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How Google Could Collapse

155 points by CPAhem 9y ago

sametmax 9y ago
This assume Google can't do anything about it. But it can. It can deny the use of it's services to people using ad-blockers. It's possible that we see a migration from youtube. Maybe some people will be ok with migrating from gmail (probably not the majority though. I did it and it was HARD). But very few people will stop using the search engine or google map, because it has absolutely zero decent competitor. I tried them all for months, fairly. Their are not even on the same planet. So apart from a few geeks, people will just disable the ad blocking software if google decide to force their hand. Besides, wait for the W3C DRM standard + webassembly to be used to hack very hard to block ads...
- jstanley 9y ago
  Google Maps is good and I haven't found a replacement, but DuckDuckGo is now so good you don't even realise you're using it.
  - sametmax 9y ago
    Search a place in google: you get time table, phone numbers, a map to go and if it's opened right now. Search anything in another language than english, and it works. Search something in a very specific area of expertise that is not computing, and google will find it. Search for something with a very weird, contextual explanation with terrible typos, still works. Ddg, as much as I like it, is very far away from delivering this experience. I used ddg for a year, but realized I ended up typing !g for most of my queries. Besides, the HN crowd is very tech saavy, they can do without the Google magic. Most people don't even know what a URL is.
    - atupis 9y ago
      But google search has gotten lot worse to find reputable information. Eg try find that is sugar bad for you. I at least get tons of sensational click bait articles instead actual reputable information.
      - matt4077 9y ago
        I'm getting an infobox summarising https://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/eating-too-much-added-sugar-increases-the-risk-of-dying-with-heart-disease-201402067021 https://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/eating-too-much-added-su... when searching for [sugar health]. Then, the first result is the decidedly non-hypolically titled "Is Sugar Really Bad for You? It Depends" from The New York Times Meanwhile, Bing gives me "10 reasons why sugar is bad for you" and "Sweet Poison: Why Sugar is Ruining our Health". It's not even close.
        pferde 9y ago
        And this here is exactly why I don't like Google Search. It will return 100 different results for 100 different people all searching for the same string.
        wentoodeep 9y ago
        Yup.. It giving me this infobox http://www.healthline.com/nutrition/10-disturbing-reasons-why-sugar-is-bad http://www.healthline.com/nutrition/10-disturbing-reasons-wh...
      - c3833174 9y ago
        The only thing that seems to have worsened is image search, when search by image was first added it was easy to get other copies of an image, now with AI magic it seems to find results in the same category better but not the exact image you're looking for.
    - fauigerzigerk 9y ago
      It's true that Google search has some fancy features that DDG doesn't have, but I have found that the core search results are very similar. DDG has become a solid search engine with some of its own more specialised fancy features. Sometimes DDG feels less convoluted. Not just because of Google's excessive ad overload, but also because Google guesses too much for my taste. They think they know me better than I do and that turns out to be incorrect often enough to be annoying. Where Google does have an unassailable lead is in maps. Their "explore" feature is extremely useful for finding places to eat & drink. Directions are great. Google maps is simply excellent.
  - fooker 9y ago
    DuckDuckGo uses Google and Bing as backends though..
    - drtillberg 9y ago
      "In fact, DuckDuckGo gets its results from over four hundred sources. These include hundreds of vertical sources delivering niche Instant Answers, DuckDuckBot (our crawler) and crowd-sourced sites (like Wikipedia, stored in our answer indexes). We also of course have more traditional links in the search results, which we source from Bing, Yahoo, and Yandex."[1] [1] https://duck.co/help/results/sources https://duck.co/help/results/sources
  - staticelf 9y ago
    The issue with DDG is that it isn't really friendly towards non-americans. This is not good.
- sniglom 9y ago
  I started using apple maps a few months ago. This far I haven't had a single reason to look back. Search engine wise they are clearly on top. On the other hand, do enough social engineering and people will start using a worse product regardless. Youtube could of course force ads on its users, but that would also make those users less interested in youtube compared to competing platforms. This is not overly simple.
  - sametmax 9y ago
    As I said, youtube is possible. Apple map ? Outside of the US, not even close. Google search, just forget about it.
    - dchesterton 9y ago
      I've been using Apple Maps in the UK for the past year after buying a car with CarPlay. I also used it in hire cars in a couple of other European countries. It's pretty good. Traffic is accurate, although it is be a little slower to update than Google Maps (it seems to be ~5 mins behind). Directions are spot on and the UI (at least in CarPlay) is clear and detailed. The only thing that's poor compared to Google Maps is the search but it's certainly a decent alternative and it's come a long way since it was first released.
      - Angostura 9y ago
        The only thing I dislike about Apple Maps is its screwed up hierarchy of importance. Local trains stations, leisure centres, schools etc seem to be afforded the same level of importance as the local nail bar. It's horribly cluttered.
    - arethuza 9y ago
      "Outside of the US, not even close." I'm in the UK I use both Apple maps, Google maps, OpenStreetMap and Bing maps regularly (in addition to the built in nav system in my car) and for me the only noticeable strength that Google has is streetview. The "satellite" view in Google Maps where I live is actually so old (12+ years) that it's actually becoming useful for researching historical stuff...
- phicoh 9y ago
  One way to look at it: consumers don't spend any money on Google products. So they can continue to use youtube, gmail, search, maps, etc. Maybe just less if ads get too annoying. At the same time, Google's real customers (advertisers) are not tied to any of Google's products. They can place ads where it has most effect.
  - perlpimp 9y ago
    most ads on youtube really annoying,sometime extra loud to get your attention. There are some creative ads i do enjoy watching. All this means that you can't pepper people wish shit visuals and expect respect. google text adverts - good thing, everything else tries to goad me into acting - feels cheap dirty. I gather they have to tone down their ads and respect their audience? After all and they vying for our attention
    - fauigerzigerk 9y ago
      >most ads on youtube really annoying,sometime extra loud to get your attention. True. The insane loudness of youtube ads got my girlfriend to install an ad-blocker for the very first time even though she is not opposed to relevant ads at all.
- fghtr 9y ago
  > google map, because it has absolutely zero decent competitor. I am using https://openstreetmap.org https://openstreetmap.org and have no problems with it.
  - sametmax 9y ago
    Open street map don't tell you to go to the left ride of the lane so you can take a better right turn in 100m in real time, then inform you that you have to alternatives to your current trip given the current traffic spike if you wish.
    - phicoh 9y ago
      If there is a choice between having to watch annoying ads and not having those details, then I go for the more basic system that is ad free. (I do use openstreetmap for 99% for my navigation, mostly because I care about open navigation systems) No doubt, real time traffic information can be developed for openstreetmap. But if and when it happens depends on where others drop the ball. For example, current navigation systems built into cars tend to be completely out of date and mostly unsupported long before the car itself is end of life. So this is an area where openstreetmap might take over.
      - icebraining 9y ago
        OSM actually had ads way before Google Maps: http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Mappam http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Mappam
        rmc 9y ago
        I don't think you can compare the ad tracking that Google does now, and what the OSM website used to do years ago. That wiki page is almost 10 years old, with the website mentioned (mappam.com) no longer working. Though since OSM predates Google Maps, it makes sense that OSM would have another first :P
      - saiya-jin 9y ago
- eleitl 9y ago
  > It can deny the use of it's services to people using ad-blockers. This would be a good way to finish off Google search and Gmail, and Calendar, and Drive. > google map, because it has absolutely zero decent competitor Dedicated navigation device from Garmin in the car and Openstreetmap for everything else.
  - sametmax 9y ago
    Most people will not pay hundreds of euros for a device that can get them the same service they have for free on their phone, ads or not. As Openstreetmap, the debate is already active in other comments.
- naibafo 9y ago
  > But very few people will stop using the search engine or google map, because it has absolutely zero decent competitor. I have been using DuckDuckGo as my search engine for a couple of years now, and I don't miss Google at all. bang! and instant answers are fantastic.
  - sametmax 9y ago
    Yeah, but you are on HN. A very poor representative sample.
- taylodl 9y ago
  "It's possible that we see a migration from youtube." Funny you say that because I don't use any of Google's services save for YouTube. I'm a musician and that's simply where the musicians are. Other than that I don't use any other Google products or services - no search, no maps, no docs - nothing. Only YouTube.
  - fghtr 9y ago
    Check out https://www.bitchute.com/ https://www.bitchute.com/, peer to peer content sharing platform.
  - sametmax 9y ago
    I suppose you don't use Chrome, or Android either, nor the iphone search button ? Because that would make it a seriously small minority.
- kamaal 9y ago
  >>It can deny the use of it's services to people using ad-blockers. Many news websites in India did this recently. Of which many have rolled back. Why? There is always a competitor to which your customers can go. And when they do, you lose users to them, may be even permanently. Sooner or later you realize its better they come to you, instead of going to competition. Isn't this the whole point behind Android? You want your OS to run on most of the worlds mobile devices, even if you give it away for free, you still get traffic in return.
  - sametmax 9y ago
    I don't buy it. iTune or netflow are very popular despite pirating even while being bloated, buggy expensive services. Pirating is free, instant, with no DRM and no waiting time. But when a service offer a tremendous value, it can't be quited easily.
- madmax96 9y ago
  >But very few people will stop using the search engine or google map Bing now controls 33% of the search engine space, and Google's share of the market is in decline. Google has a monetization issue, not a product issue. People love their products, but they hate their ads.
keyle 9y ago
So, talking about ads... Yes my adblocker on the web is pretty nice... But I'm still getting bombarded by ads on Youtube and Twitch. That's the difference, if you own the platform / app, you get 100% ad views. By putting more DRM on the web and 'sneaking' ads on the web, they will prevail.
- jvzr 9y ago
  I wonder what AdBlocker you are using. I use both of these platforms daily, and see absolutely no ad. Apart from product placements directly in the video by the content creator, but not as banners/pre-rolls or any other form.
  - Tarq0n 9y ago
    Amazon has been experimenting with ads for their own products integrated into twitch streams lately. I'm not sure if ad blockers have caught up yet, or if they will at all.
  - keyle 9y ago
    YouTube and twitch apps on iOS. No ad blocking that I know of. Sorry I wasn't clear.
    - jvzr 9y ago
      Oh, yes I understand. Totally with you. And proxy adblockers are not really user-friendly yet, so as long as advertisers go native they still have a rosy future indeed.
hug 9y ago
I'm tempted to be pithy. I'm tempted to write something like "and that, of course, is why Microsoft as a company completely folded after the death of the desktop PC," but it wouldn't really be worth reading. On the other hand who doesn't like a bit of apophasis, right? But, you know, maybe they're right. Maybe online advertising is a dying business, and maybe that's why no one solicits for advertising partnerships at the bottom of their articles. Who knows. Maybe their article is, seriously this time, completely correct, and maybe that flashy graph they've got at the top of the page -- you know, the one asking about whether or not you search for products on Amazon or Google -- isn't because no one really feels the need to google for toilet paper before buying some off whoever is convenient. You know what will help? Some pullquotes from CEOs saying things like "brand owners are detemined to take the lead". Of course they are. That's why the Internet is now devoid of atrocious ads. Quick. Put some more graphs in, but make sure you don't put the one in that shows their rising profit margins.
- gaius 9y ago
  "and that, of course, is why Microsoft as a company completely folded after the death of the desktop PC," Who thought giants like SGI, DEC, Sun would fall? But they did, and when it happened it happened quickly. Isn't Google in SGI's old building now?
  - skj 9y ago
    The building is haunted, clearly. Cursed, even!
  - izacus 9y ago
    And who thought companies like Apple and Microsoft wouldn't fail? Doom articles are dime a dozen.
    - Houshalter 9y ago
      Survivorship bias.
      - 9y ago
scalablenotions 9y ago
This is fun reading, but it paints a picture of a "Google" much smaller than the real thing.
- fnordian_slip 9y ago
  Yeah, even though I agree that the article depicts one possible future, I would expect Google to find a new core business model sooner or later when this trend continues. I know that size alone does not make you immune to failure but come on, the amount of money and brainpower they command is obscene! It is somehow unimaginable for me that they can not find a way to get out off this, given their resources.
- coldtea 9y ago
  Well, the truth is Google is not that bigger than the picture. Despite Android and Gmail and self-driving cars and this and that, the overwhelming majority of its revenue is plain ole advertising.
jeanloolz 9y ago
I'm not too sure about the conclusion of the article. While it's true that ad blockers have been adopted by users, advertising revenue from Google is about to get a 15% growth this year compared to last year. Regarding Cloud computing, although I have no numbers to back this up, I'm pretty sure Google Cloud will also grow nicely in the next decade. From an AI perspective, they're clearly leading that field over amazon, without a doubt.
papa_bear 9y ago
This article is placing so much emphasis on voice interfaces as the replacement for screens, but I can't imagine that happening for more than a handful of use cases. Maybe I'm an outlier, but I would never use a voice assistant in public, and you can show a much higher depth of information on a screen. Screens are going to be around for a long time, with AR headsets being the logical next step. Google will have plenty of time to show me ads on screens in the future (if not directly in search, then via app stores and video ads). And even if their voice assistant just exists to direct me to their screen presence more, in my experience, google as a voice assistant has been 10x more reliable than either Alexa or Siri.
- AstralStorm 9y ago
  Subvocal interfaces could work, but it is a hard problem - both in AI as in the design of such an EMG necklace.
  - nabla9 9y ago
    Existing throat microphone technology applied to whispering can be lower tech solution. Some tactical throat mics already have whispering capabilities.
    - melling 9y ago
      We have this same exact discussion when we talk about programming by voice. Can someone provide links to current microphones that are good at this?
- afro88 9y ago
  Case in point: radio didn't replace newspaper
- aninhumer 9y ago
  > would never use a voice assistant in public I would be so much more willing to use voice control systems if they ditched the stupid code phrases, and just used a push-to-talk button instead. Something about saying "Okay Google/Siri/Alexa" creeps me out way more than just talking to a computer. I already use voice search and say "timer 10 minutes" rather than navigate the awkward clock app, but I'd love to be able to just squeeze a reliable button on the side of my phone (or even smart watch) to do that instead of fiddly swiping. And PTT would also reassure me that the mic isn't listening in when I don't want it to, and help to minimise latency (which IME is a major impediment to using voice control) by providing immediate feedback when you're done speaking instead of having to wait for silence.
ndh2 9y ago
This graph paints a different picture, though: https://www.statista.com/statistics/234529/comparison-of-apple-and-google-revenues/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/234529/comparison-of-app...
- Tarq0n 9y ago
  The growth rates of these are fascinating. I'm amazed Google still has that much of an exponential curve.
- nabla9 9y ago
  revenues are not profits. Alphabet profits have increased but profit margins are down. Amazon revenue is rocketing in the expense of not making profits.
  - adventured 9y ago
    Alphabet's margins in fact are not down in any meaningful sense. They're basically unchanged for years. 2016 net income margin: 21.5% 2015 net income margin: 21.7% 2014 net income margin: 21.3% 2013 net income margin: 20.4% 2012 net income margin: 21.6%
    - nabla9 9y ago
      Alphabets profit margin dropping is recent phenomenon. 2017q2 profit margin is just 13.55%. Advertisers paid 23% less per click.
  - crispytx 9y ago
    Amazon hides a lot of its profits as R&D expenses. I'm not an accountant, but I think it's sort of a tax dodging scheme. Refrain from paying dividends, pump all of your would-be-profits into R&D, and essentially 'break even' on paper every quarter.
    - adventured 9y ago
      > Amazon hides a lot of its profits as R&D expenses. I'm not an accountant, but I think it's sort of a tax dodging scheme. That you're not an accountant must be the reason you don't understand spending on R&D isn't hiding profit. If you spend the money, it's not available as profit. Now, you use the term "hide" in relation to profit - which blatantly implies illegal activity. If that's the case, please provide the financial statements that you used to derive that immense legal claim. Amazon is a half a trillion dollar corporation with a vast number of very wealthy shareholders that would love to see all of this stolen profit that is being kept from them.
semperdark 9y ago
Maybe it's wishful thinking, but I think the value of personal data in advertising is inflated right now. P&G spent $7 billion on online ads in 2016, and has been making a lot of noise about moving away from them. Many of those consumer products can be sold to almost anyone, and hyper-targeting users by keyword may not help much. For the sake of the Internet, it'd be stellar if the value of personal data corrected to a level that stopped the war on user privacy. If it turns out that the value is propped up by hype/FOMO-driven ad purchases by larger companies, it could very well happen.
- sametmax 9y ago
  It is for ads. But those data are also sold for other things like spying, market analysis, cost evaluation, targeting prospects, etc.
- tonyedgecombe 9y ago
  P&G spent $7 billion on online ads in 2016 No, P&G spent $7 billion on ads in 2016.
  - semperdark 9y ago
    You're absolutely correct - I'm not sure how I didn't notice that. Thank you for the clarification.
harel 9y ago
Using voice interfaces (at least in a public setting) is going to end up like the Segway. Looks kinda cool on the brochure, but feels a bit daft actually doing it when out and about.
- romanovcode 9y ago
  Kind of like Google Glass.
- crispytx 9y ago
  This ^^^. My Dad is always talking into his phone to send text messages. I really want to tell him, "Dad, you're doing it wrong. Nobody wants to hear you narrate your text messages."
  - falcolas 9y ago
    Aah, but your dad doesn't care. It's just so much easier to use the VR software than to fiddle with the keyboard, especially as you hand-eye coordination fades with age. Spend a minute fiddling with a tiny on-screen keyboard, or a few seconds and a minor social gaffe? People have been speaking to their phones for decades now; the only difference is there isn't someone listening directly.
    - harel 9y ago
      Most people, I think, don't feel comfortable speaking to their phone when nobody is at the other side. Even if I, as an observer am not aware of that. I know I don't feel comfortable. Because I know nobody is there and i'm talking to a machine. Besides, can you imagine the background noise in the world if everybody started talking to their machines? Its enough their eyes are stuck on the screen all the time. If they equated that time to talking - it would mean constant chatter noise. nobody wants that...
jmull 9y ago
People want stuff for free more than they hate ads... ads aren't going anywhere.
- adventured 9y ago
  While ads definitely aren't going anywhere, the extreme majority of Google's $99 billion in sales (last four quarters), is earned directly from search ads, not from ads having anything to do with free stuff (gmail, youtube etc).
  - crispytx 9y ago
    I think he means free search results.
matt4077 9y ago
This reminds me of all those articles saying Facebook would die because people were moving to mobile and "there are no ads in the Facebook app".
- crispytx 9y ago
  I still don't think facebook is safe long term. I've been on facebook off and on for 12 years, and honestly is was only really cool back in college. I suppose there is some value in the whole 'real identity' thing. But the problem I see with facebook is the whole 'friending' thing. Do you really want to have to maintain digital relationships with everyone you've ever known? A digital phone book would be so much nicer. Want to reach out to an old friend from college you haven't seen in years? Look them up in the digital phone book. Wouldn't that be nice? But with how facebook works now, you have to stay 'friends' with everyone you've ever known (because its awkward deleting and then re-friending people). But then you ended up with this news feed full of a bunch of crap from everyone you've ever known. It's just not good. People aren't going to want to keep using facebook for 20+ years. After 12 years I'm burned out as hell on facebook and only have like 7 friends. And I have a feeling, other people are going to get burned out at the 12 year mark as well. Anyway... I think facebook is still the most vulnerable of all the big tech companies. And I think Mark Zuckerberg feels the same way deep down inside. Why else did he pay $1,000,000,000 for Instagram? And feels he has to copy SnapChat? Because he's scared his empire is going to be the next MySpace. And you know what, it probably will go the way of MySpace eventually.
  - nicoburns 9y ago
    Facebook has a bunch of tools to restrict both what you see of other people in your newsfeed (unfollow), and what they see of you (restricted list).
codingdave 9y ago
The battle for the future success of Google isn't going to be over advertising. Google already knows they need to be more diverse than that. And they already are, even if we look no farther than their cloud platforms. When the article said that Search is the only product that Google was a winner on, it seems to have forgotten about gmail. And how a large number of enterprise customers are moving their internal email to gmail, and thereby their Office Suite to Docs. If Google fills in the gaps that custom software development fills in the enterprise (small department level workflow apps, content management, industry-specific forms, processes, and data flows, etc)... THAT is what will make a whole new Google over the next 10 years.
- dilemma 9y ago
  Do enterprise customers really move to GSuite? I don't believe so. Startups may start on it, but I would never put my business on there. You can't even back up your documents! They only exist as links. And you can't move them.
  - icebraining 9y ago
    Google announced that both Roche and BBVA have switched, so apparently some do. In any case, between startups and enterprise there's "SMB", which is a huge market, and often with nary an IT professional in sight. Getting Google to do backups for them is an improvement over not doing any, which is the reality on many of these companies.
  - theandrewbailey 9y ago
    Wrong. You can backup all your documents in a real format. https://takeout.google.com/settings/takeout https://takeout.google.com/settings/takeout
  - NovaS1X 9y ago
    Last two companies I worked for used or was moving to GSuite. One was 650 person, the other 250. Not quite enterprise but not a small start-up either. Who the hell wants to deal with Exchange?
- 9y ago
code4tee 9y ago
It is true that, for all the cool stuff Google does, it is still fundamentally an advertising company where the future in those revenue streams looks bleak. That said, Microsoft didn't die off in the "post PC" era even after spectacular failures in things like trying to make inroads in mobile phones. So with Google yes there are dark clouds on the horizon, but they could pull off a change in revenue streams and still do quite well. The clock is ticking though... they're spending tons on these other pet projects that have yet to pay off so the pressure is really on to prove that they can actually create a viable business with revenue outside advertising.
- seabird 9y ago
  The zinger with the "post PC era" bullshit was that it was a ridiculous marketing/buzz campaign that attempted to completely eschew the reality that most people need something more than a compact touch screen device to effectively complete their work. You cannot genuinely ask an electrical engineer, Excel jockey, photographer, or any other professional or power user to use something other than a laptop or desktop to make their living. I think you can can see the difference between Microsoft's model (which never did go out of style and won't any time soon) and Google's model (which was doomed from the start).
  - slededit 9y ago
    It's still a net reduction in the size of the market. Early 2000s your office had a PC and you had one at home. The office computer may remain but the home one is gone for the vast majority of people.
    - seabird 9y ago
      There's a net reduction, but that loss in the market didn't translate directly into tablet/mobile usage. Anecdotally, I would say that the home PC isn't gone, just less focused on entertainment. I've noticed a significant shift towards occasionally used laptops that are used for work and study while mobile devices make up for the entertainment/simple browsing/bullshitting that would have been done on a desktop ten years ago. Regardless, the relevance to my point is still there; PCs are a product that will have worthwhile demand for the foreseeable future while internet advertising could disappear with little fanfare. That isn't a good fit for Google.
scandox 9y ago
My feeling is that the thing that would really rock Google to its core would be a major scandal about ad spend. Like one where they were unambiguously exposed - say - channelling all the good leads to people at the start of campaigns and then once the spend was established starting to feed them the shit leads, until they convinced them to spend more money. In short like a Casino that would let people win to give them a taste and then reef them. But of course that's purely speculative and probably that type of thing couldn't be unambiguously proved even if it were true - which it isn't.
joneholland 9y ago
Two of the largest customers of adwords are Expedia and Priceline. Why? Because almost every travel customer starts by typing their destination into google, and whoever has the top ad gets the booking. It's a fierce bidding war on keywords, and the only winner is Google. This article grossly understates the number of companies and industries that begrudgingly play this game to acquire expensive traffic with hopes that it converts to cheap organic repeat traffic in the future. Google is doing fine.
- scandox 9y ago
  > This article grossly understates the number of companies and industries that begrudgingly play this game to acquire expensive traffic with hopes that it converts to cheap organic repeat traffic in the future. Exactly right. Seen it over and over again.
mark_l_watson 9y ago
Clever article, blending history and future conjecture. Sure, Google has potential long term problems with its ad revenue stream but the have sufficient cash reserves to succeed in different lines of business. And they probably will. I use fastmail and mostly duck duck go, so in a sense Google doesn't make money from me in the traditional advertising sense, but I like GCP, pay for YouTube red and music, and buy movies and tv shows on Play TV.
- dalbasal 9y ago
  In practice, Google have very few different revenue streams. They do a lot of different things, but advertising makes up the biggest portion of revenue and search market share is what locks up that market.
seabird 9y ago
I hope it collapses fast and hard. Advertising is a nearly worthless vampire industry that works to suck some of the life out of other useful services. If Cisco, Qualcomm, or Texas Instruments threw in the towel, their respective industries would change forever; we would be hearing about it in a matter of minutes. The same can't be said for any advertising company other than Google, and that's not because we find Google's advertising particularly endearing. As time wears on and consumer patience for advertising wears thin, Google will need a miracle in a market that the world can't live without.
- jordanpg 9y ago
  It has always been something of a mystery to me that billions of dollars of revenues are somehow extracted from the internet in this form. My reaction to advertising in all forms is visceral and strong. I don't really understand it, but I know that I am willing to go to some lengths to avoid it. Reading HN threads over the years has shown me that I'm not alone. For this reason, I've come to believe that this era of internet advertising will be a brief flash in the pan of history. I have no idea what the next step will be, but it's hard for me to imagine the future internet being one held up by something that is genuinely despised by so many. Mass quantities of free, mediocre quality content will give way to something else in this new equilibrium. But what will pay for all the infrastructure? All a subject for science fiction writers at the moment.
  - zild3d 9y ago
    I have been wondering recently if we could be in an "advertising bubble"
  - kijin 9y ago
    > Mass quantities of free, mediocre quality content will give way to something else in this new equilibrium. But what will pay for all the infrastructure? There are still a lot of people who just rent a (virtual) server, or rent space on someone else's platform, to post whatever they want. They might have tens, hundreds, thousands of viewers. They could easily scale to even more viewers with the help of some off-the-shelf CDN, while keeping the total expense well within the realm of "hobby spending" for most people in the developed world. Producing and distributing content only costs a lot of money if you want to deliver a lot of content to a lot of people. But I would much prefer a decentralized network where a lot of people each produce and distribute a little bit of content. Each of them would only incur a small expense, if and only if they want to. It will probably cost less than what they're already paying for advertising anyway. Even in a world like that, large content producers who actually have a concrete revenue stream, such as Hollywood studios and a small number of world-famous and/or publicly funded news outlets, will continue to reach billions of people at a time. We don't need to worry about BBC as we say farewell to thousands of content mills who had no reason to exist in the first place.
r721 9y ago
Previous discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14221587 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14221587 Author's comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14223780 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14223780 "Honestly I just wrote this for fun to play devil's advocate and see how convincing an argument I could make. It was intended to be more creative writing than a serious market prediction. (The title used to be "How Google Collapsed" -- Startup Grind changed it and added the subtitle when they published it on their blog). I don't think it's likely that Google is going to collapse any time soon. I just wanted to imagine a world where they had, and try to work backwards from there with current data. It's my first article, and I'm only 21 so I definitely got a lot of things wrong and oversimplified/combined others. But I do have almost 2 years of work experience in online advertising, so I have /some/ idea of how things work. I was honestly expecting 12 views and a mean comment about how stupid I was -- I didn't expect the article to pick up traction. The editor in chief of Startup Grind reached out to me and asked if I would like to have it published on their blog, and I said sure."
- sjg007 9y ago
  It's a very good analysis. You miss chromebooks and the play store revenues but those might be dwarfed by ads. the next task is to figure out what's next which might be glass/AR.
bsenftner 9y ago
Google needs to fix the issue with search optimization gaming. Searching for products on Google is useless! The SEO manipulation puts marketing heaving companies first, while companies with product focus rather than marketing focus loose out. This creates a world of empty products with the majority of the product's investment going towards the advertising of the empty thing.
occultist_throw 9y ago
You want evil? I can give you evil. ASM.js or similar like Webassembly. Use it, create a polymorphic VM in the browser that forces a user to compute the ads in order to get content. Now, trap the content in each VM (and no, not as a downloaded plaintext). This will be an encoded bytestream, that the easiest way to decode will be through the browser VM, and displaying ads along the way. That's evil, and I would highly assume it works.
leoharsha2 9y ago
If I had to pick a point of fragility for Google it is that the founders have set up the company such that they exercise dictatorial control. This can be good, but it's a question mark what will happen once that control is passed to other hands. Further, Google makes most of its money from advertising and it's search engine. They're one competitor away from being in serious trouble. So far Google has beaten them all off but there are a lot of very smart people out there who want to cut into that very profitable business. In the plus column for longevity is a very large cash hoard. However, history proves that companies can vaporise their cash overnight in ill-advised acquisitions.
yuhong 9y ago
Personally I think the problem is the ad bubble in general not just Google.
dgudkov 9y ago
The Google's business is not search, but answering questions. Web search is just one way to ask (and answer) a question.

155 points by CPAhem 9y ago

This assume Google can't do anything about it. But it can. It can deny the use of it's services to people using ad-blockers. It's possible that we see a migration from youtube. Maybe some people will be ok with migrating from gmail (probably not the majority though. I did it and it was HARD). But very few people will stop using the search engine or google map, because it has absolutely zero decent competitor. I tried them all for months, fairly. Their are not even on the same planet. So apart from a few geeks, people will just disable the ad blocking software if google decide to force their hand. Besides, wait for the W3C DRM standard + webassembly to be used to hack very hard to block ads...

jstanley 9y ago
Google Maps is good and I haven't found a replacement, but DuckDuckGo is now so good you don't even realise you're using it.
- sametmax 9y ago
  Search a place in google: you get time table, phone numbers, a map to go and if it's opened right now. Search anything in another language than english, and it works. Search something in a very specific area of expertise that is not computing, and google will find it. Search for something with a very weird, contextual explanation with terrible typos, still works. Ddg, as much as I like it, is very far away from delivering this experience. I used ddg for a year, but realized I ended up typing !g for most of my queries. Besides, the HN crowd is very tech saavy, they can do without the Google magic. Most people don't even know what a URL is.
  - atupis 9y ago
    But google search has gotten lot worse to find reputable information. Eg try find that is sugar bad for you. I at least get tons of sensational click bait articles instead actual reputable information.
    - matt4077 9y ago
      I'm getting an infobox summarising https://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/eating-too-much-added-sugar-increases-the-risk-of-dying-with-heart-disease-201402067021 https://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/eating-too-much-added-su... when searching for [sugar health]. Then, the first result is the decidedly non-hypolically titled "Is Sugar Really Bad for You? It Depends" from The New York Times Meanwhile, Bing gives me "10 reasons why sugar is bad for you" and "Sweet Poison: Why Sugar is Ruining our Health". It's not even close.
      - pferde 9y ago
        And this here is exactly why I don't like Google Search. It will return 100 different results for 100 different people all searching for the same string.
        wentoodeep 9y ago
        Yup.. It giving me this infobox http://www.healthline.com/nutrition/10-disturbing-reasons-why-sugar-is-bad http://www.healthline.com/nutrition/10-disturbing-reasons-wh...
    - c3833174 9y ago
      The only thing that seems to have worsened is image search, when search by image was first added it was easy to get other copies of an image, now with AI magic it seems to find results in the same category better but not the exact image you're looking for.
  - fauigerzigerk 9y ago
    It's true that Google search has some fancy features that DDG doesn't have, but I have found that the core search results are very similar. DDG has become a solid search engine with some of its own more specialised fancy features. Sometimes DDG feels less convoluted. Not just because of Google's excessive ad overload, but also because Google guesses too much for my taste. They think they know me better than I do and that turns out to be incorrect often enough to be annoying. Where Google does have an unassailable lead is in maps. Their "explore" feature is extremely useful for finding places to eat & drink. Directions are great. Google maps is simply excellent.
- fooker 9y ago
  DuckDuckGo uses Google and Bing as backends though..
  - drtillberg 9y ago
    "In fact, DuckDuckGo gets its results from over four hundred sources. These include hundreds of vertical sources delivering niche Instant Answers, DuckDuckBot (our crawler) and crowd-sourced sites (like Wikipedia, stored in our answer indexes). We also of course have more traditional links in the search results, which we source from Bing, Yahoo, and Yandex."[1] [1] https://duck.co/help/results/sources https://duck.co/help/results/sources
- staticelf 9y ago
  The issue with DDG is that it isn't really friendly towards non-americans. This is not good.
sniglom 9y ago
I started using apple maps a few months ago. This far I haven't had a single reason to look back. Search engine wise they are clearly on top. On the other hand, do enough social engineering and people will start using a worse product regardless. Youtube could of course force ads on its users, but that would also make those users less interested in youtube compared to competing platforms. This is not overly simple.
- sametmax 9y ago
  As I said, youtube is possible. Apple map ? Outside of the US, not even close. Google search, just forget about it.
  - dchesterton 9y ago
    I've been using Apple Maps in the UK for the past year after buying a car with CarPlay. I also used it in hire cars in a couple of other European countries. It's pretty good. Traffic is accurate, although it is be a little slower to update than Google Maps (it seems to be ~5 mins behind). Directions are spot on and the UI (at least in CarPlay) is clear and detailed. The only thing that's poor compared to Google Maps is the search but it's certainly a decent alternative and it's come a long way since it was first released.
    - Angostura 9y ago
      The only thing I dislike about Apple Maps is its screwed up hierarchy of importance. Local trains stations, leisure centres, schools etc seem to be afforded the same level of importance as the local nail bar. It's horribly cluttered.
  - arethuza 9y ago
    "Outside of the US, not even close." I'm in the UK I use both Apple maps, Google maps, OpenStreetMap and Bing maps regularly (in addition to the built in nav system in my car) and for me the only noticeable strength that Google has is streetview. The "satellite" view in Google Maps where I live is actually so old (12+ years) that it's actually becoming useful for researching historical stuff...
phicoh 9y ago
One way to look at it: consumers don't spend any money on Google products. So they can continue to use youtube, gmail, search, maps, etc. Maybe just less if ads get too annoying. At the same time, Google's real customers (advertisers) are not tied to any of Google's products. They can place ads where it has most effect.
- perlpimp 9y ago
  most ads on youtube really annoying,sometime extra loud to get your attention. There are some creative ads i do enjoy watching. All this means that you can't pepper people wish shit visuals and expect respect. google text adverts - good thing, everything else tries to goad me into acting - feels cheap dirty. I gather they have to tone down their ads and respect their audience? After all and they vying for our attention
  - fauigerzigerk 9y ago
    >most ads on youtube really annoying,sometime extra loud to get your attention. True. The insane loudness of youtube ads got my girlfriend to install an ad-blocker for the very first time even though she is not opposed to relevant ads at all.
fghtr 9y ago
> google map, because it has absolutely zero decent competitor. I am using https://openstreetmap.org https://openstreetmap.org and have no problems with it.
- sametmax 9y ago
  Open street map don't tell you to go to the left ride of the lane so you can take a better right turn in 100m in real time, then inform you that you have to alternatives to your current trip given the current traffic spike if you wish.
  - phicoh 9y ago
    If there is a choice between having to watch annoying ads and not having those details, then I go for the more basic system that is ad free. (I do use openstreetmap for 99% for my navigation, mostly because I care about open navigation systems) No doubt, real time traffic information can be developed for openstreetmap. But if and when it happens depends on where others drop the ball. For example, current navigation systems built into cars tend to be completely out of date and mostly unsupported long before the car itself is end of life. So this is an area where openstreetmap might take over.
    - icebraining 9y ago
      OSM actually had ads way before Google Maps: http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Mappam http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Mappam
      - rmc 9y ago
        I don't think you can compare the ad tracking that Google does now, and what the OSM website used to do years ago. That wiki page is almost 10 years old, with the website mentioned (mappam.com) no longer working. Though since OSM predates Google Maps, it makes sense that OSM would have another first :P
    - saiya-jin 9y ago
eleitl 9y ago
> It can deny the use of it's services to people using ad-blockers. This would be a good way to finish off Google search and Gmail, and Calendar, and Drive. > google map, because it has absolutely zero decent competitor Dedicated navigation device from Garmin in the car and Openstreetmap for everything else.
- sametmax 9y ago
  Most people will not pay hundreds of euros for a device that can get them the same service they have for free on their phone, ads or not. As Openstreetmap, the debate is already active in other comments.
naibafo 9y ago
> But very few people will stop using the search engine or google map, because it has absolutely zero decent competitor. I have been using DuckDuckGo as my search engine for a couple of years now, and I don't miss Google at all. bang! and instant answers are fantastic.
- sametmax 9y ago
  Yeah, but you are on HN. A very poor representative sample.
taylodl 9y ago
"It's possible that we see a migration from youtube." Funny you say that because I don't use any of Google's services save for YouTube. I'm a musician and that's simply where the musicians are. Other than that I don't use any other Google products or services - no search, no maps, no docs - nothing. Only YouTube.
- fghtr 9y ago
  Check out https://www.bitchute.com/ https://www.bitchute.com/, peer to peer content sharing platform.
- sametmax 9y ago
  I suppose you don't use Chrome, or Android either, nor the iphone search button ? Because that would make it a seriously small minority.
kamaal 9y ago
>>It can deny the use of it's services to people using ad-blockers. Many news websites in India did this recently. Of which many have rolled back. Why? There is always a competitor to which your customers can go. And when they do, you lose users to them, may be even permanently. Sooner or later you realize its better they come to you, instead of going to competition. Isn't this the whole point behind Android? You want your OS to run on most of the worlds mobile devices, even if you give it away for free, you still get traffic in return.
- sametmax 9y ago
  I don't buy it. iTune or netflow are very popular despite pirating even while being bloated, buggy expensive services. Pirating is free, instant, with no DRM and no waiting time. But when a service offer a tremendous value, it can't be quited easily.
madmax96 9y ago
>But very few people will stop using the search engine or google map Bing now controls 33% of the search engine space, and Google's share of the market is in decline. Google has a monetization issue, not a product issue. People love their products, but they hate their ads.

keyle 9y ago

So, talking about ads... Yes my adblocker on the web is pretty nice... But I'm still getting bombarded by ads on Youtube and Twitch. That's the difference, if you own the platform / app, you get 100% ad views. By putting more DRM on the web and 'sneaking' ads on the web, they will prevail.

jvzr 9y ago
I wonder what AdBlocker you are using. I use both of these platforms daily, and see absolutely no ad. Apart from product placements directly in the video by the content creator, but not as banners/pre-rolls or any other form.
- Tarq0n 9y ago
  Amazon has been experimenting with ads for their own products integrated into twitch streams lately. I'm not sure if ad blockers have caught up yet, or if they will at all.
- keyle 9y ago
  YouTube and twitch apps on iOS. No ad blocking that I know of. Sorry I wasn't clear.
  - jvzr 9y ago
    Oh, yes I understand. Totally with you. And proxy adblockers are not really user-friendly yet, so as long as advertisers go native they still have a rosy future indeed.

hug 9y ago

I'm tempted to be pithy. I'm tempted to write something like "and that, of course, is why Microsoft as a company completely folded after the death of the desktop PC," but it wouldn't really be worth reading. On the other hand who doesn't like a bit of apophasis, right? But, you know, maybe they're right. Maybe online advertising is a dying business, and maybe that's why no one solicits for advertising partnerships at the bottom of their articles. Who knows. Maybe their article is, seriously this time, completely correct, and maybe that flashy graph they've got at the top of the page -- you know, the one asking about whether or not you search for products on Amazon or Google -- isn't because no one really feels the need to google for toilet paper before buying some off whoever is convenient. You know what will help? Some pullquotes from CEOs saying things like "brand owners are detemined to take the lead". Of course they are. That's why the Internet is now devoid of atrocious ads. Quick. Put some more graphs in, but make sure you don't put the one in that shows their rising profit margins.

gaius 9y ago
"and that, of course, is why Microsoft as a company completely folded after the death of the desktop PC," Who thought giants like SGI, DEC, Sun would fall? But they did, and when it happened it happened quickly. Isn't Google in SGI's old building now?
- skj 9y ago
  The building is haunted, clearly. Cursed, even!
- izacus 9y ago
  And who thought companies like Apple and Microsoft wouldn't fail? Doom articles are dime a dozen.
  - Houshalter 9y ago
    Survivorship bias.
    - 9y ago

scalablenotions 9y ago

This is fun reading, but it paints a picture of a "Google" much smaller than the real thing.

fnordian_slip 9y ago
Yeah, even though I agree that the article depicts one possible future, I would expect Google to find a new core business model sooner or later when this trend continues. I know that size alone does not make you immune to failure but come on, the amount of money and brainpower they command is obscene! It is somehow unimaginable for me that they can not find a way to get out off this, given their resources.
coldtea 9y ago
Well, the truth is Google is not that bigger than the picture. Despite Android and Gmail and self-driving cars and this and that, the overwhelming majority of its revenue is plain ole advertising.

jeanloolz 9y ago

I'm not too sure about the conclusion of the article. While it's true that ad blockers have been adopted by users, advertising revenue from Google is about to get a 15% growth this year compared to last year. Regarding Cloud computing, although I have no numbers to back this up, I'm pretty sure Google Cloud will also grow nicely in the next decade. From an AI perspective, they're clearly leading that field over amazon, without a doubt.

papa_bear 9y ago

This article is placing so much emphasis on voice interfaces as the replacement for screens, but I can't imagine that happening for more than a handful of use cases. Maybe I'm an outlier, but I would never use a voice assistant in public, and you can show a much higher depth of information on a screen. Screens are going to be around for a long time, with AR headsets being the logical next step. Google will have plenty of time to show me ads on screens in the future (if not directly in search, then via app stores and video ads). And even if their voice assistant just exists to direct me to their screen presence more, in my experience, google as a voice assistant has been 10x more reliable than either Alexa or Siri.

AstralStorm 9y ago
Subvocal interfaces could work, but it is a hard problem - both in AI as in the design of such an EMG necklace.
- nabla9 9y ago
  Existing throat microphone technology applied to whispering can be lower tech solution. Some tactical throat mics already have whispering capabilities.
  - melling 9y ago
    We have this same exact discussion when we talk about programming by voice. Can someone provide links to current microphones that are good at this?
afro88 9y ago
Case in point: radio didn't replace newspaper
aninhumer 9y ago
> would never use a voice assistant in public I would be so much more willing to use voice control systems if they ditched the stupid code phrases, and just used a push-to-talk button instead. Something about saying "Okay Google/Siri/Alexa" creeps me out way more than just talking to a computer. I already use voice search and say "timer 10 minutes" rather than navigate the awkward clock app, but I'd love to be able to just squeeze a reliable button on the side of my phone (or even smart watch) to do that instead of fiddly swiping. And PTT would also reassure me that the mic isn't listening in when I don't want it to, and help to minimise latency (which IME is a major impediment to using voice control) by providing immediate feedback when you're done speaking instead of having to wait for silence.

ndh2 9y ago

This graph paints a different picture, though: https://www.statista.com/statistics/234529/comparison-of-apple-and-google-revenues/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/234529/comparison-of-app...

Tarq0n 9y ago
The growth rates of these are fascinating. I'm amazed Google still has that much of an exponential curve.
nabla9 9y ago
revenues are not profits. Alphabet profits have increased but profit margins are down. Amazon revenue is rocketing in the expense of not making profits.
- adventured 9y ago
  Alphabet's margins in fact are not down in any meaningful sense. They're basically unchanged for years. 2016 net income margin: 21.5% 2015 net income margin: 21.7% 2014 net income margin: 21.3% 2013 net income margin: 20.4% 2012 net income margin: 21.6%
  - nabla9 9y ago
    Alphabets profit margin dropping is recent phenomenon. 2017q2 profit margin is just 13.55%. Advertisers paid 23% less per click.
- crispytx 9y ago
  Amazon hides a lot of its profits as R&D expenses. I'm not an accountant, but I think it's sort of a tax dodging scheme. Refrain from paying dividends, pump all of your would-be-profits into R&D, and essentially 'break even' on paper every quarter.
  - adventured 9y ago
    > Amazon hides a lot of its profits as R&D expenses. I'm not an accountant, but I think it's sort of a tax dodging scheme. That you're not an accountant must be the reason you don't understand spending on R&D isn't hiding profit. If you spend the money, it's not available as profit. Now, you use the term "hide" in relation to profit - which blatantly implies illegal activity. If that's the case, please provide the financial statements that you used to derive that immense legal claim. Amazon is a half a trillion dollar corporation with a vast number of very wealthy shareholders that would love to see all of this stolen profit that is being kept from them.

semperdark 9y ago

Maybe it's wishful thinking, but I think the value of personal data in advertising is inflated right now. P&G spent $7 billion on online ads in 2016, and has been making a lot of noise about moving away from them. Many of those consumer products can be sold to almost anyone, and hyper-targeting users by keyword may not help much. For the sake of the Internet, it'd be stellar if the value of personal data corrected to a level that stopped the war on user privacy. If it turns out that the value is propped up by hype/FOMO-driven ad purchases by larger companies, it could very well happen.

sametmax 9y ago
It is for ads. But those data are also sold for other things like spying, market analysis, cost evaluation, targeting prospects, etc.
tonyedgecombe 9y ago
P&G spent $7 billion on online ads in 2016 No, P&G spent $7 billion on ads in 2016.
- semperdark 9y ago
  You're absolutely correct - I'm not sure how I didn't notice that. Thank you for the clarification.

harel 9y ago

Using voice interfaces (at least in a public setting) is going to end up like the Segway. Looks kinda cool on the brochure, but feels a bit daft actually doing it when out and about.

romanovcode 9y ago
Kind of like Google Glass.
crispytx 9y ago
This ^^^. My Dad is always talking into his phone to send text messages. I really want to tell him, "Dad, you're doing it wrong. Nobody wants to hear you narrate your text messages."
- falcolas 9y ago
  Aah, but your dad doesn't care. It's just so much easier to use the VR software than to fiddle with the keyboard, especially as you hand-eye coordination fades with age. Spend a minute fiddling with a tiny on-screen keyboard, or a few seconds and a minor social gaffe? People have been speaking to their phones for decades now; the only difference is there isn't someone listening directly.
  - harel 9y ago
    Most people, I think, don't feel comfortable speaking to their phone when nobody is at the other side. Even if I, as an observer am not aware of that. I know I don't feel comfortable. Because I know nobody is there and i'm talking to a machine. Besides, can you imagine the background noise in the world if everybody started talking to their machines? Its enough their eyes are stuck on the screen all the time. If they equated that time to talking - it would mean constant chatter noise. nobody wants that...

jmull 9y ago

People want stuff for free more than they hate ads... ads aren't going anywhere.

adventured 9y ago
While ads definitely aren't going anywhere, the extreme majority of Google's $99 billion in sales (last four quarters), is earned directly from search ads, not from ads having anything to do with free stuff (gmail, youtube etc).
- crispytx 9y ago
  I think he means free search results.

matt4077 9y ago

This reminds me of all those articles saying Facebook would die because people were moving to mobile and "there are no ads in the Facebook app".

crispytx 9y ago
I still don't think facebook is safe long term. I've been on facebook off and on for 12 years, and honestly is was only really cool back in college. I suppose there is some value in the whole 'real identity' thing. But the problem I see with facebook is the whole 'friending' thing. Do you really want to have to maintain digital relationships with everyone you've ever known? A digital phone book would be so much nicer. Want to reach out to an old friend from college you haven't seen in years? Look them up in the digital phone book. Wouldn't that be nice? But with how facebook works now, you have to stay 'friends' with everyone you've ever known (because its awkward deleting and then re-friending people). But then you ended up with this news feed full of a bunch of crap from everyone you've ever known. It's just not good. People aren't going to want to keep using facebook for 20+ years. After 12 years I'm burned out as hell on facebook and only have like 7 friends. And I have a feeling, other people are going to get burned out at the 12 year mark as well. Anyway... I think facebook is still the most vulnerable of all the big tech companies. And I think Mark Zuckerberg feels the same way deep down inside. Why else did he pay $1,000,000,000 for Instagram? And feels he has to copy SnapChat? Because he's scared his empire is going to be the next MySpace. And you know what, it probably will go the way of MySpace eventually.
- nicoburns 9y ago
  Facebook has a bunch of tools to restrict both what you see of other people in your newsfeed (unfollow), and what they see of you (restricted list).

codingdave 9y ago

The battle for the future success of Google isn't going to be over advertising. Google already knows they need to be more diverse than that. And they already are, even if we look no farther than their cloud platforms. When the article said that Search is the only product that Google was a winner on, it seems to have forgotten about gmail. And how a large number of enterprise customers are moving their internal email to gmail, and thereby their Office Suite to Docs. If Google fills in the gaps that custom software development fills in the enterprise (small department level workflow apps, content management, industry-specific forms, processes, and data flows, etc)... THAT is what will make a whole new Google over the next 10 years.

dilemma 9y ago
Do enterprise customers really move to GSuite? I don't believe so. Startups may start on it, but I would never put my business on there. You can't even back up your documents! They only exist as links. And you can't move them.
- icebraining 9y ago
  Google announced that both Roche and BBVA have switched, so apparently some do. In any case, between startups and enterprise there's "SMB", which is a huge market, and often with nary an IT professional in sight. Getting Google to do backups for them is an improvement over not doing any, which is the reality on many of these companies.
- theandrewbailey 9y ago
  Wrong. You can backup all your documents in a real format. https://takeout.google.com/settings/takeout https://takeout.google.com/settings/takeout
- NovaS1X 9y ago
  Last two companies I worked for used or was moving to GSuite. One was 650 person, the other 250. Not quite enterprise but not a small start-up either. Who the hell wants to deal with Exchange?
9y ago

code4tee 9y ago

It is true that, for all the cool stuff Google does, it is still fundamentally an advertising company where the future in those revenue streams looks bleak. That said, Microsoft didn't die off in the "post PC" era even after spectacular failures in things like trying to make inroads in mobile phones. So with Google yes there are dark clouds on the horizon, but they could pull off a change in revenue streams and still do quite well. The clock is ticking though... they're spending tons on these other pet projects that have yet to pay off so the pressure is really on to prove that they can actually create a viable business with revenue outside advertising.

seabird 9y ago
The zinger with the "post PC era" bullshit was that it was a ridiculous marketing/buzz campaign that attempted to completely eschew the reality that most people need something more than a compact touch screen device to effectively complete their work. You cannot genuinely ask an electrical engineer, Excel jockey, photographer, or any other professional or power user to use something other than a laptop or desktop to make their living. I think you can can see the difference between Microsoft's model (which never did go out of style and won't any time soon) and Google's model (which was doomed from the start).
- slededit 9y ago
  It's still a net reduction in the size of the market. Early 2000s your office had a PC and you had one at home. The office computer may remain but the home one is gone for the vast majority of people.
  - seabird 9y ago
    There's a net reduction, but that loss in the market didn't translate directly into tablet/mobile usage. Anecdotally, I would say that the home PC isn't gone, just less focused on entertainment. I've noticed a significant shift towards occasionally used laptops that are used for work and study while mobile devices make up for the entertainment/simple browsing/bullshitting that would have been done on a desktop ten years ago. Regardless, the relevance to my point is still there; PCs are a product that will have worthwhile demand for the foreseeable future while internet advertising could disappear with little fanfare. That isn't a good fit for Google.

scandox 9y ago

My feeling is that the thing that would really rock Google to its core would be a major scandal about ad spend. Like one where they were unambiguously exposed - say - channelling all the good leads to people at the start of campaigns and then once the spend was established starting to feed them the shit leads, until they convinced them to spend more money. In short like a Casino that would let people win to give them a taste and then reef them. But of course that's purely speculative and probably that type of thing couldn't be unambiguously proved even if it were true - which it isn't.

joneholland 9y ago

Two of the largest customers of adwords are Expedia and Priceline. Why? Because almost every travel customer starts by typing their destination into google, and whoever has the top ad gets the booking. It's a fierce bidding war on keywords, and the only winner is Google. This article grossly understates the number of companies and industries that begrudgingly play this game to acquire expensive traffic with hopes that it converts to cheap organic repeat traffic in the future. Google is doing fine.

scandox 9y ago
> This article grossly understates the number of companies and industries that begrudgingly play this game to acquire expensive traffic with hopes that it converts to cheap organic repeat traffic in the future. Exactly right. Seen it over and over again.

mark_l_watson 9y ago

Clever article, blending history and future conjecture. Sure, Google has potential long term problems with its ad revenue stream but the have sufficient cash reserves to succeed in different lines of business. And they probably will. I use fastmail and mostly duck duck go, so in a sense Google doesn't make money from me in the traditional advertising sense, but I like GCP, pay for YouTube red and music, and buy movies and tv shows on Play TV.

dalbasal 9y ago
In practice, Google have very few different revenue streams. They do a lot of different things, but advertising makes up the biggest portion of revenue and search market share is what locks up that market.

seabird 9y ago

I hope it collapses fast and hard. Advertising is a nearly worthless vampire industry that works to suck some of the life out of other useful services. If Cisco, Qualcomm, or Texas Instruments threw in the towel, their respective industries would change forever; we would be hearing about it in a matter of minutes. The same can't be said for any advertising company other than Google, and that's not because we find Google's advertising particularly endearing. As time wears on and consumer patience for advertising wears thin, Google will need a miracle in a market that the world can't live without.

jordanpg 9y ago
It has always been something of a mystery to me that billions of dollars of revenues are somehow extracted from the internet in this form. My reaction to advertising in all forms is visceral and strong. I don't really understand it, but I know that I am willing to go to some lengths to avoid it. Reading HN threads over the years has shown me that I'm not alone. For this reason, I've come to believe that this era of internet advertising will be a brief flash in the pan of history. I have no idea what the next step will be, but it's hard for me to imagine the future internet being one held up by something that is genuinely despised by so many. Mass quantities of free, mediocre quality content will give way to something else in this new equilibrium. But what will pay for all the infrastructure? All a subject for science fiction writers at the moment.
- zild3d 9y ago
  I have been wondering recently if we could be in an "advertising bubble"
- kijin 9y ago
  > Mass quantities of free, mediocre quality content will give way to something else in this new equilibrium. But what will pay for all the infrastructure? There are still a lot of people who just rent a (virtual) server, or rent space on someone else's platform, to post whatever they want. They might have tens, hundreds, thousands of viewers. They could easily scale to even more viewers with the help of some off-the-shelf CDN, while keeping the total expense well within the realm of "hobby spending" for most people in the developed world. Producing and distributing content only costs a lot of money if you want to deliver a lot of content to a lot of people. But I would much prefer a decentralized network where a lot of people each produce and distribute a little bit of content. Each of them would only incur a small expense, if and only if they want to. It will probably cost less than what they're already paying for advertising anyway. Even in a world like that, large content producers who actually have a concrete revenue stream, such as Hollywood studios and a small number of world-famous and/or publicly funded news outlets, will continue to reach billions of people at a time. We don't need to worry about BBC as we say farewell to thousands of content mills who had no reason to exist in the first place.

r721 9y ago

Previous discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14221587 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14221587 Author's comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14223780 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14223780 "Honestly I just wrote this for fun to play devil's advocate and see how convincing an argument I could make. It was intended to be more creative writing than a serious market prediction. (The title used to be "How Google Collapsed" -- Startup Grind changed it and added the subtitle when they published it on their blog). I don't think it's likely that Google is going to collapse any time soon. I just wanted to imagine a world where they had, and try to work backwards from there with current data. It's my first article, and I'm only 21 so I definitely got a lot of things wrong and oversimplified/combined others. But I do have almost 2 years of work experience in online advertising, so I have /some/ idea of how things work. I was honestly expecting 12 views and a mean comment about how stupid I was -- I didn't expect the article to pick up traction. The editor in chief of Startup Grind reached out to me and asked if I would like to have it published on their blog, and I said sure."

sjg007 9y ago
It's a very good analysis. You miss chromebooks and the play store revenues but those might be dwarfed by ads. the next task is to figure out what's next which might be glass/AR.

bsenftner 9y ago

Google needs to fix the issue with search optimization gaming. Searching for products on Google is useless! The SEO manipulation puts marketing heaving companies first, while companies with product focus rather than marketing focus loose out. This creates a world of empty products with the majority of the product's investment going towards the advertising of the empty thing.

occultist_throw 9y ago

You want evil? I can give you evil. ASM.js or similar like Webassembly. Use it, create a polymorphic VM in the browser that forces a user to compute the ads in order to get content. Now, trap the content in each VM (and no, not as a downloaded plaintext). This will be an encoded bytestream, that the easiest way to decode will be through the browser VM, and displaying ads along the way. That's evil, and I would highly assume it works.

leoharsha2 9y ago

If I had to pick a point of fragility for Google it is that the founders have set up the company such that they exercise dictatorial control. This can be good, but it's a question mark what will happen once that control is passed to other hands. Further, Google makes most of its money from advertising and it's search engine. They're one competitor away from being in serious trouble. So far Google has beaten them all off but there are a lot of very smart people out there who want to cut into that very profitable business. In the plus column for longevity is a very large cash hoard. However, history proves that companies can vaporise their cash overnight in ill-advised acquisitions.

yuhong 9y ago

Personally I think the problem is the ad bubble in general not just Google.

dgudkov 9y ago

The Google's business is not search, but answering questions. Web search is just one way to ask (and answer) a question.