifying other industries in the process. Its online applications such as Gmail and Google Spreadsheet pose a threat to Microsoft's longstanding dominance of the desktop office suite market.

Its Google Print indexing operation also has many in the publishing industry worried, while its recent purchase of YouTube emphasises its ambitions in the broadcast arena.

Even if Google further extends its reach into sectors such as finance, that won't necessarily mean the death of banking as we know it, some market experts suggest.

"Customers don't give up -- they just take more and more channels," said Deanna Oppenheimer, CEO of retail banking for UK bank chain Barclays. Bank research shows that even customers who bank largely through online channels want the reassurance of a nearby physical branch, she said.
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