By ReutersInformationWeek
"I am worried about Google, just because I don't know," Eric
Simonsen, chief financial officer of telecoms infrastructure
provider Nokia Siemens Networks, told the Reuters Technology,
Media and Telecoms Summit in Paris.
"I have no idea how, I have no idea when, but I ought to be
thinking about those kinds of things."
Google has branched out from its core businesses into areas
as diverse as cellphone software, submarine communications
cables and medical software, raising a wave of anxiety that has
spread from the United States and is still rising in Europe.
In the U.S., companies as diverse as retailer Wal-Mart,
agricultural commodity supplier Cargill and Wall Street banks
have studied how Google could become a major challenger in the
long run.
As a result, Google has come under the glare of competition
regulators in Europe and the U.S. in the past year, egged on by
Microsoft and major telecommunications carriers.
THE "FRENEMY"
Many traditional advertising groups, telecoms operators and
mapmakers have rushed to strike up partnerships with the
fast-growing Internet phenomenon, hoping to be carried along by
its success rather than crushed by it.
He told the Reuters summit: "Google is a phenomenal company,
as is Microsoft, as is Yahoo, frankly, and we're increasingly
trying to find ways to work with them."
WPP rival Publicis boasted at the summit that WPP was
copying a deal it had previously struck with Google, although
Chairman and CEO Maurice Levy was careful not to upset its
powerful partner by giving away details too soon.
"Google has a lot of restrictions for any announcement which
could be seen as a pre-announcement," Levy said. "I cannot give
detailed information on what we're doing but believe we will
soon be able to give more details."
Google's almost eightfold rise in market value since its
2004 stock market debut to $173 billion has made it one of the
world's most valuable companies and the object of almost
universal envy.
"All you have to do is look at Google and you'll see how
much the stock markets love growth," T-Mobile CEO Hamid Akhavan
told the Reuters summit. "Growth is the sexiest thing on earth.
You can produce truckloads of cash but it's not exciting."
(Additional reporting by Kate Holton in London and Eric Auchard
in New York; Editing by James Regan)
By: Georgina Prodhan, European Technology Correspondent
Copyright 2008 Reuters. See original article on InformationWeek
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