Alphabet Inc 's Comment on Competition and Industry Peers
Our business is characterized by rapid change as well as new and disruptive technologies.
We face formidable competition in every aspect of our business, particularly from
companies that seek to connect people with online information and provide them
with relevant advertising. We face competition from:
General purpose search engines and information services, such as Baidu, Microsofts
Bing, Naver, Seznam, Verizons Yahoo, and Yandex.
Vertical search engines and e-commerce websites, such as Amazon and eBay (e-commerce),
Bookings Kayak (travel queries), Microsofts LinkedIn (job queries), and WebMD
(health queries). Some users will navigate directly to such content, websites,
and apps rather than go through Google.
Social networks, such as Facebook, Snapchat, and Twitter. Some users increasingly
rely on social networks for product or service referrals, rather than seeking
information through traditional search engines.
Other forms of advertising, such as billboards, magazines, newspapers, radio,
and television. Our advertisers typically advertise in multiple media, both online
and offline.
Other online advertising platforms and networks, including Amazon, AppNexus, Criteo,
and Facebook, that compete for advertisers that use Google Ads, our primary auction-based
advertising platform.
Providers of digital video services, such as Amazon, Apple, AT&T, Disney,
Facebook, Hulu, Netflix and TikTok.
In businesses that are further afield from our advertising business, we compete
with companies that have longer operating histories and more established relationships
with customers and users. We face competition from:
Other digital content and application platform providers, such as Amazon and Apple.
Companies that design, manufacture, and market consumer hardware products, including
businesses that have developed proprietary platforms.
Providers of enterprise cloud services, including Alibaba, Amazon, and Microsoft.
Digital assistant providers, such as Amazon and Apple.
Competing successfully depends heavily on our ability to deliver and distribute
innovative products and technologies to the marketplace across our businesses.
Specifically, for advertising, competing successfully depends on attracting and
retaining:
Users, for whom other products and services are literally one click away, largely
on the basis of the relevance of our advertising, as well as the general usefulness,
security and availability of our products and services.
Advertisers, primarily based on our ability to generate sales leads, and ultimately
customers, and to deliver their advertisements in an efficient and effective manner
across a variety of distribution channels.
Content providers, primarily based on the quality of our advertiser base, our
ability to help these partners generate revenues from advertising, and the terms
of our agreements with them.
