Previous discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14221587 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14221587 Author's comment: https://news.ycombinator.com

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."