While Google is on the web’s side, we can be on Google’s side

Oh, Android phones aren’t better than an iPhone, not yet; but the Nexus One and the Droid and such will push Apple to do things its closed mentality would rather not do. It will push battery technology — you need power to use a network machine all the time. It will push cellular companies to commoditize their bandwidth. Add in Google Voice, and you no longer need a separate voice plan. Having lots and lots of super-capable smartphones will push people (and then companies) to cloud data, which will make RIM unhappy but Google very happy. The list goes on.

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Google is intent in raising the average in areas it thinks are key to its future. – Why Did Google Build a Phone and a Browser?

Another way of saying this is that Google is a company that takes complementary goods seriously. When the price of the PS3 goes down, the sales for PS3 games will go up. When your browser’s javascript engine gets faster, you will be happier to use websites with more javascript. These things complement each other.

Google is the only firm I’m aware of with a position of Chief Economist, held by Hal Varian, a UC-Berkeley economist. And it’s with issues like this that we see why such a person is worth their weight in gold (probably literally). I think a lot of what makes Google the friendly company that it is is its understanding of complementary goods. In general, Google seems happy not only to help the growth of industries that it makes money from, but also complementary industries. As far as I know, Google doesn’t sell bandwidth. But they do give it away for free sometimes. Google would be happy if people were a little more used to using the web at the airport. Every additional unit of time on the web that a person spends is a win for Google, because time on the web is a complementary good to their advertising and other services.

For this reason, Google gets to be the technology industry good guy. They’re not trying to squeeze money out of every sector they look at. They do shake things up, as in mobile phones and desktop browsers. But they are great friends of the web for solid business reasons. So, maybe the industries that are fighting the web, like mobile telecoms and some media companies, have something to worry about in Google. But those of us who are also friends of the web have nothing to worry about.

At least for now. My previous post was partially about one of my worries for Google. Right now Google succeeds in large part because it has smart people like Hal Varian, LarryNSergey, and probably thousand of other folks I’ll never hear about. But corporations outlive their staff. One day Google might be run by folks with less sensitivity for a complementary goods strategy, but will still feel the pull of strong quarterly results. I think that Google will remain a company we can trust, so long as they talk the talk and walk the walk of the web. Once they start trying to push everyone into Google services and away from the rest of the web, we should worry. Which is exactly what worries me about Chrome OS.