Last Updated on 26/12/2021 by TheDigitalHacker
TikTok has been declared the #1 website by one of the largest networking companies Cloudflare. Up till 2020, Google had position #1.
Being #1 has been no fun for TikTok as Google is now trying to copy the UI that made TikTok the most popular web and mobile application.
It is shocking to know that Google, which claims “Do the right thing”, is copying TikTok.
Looks familiar, isn’t it!
Have difficulty in comparing them? Let us do if for you.
They look familiar, isn’t it!
How will this Google Clone of Tiktok affect TikTok and Instagram Reels?
They will basically lose creators and revenue to Google. But there is something more concerning. Small competitors, that have yet not had enough resources to backup will die.
How does Google’s clone affect startups building similar platforms? Someone like Roposo, Chinagari, Moz, ShareChat, Mitron and etc!
It may kill them.
There are 3 things that short video content startups need to run.
(a) Platform
(b) Engineering
(c) Cloud
Google has all of these. It also has an existing video platform, Youtube which will by default pull creators.
Google also has an advertising platform named Adsense, which can be used to generate “revenue” for creators.
Creators generally don’t make any money when they publish on TikTok but they definitely expect to make money. Youtube has been the platform and source of revenue for video creators for years. Adding short videos directly on youtube will be groundbreaking and it will require quite less effort to bring creators on youtube shorts than it took for TikTok and other platforms.
TikTok has an “Advertising Panel” which is used by companies to advertise on the platform but there was no way where creators make money.
Let’s go deeper with Platform, Engineering, and Cloud Cost
How does having a creator platform, cloud, and world-class engineering help google?
Google is one of the pre-established billion-dollar tech companies, it has everything a startup suffocate to have
- Platform: 0 cost Creator Acquisition: Acquiring creators will cost nothing to youtube. They are giving enough benefits to creators that will pull them on the platform.
Besides, Goole has been promoting short videos heavily on the homepage which is giving millions of views to creators, even to the newer ones. - Wold class engineering
Google has thousands of top-class engineering talent to make things work. Google does not have to worry about funding because less than 0.01% of the fund will make video companies run on themselves. - Cloud Cost: Cloud, Storage, and hosting cost is some of the most expensive resources that cost content companies in billions. Google having Google Cloud just removes all the limitations and gives an immense power to push harder. Unlike startups like Roposo, Chingari, Mox, Sharechat which are in the same space, Google’s “Short videos” platform has to worry none.
4. Advertising and Content Monetisation Platform
Getting Paid for views will be alone to bring down creators. Google has its revenue platform “Adsense” ready for creators.
Special Budget: Othe top of everything, Google has announced that the short video creators will be having 100 million allocated for short video content creators on youtube.
How did Tiktok get popular and why Google doesn’t have to do that hard work?
The original TikTok was known musically. A platform that allowed creators to create short engaging videos. In 2017, Bytedance Inc acquired Musical.ly Inc and renamed the platform with the name TikTok.
TikTok did not invest in marketing to “acquire content creators”. They did small-medium events in metropolitan cities but they grew through the platform they built.
It’s easy to copy and grow but small businesses can not
This might be shocking to a lot of people but this is not the first time Google targetted the internet growing platforms. The history of taking popular businesses ideas and implementing them with Google’s capability has been one of googles’ most popular strategies to overtake growing products.
- In 2014, Google successfully implemented the TrueCaller feature in Dialer which now comes by default dialer in android. Truecaller was the most popular apps to detect caller id in India. “Google Phone” app has 1B users but Truecaller only has 500M users. This basically shows the power of platform control and why small tech business doesn’t grow but gets their idea stolen and scaled by someone else but them.
- Google pushed google meets in every way possible to take zoom’s users and revenue. It’s going so intense that Google is promoting Google integrated Google in Google Calendar, Gmail App, Google Documents.
- An attempt to promote Google Duo when the word “zoom” was mentioned in the default messaging app “Messages” but due to media critics, it rolled back the feature. TheDigitalHacker was the first publisher to report that news.
- Google also tried to take on the Question and Answer platform quora by integrating the question and answer feature directly in search but users didn’t use it and it got rolled back.
