<![CDATA[Why Google's unstoppable - Valleywag Comments]]> <![CDATA[Why Google's unstoppable - Valleywag Comments]]> <![CDATA[Why Google's unstoppable]]> @neef: actually you're right, my PC analogy is flawed. PC growth stalled out years ago, and has been flat to modest (in the US anyway). it's a testament to Jobs & co. that apple has managed to steal/grow market share in such an environment.

why does my analogy suck? because Search & Online Advertising / E-commerce are still growing like weeds.

so even if Microsoft only grabbed 5% of the pie with Yahoo's assets, as i said before it's 5% of a big fucking pie. more importantly, it's 5% of a big fucking pie AND GROWING.

and realistically, the issue is more about whether Microsoft can retain / grow its share of online advertisers' attention. thus the investment in their own search (wrong in my opinion, they should have bought someone else's engine). thus the interest in DoubleClick, and failing that the acquisition of Acquantive. and thus the interest in Yahoo, small / flailing market share or not.

so Owen: is Google unstoppable? yes, probably you're correct on that one. but is Microsoft's efforts to grab Yahoo and build a decent #2 position fruitless? absolutely not. in fact, it's a great way to buy market share in a growing industry at a substantial discount.

i reiterate: "financial non-entity" is a gross overstatement. there's plenty of room in the market outside even Google's dominant market share for other folks to make a crapload of dollah dollah billz, yo.

DaveMcClure500Hats

]]> <![CDATA[Why Google's unstoppable]]> microsoft (failed company) + yahoo (failed search engine) = failure.
google (superior search + innovative products- maps, calendar, gmail, etc)= success

tech2012

]]> <![CDATA[Why Google's unstoppable]]> @DaveMcClure500Hats: The Apple analogy is flawed. Even with 5% of the market, a Mac might be as valuable than a PC, and therefore worth purchasing.

Ads on a network with 20% of the market are *worth less* than advertising on a network with 75% of the market. A better analogy is Microsoft spending 44B to air infomercials at 2AM, while Google sells spots during the SuperBowl.

While the smaller slice may be profitable, it is in no way competitive.

Neef

]]> <![CDATA[Why Google's unstoppable]]> Y! has high traffic/unique visitors; more than Google. It's worth a lot of money if they can monitize it.

checkwit

]]> <![CDATA[Why Google's unstoppable]]> @Owen Thomas: That's better than "Al Gore rhythms."

Jordan Golson

]]> <![CDATA[Why Google's unstoppable]]> @Owen Thomas: Ahem. "algorithms".

Owen Thomas

]]> <![CDATA[Why Google's unstoppable]]> @DaveMcClure500Hats: If I'm going back to school, I'm taking you with me. Microsoft has premised its bid on "scale economics" -- think eBay, a company I know you're painfully familiar with. My point here: In the vital search-advertising market, even buying Yahoo does not give Microsoft meaningful worldwide scale. Does 5 percent of a market give you sufficient data to refine monetization algorithm's at Google's pace? I doubt it.

Owen Thomas

]]> <![CDATA[Why Google's unstoppable]]> sorry owen, you're full of shite here: 5% of the entire EU search market = financial non-entity?

bzzzz. wrong. go back to Econ 101. oh wait, sorry... you're a journalist. try Econ for Dummies.

sorry, search is a big fucking market. single-digit %'s do matter, and 5% of a big number is still a big number.

wasn't Apple only getting 5% market share in the US for pc sales at one point?

agreed, from an advertiser's perspective, if you're less than 10-15% of market i may not care... but if you're microsoft and you can somehow get to double-digit share of search in US, UK, and (maybe) EU, then that's definitely interesting.

DaveMcClure500Hats

]]> <![CDATA[Why Google's unstoppable]]> Well if they do ever find another revenue stream, LOOK OUT. All the fanboys like Carr and Cringely are kind of right about the potential of that enormous network that Google has. If Google ever figures out how to point all that horsepower at anything besides advertising then the results would probably make Google 1.0 look like a grad-school project. Oh, uh...

Of course there is considerable downside risk associated with that possibility; another paradigm-establishing success at Mountain View might create a field of smugness so dense that it could impair the operation of electronic equipment throughout Northern California -- is this the real reason for the remote datacenters?

grrgle

]]> <![CDATA[Why Google's unstoppable]]> Unstoppable is really all relative.

IBM had unstoppable domination of the PC industry around this time 20 years ago.

15 years ago, Dell, Gateway (RIP), and Zeos (RIP) dominated the top tier of the PC compatibles market.

When I got out of college in the early 90's, you couldn't land a professional white-collar job if you didn't know Lotus 1-2-3.

How about Netscape in the mid 90's?

Things change over time.

Change is really the only constant.

5 years from now the SEM/PPC industry will be quite different than it looks today. What kind of different? The marketplace will decide.

Joshua-Feinberg

]]> <![CDATA[Why Google's unstoppable]]> They seem unstoppable, but there are potential chinks in their armor (10Q):

- We generated approximately 99% of our revenues in 2006 and the first nine months of 2007 from our advertisers. Our advertisers can generally terminate their contracts with us at any time.

- We provide advertising, web search and other services to members of our Google Network, which accounted for 39% of our revenues in 2006 and 35% of our revenues in the nine months ended September 30, 2007.

With all their resources they are still a 1 trick, with multiple derivatives, pony.

Anyone surprised about how initiatives like Android (mobile OS) continue to falter with the Google "big" guns they have? They still struggle to find alternate revenue streams.

stupindus

]]> <![CDATA[Why Google's unstoppable]]> @dweezel: Precisely. See also AOL, Netscape, Microsoft -- and they actually sold products!

grrgle

]]> <![CDATA[Why Google's unstoppable]]> That's a strong title considering Yahoo! was once unstoppable..

dweezel

]]> <![CDATA[Why Google's unstoppable]]> @grrgle: Then we laugh at your stupid comment, skippy.

fishneversleep

]]> <![CDATA[Why Google's unstoppable]]> WTF search advertising. Okay I get that it is more measurable than print/broadcast spew but how strange that most of the most brilliant engineers of our day are focused like frisbee-dogs on selling ads that nobody looks at. Sure that model worked for about a hundred years and created some of the real titans of the Dow -- in fact um The Dow itself sells ads for a living -- but hasn't anybody noticed the collapse of the Old Media in the face of this new venue for ads, and done the arithmetic? How long before all the advertisers figure out that they don't need the search engines any more than they needed the big-city dailies? Then what?

grrgle

]]> <![CDATA[Why Google's unstoppable]]> Wha? 4% + 18% = a lot more than 4%. Microsoft needs that 18%, and at $44 billion it's a steal. So they won't own the Australian market after all is said and done, but that's OK, those guys still have to work out that "water drains the other way" thing before they can be taken seriously anyway.

WagCurious

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