Is Google playing hardball with Google Buzz?

One of the major hardball strategies in business often adopted by top companies to overwhelm the competition is to plagiarize with pride. Hardball players, who play to win, do not merely take ideas directly from other companies, but also improve on them to launch attacks on their competitors. Google, in introducing Google Buzz, seems to be playing a game just as such.

Google pulled ideas from Facebook, Twitter and Flickr, and integrated them all together in an attempt to become the ultimate leader in social networking business. As more and more information gets shared online, the fundamental issue in social networking is to find the signal in the huge amount of noise. Google plunged right at the heart of the issue, with its simplicity and proven record in organizing information. Because of its dominant market power, Google is in a unique position to take its competitors on. And it is doing so in quite a style, initially copying ideas from its competitors and then using its competitive advantage to solve the overarching problem that is holding the competitors back. Now that is a real hardball strategy.

Photo courtesy of [Flickr](http://farm1.static.flickr.com/101/272645368_c97bf5c1f6.jpg).