Can Google Beat The CES Curse?

There is a curse over the CES show, don't you know.

The products that are big at CES haven't been real consumer hits for years. Netbooks? Non-iPad tablets? 3D TV sets? Meh.

This is a big danger signal for Google (GOOG), one reason (perhaps) that the stock has been selling off in recent sessions. (That and the fact it got way ahead of itself over the holidays.) Because Google is going to be all over the things that do get shown next week:

• Ultrabooks, while they run Windows, are also right in the Google Chromebook wheelhouse.
• Internet-connected TVs, just like the Google TV being shown by a host of manufacturers at the show.
• Smaller, cheaper tablets like one that Google itself is said to be working on.
• Android phones a-plenty. Google is finally going to make them more uniform with the ?Holo? interface for its Ice Cream Sandwich version of the operating system.

This is a dangerous game, but Google is stuck with it. When you're an ingredient in everything, you wind up associating with losers as well as winners. While Google has seen the value of tightening up control of Android, it has yet to bring its vast ecosystem in under its own brand, so the impact is diluted.

In the near term, this is a feature and not a bug. Google has become a default alternative for an industry that can otherwise do little but watch Apple run away with things. They wait for Google to do something like that, make that thing, discount it, and sell tons to people who really would have rather had an iPhone.

Criticize it all you want, but it's just what Microsoft (MSFT) was doing 20 years ago, when the big OEM names were Sharp, Dell (DELL), Hewlett Packard (HPQ) and Gateway. The difference then was that Microsoft was a brand ahead of its OEMs, while Google remains (for now) a brand behind its OEMs.

This needs to change. It would benefit Google OEMs if people felt there was some branding behind what they were buying. It would also benefit Google to be perceived as a hardware as well as an ingredient brand.

So expect to see a lot more commercials for Google, and for things made by Google, or with Google, in the coming months. Were I a bug in Larry Page's ear I might even suggest something like the Intel Inside campaign, a co-op campaign, with funding, that could get the Google brand message into every Android ad bought by Samsung (SSNLF.PK) or the other OEMs over the next few years, increasing the buying power of advertising.

Otherwise the CES curse may well strike Google, and the result of being associated with failure could be very bad indeed. It's a stain that does not wash off, as HP and RIM will attest.

Disclosure: I am long GOOG.

Source: http://seekingalpha.com/article/317901-can-google-beat-the-ces-curse?source=feed

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