Google in 2013 will travel two steps forward and one step back. Through the merciless culling of its product portfolio at the hands of CEO Larry Page, and the growing synergy between its cloud services, operating systems and Google-friendly hardware, the company is well-positioned to consolidate its power and to keep growing.

The company has survived a copyright and patent infringement claim from Oracle that threatened to undo Android. Its hardware partners have fared less well, with Samsung on the defensive as it tries to reverse the billion-dollar judgment Apple won over the summer and with other Android hardware makers paying patent protection money to Microsoft and Apple.

Google’s backward motion will be the result of a push by regulators and corporate litigants around the world to tame the company’s ability to disrupt established markets and to extract tolls for daring to subsidize what was once expensive with ad revenue. Only a handful of companies are competing effectively against Google, and those that are doing well, like Baidu in China, tend to benefit from a regulatory advantage or, like Microsoft and its Office suite, from force of habit.
Network Computing