A very good friend of mine, and senior executive with Google, suggested to me today that the search giant is imminently poised to begin consolidating the search engine optimization industry. Google plans to make SEO services available to web site owners and marketers directly, to better enable them to increase their advertising return on investment and make their web sites more effective, for free.
If you are scoffing at the possibility, let’s look at Google from a philosophical perspective. Google likes to have complete control. When Google decided it was serious about the video space it launched a new tab titled video on its home page. At a certain point the company realized YouTube was too strong a competitor and Google threw in the towel and purchased the video competitor. So one wonders if history may indeed repeat itself and Google will start with purchasing/hiring the largest SEO agencies and industry personalities.
In fact, I’m told, that a press release has already been drawn up announcing that it is interested in acquiring "leaders in search”. Apparently, the only thing that this acquisition strategy is subject to is having the following industry leaders accepting positions within this new department:
Director of Outdoor Adventures and Computational Fluid Dynamics Engineer
Director of Culture Activities and Social Spamming
Director of European Football Operations and First Impressions
Director – In House Chiropractic Services and Local Maps Documentation Fragmentation Specialist
Director German Mexican Friendship Committee and Ruby on Rails Developer
Director - Google Radio “All U2, All The Time”
Director of Hockey Operations and Senior Social Media Hacker
Director of Instigator Relations and Reverse Yahoo Search Engineer
So do I think Google will make such an acquisition? Maybe. On April Fools Day? Not!
PS, who do you think Google will “acquire” next and which SEO personality do you think they will integrate?