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The Post-Google Era
Jul. 28th, 2008 12:58 pmI think we're pretty close to seeing "peak Google" if we aren't seeing it now. Google's blood is in the water; the new "Cuil" search engine may provide some more direct competition to an extent, but Google's got advantages in infrastructure and corollary apps that could keep Cuil from amounting to much.
No, Google is much more threatened by Wikipedia and by the iPhone. How so? Well, have you noticed lately that every time you search for something on Google that a Wikipedia page is usually in the top 5 results? Or at least somewhere on the first page? If you're looking for information on say, Archimedes, why the hell would you ever use Google for that? Wikipedia will instanteously provide you with what you need, and give you tons of related internal and external links for deeper knowledge. What the hell does Google get you besides a hundred thousand useless non-linked web pages? Wikipedia provides context and information infrastructure, and that is a Google killer.
How does the iPhone threaten Google? I think I've mentioned this before, but the iPhone can basically provide much more targeted information than anything else on the planet. Leverage the network of iPhone users, use their distributed nature to geotag and continuously improve data about everything everywhere, and you've now made relatively static web pages next to useless. Who cares that Google has billions of pages cached, when I can get a Twitter from a friend who's up the street who tells me that he just found a brand new restaurant that no one knows about, or that the perfect red velvet cupcake can be found at Latitude: 40.72861 Longitude: -73.99639? That kind of ultra-specific, real-time rapidly distributed information is a Google killer.
Google has no other business but advertising - that's the place where they make all their money, whatever else they get from selling infrastructure or appliances is relatively negligible. They lost ten percent of their value recently... advertising always goes down in a bad economy. If things get really bad, like cascading bank failures, Google will completely fall down. And over time, surely a short period of time, the disruptive Google killers mentioned above will suck eyeballs away from Google ads, making their entire model basically worthless.
Google has a lot of cash, sure, but how can they survive the loss of advertising revenue? They'd have to completely retool their business, or merge with some other company that actually gets revenue from a real source (like Amazon or eBay).
No, Google is much more threatened by Wikipedia and by the iPhone. How so? Well, have you noticed lately that every time you search for something on Google that a Wikipedia page is usually in the top 5 results? Or at least somewhere on the first page? If you're looking for information on say, Archimedes, why the hell would you ever use Google for that? Wikipedia will instanteously provide you with what you need, and give you tons of related internal and external links for deeper knowledge. What the hell does Google get you besides a hundred thousand useless non-linked web pages? Wikipedia provides context and information infrastructure, and that is a Google killer.
How does the iPhone threaten Google? I think I've mentioned this before, but the iPhone can basically provide much more targeted information than anything else on the planet. Leverage the network of iPhone users, use their distributed nature to geotag and continuously improve data about everything everywhere, and you've now made relatively static web pages next to useless. Who cares that Google has billions of pages cached, when I can get a Twitter from a friend who's up the street who tells me that he just found a brand new restaurant that no one knows about, or that the perfect red velvet cupcake can be found at Latitude: 40.72861 Longitude: -73.99639? That kind of ultra-specific, real-time rapidly distributed information is a Google killer.
Google has no other business but advertising - that's the place where they make all their money, whatever else they get from selling infrastructure or appliances is relatively negligible. They lost ten percent of their value recently... advertising always goes down in a bad economy. If things get really bad, like cascading bank failures, Google will completely fall down. And over time, surely a short period of time, the disruptive Google killers mentioned above will suck eyeballs away from Google ads, making their entire model basically worthless.
Google has a lot of cash, sure, but how can they survive the loss of advertising revenue? They'd have to completely retool their business, or merge with some other company that actually gets revenue from a real source (like Amazon or eBay).