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So you're saying that John Q will search 30% more next year and Google will own (with FB) say 85% of the ad market. How long will that last before enemies succe

So you're saying that John Q will search 30% more next year and Google will own (with FB) say 85% of the ad market. How long will that last before enemies succeed to get the state involved? Goog is valued at $700 BILLION right now. Will it be $1.5 Trillion in 5-10 years?

nostrademons 9y ago
Or rather, John Q Millenial is already using Google for most things and will search 5% more, but his dad John Q Boomer will finally be convinced to save $50/month by cutting his TV subscription and using the Internet only and will search 45% more. Or if that doesn't happen, John Q Boomer dies off and his place, as a consumer, is taken by John Q Student who already uses Google for 100% of his consumption. That's what happens when you get a technological revolution - the new means of production completely replaces the old. Imagine you were born into a wealthy Virginia plantation in 1830. Your mental model of the world is that cotton is king, wealth comes from working and owning the land, slavery is just how things are done, traveling beyond your plantation is prohibitive in time and cost, and your family is part of the landed aristocracy and secure in its social position. If you live to the ripe old age of 90 and die in 1920, you will have seen cotton become just another commodity, inconceivable wealth generated by newfangled machines that you could not have imagined, over half the population move to tenements in cities, people crossing the Atlantic in a matter of days, slavery outlawed, and your plantation burned and its title stripped from you and divided amongst your slaves. And yeah, if the state survives, it will absolutely get involved. I would bet even money that the concept of a nation state fractures and starts to disintegrate within 20 years, though. The idea of a nation-state as it currently exists is a construct of the Industrial Revolution: the new technologies being developed benefitted from vastly increased scale and social organization, and so those populations that organized themselves as nations were able to defeat those that did not in battle. (Note that in the example above, the "state" was Virginia in 1830 but the United States in 1920; the U.S. of 1830 was organized as a loose confederation of states while that of 1920 was organized as a nation-state with a strong central government, and it took the "Union" defeating the "Confederacy" to bring that about.) I don't know what sort of social organization the information age will demand, whether it'll be city-states in a trade confederation or corporate feudalism where you pledge loyalty for your employer in exchange for protection, but it'll likely not be the nation state as we currently know it.
- sova 9y ago
  Thanks for sharing your view, I find it very illuminating. The notion of a nation-state must now adapt to be both regional and digital. We still need voting for local things, I want our =water supply to be clean, etc. Having people who are able to vote through the internet would theoretically strongly increase democracy-in-participation but it also brings in a lot of strong questions of how to do regional decisions when some people are casting their ballots remotely. If everyone became an absentee voter, the whole structure for regional decision making comes into question. Thanks for writing your write-up. I don't think I ever heard of an instance when a plantation's land was divided amongst the slaves that worked it, but that would be a form of social justice I can get behind.
- tryingagainbro 9y ago
  Yeah but the state, union of states, confederations or whatever will exist in a form or another. Antitrust in pretty much hard coded into every country's legal doctrine.
MarkMc 9y ago
Here is something that could reasonably occur in 1 year: - Number of people connected to internet grows by 7% - Average income of existing users grows by 2% - Amount of time on internet spent by average user grows 7% - Number of ads served to an average user per hour of internet time grows 2% - Effectiveness of an average Google ad grows 9% Total growth in Google revenue: 30% Also keep in mind that most of Google's costs do not need to rise in line with revenue - it wouldn't take twice as many employees to serve twice as many ads. Including dividends, I would put the chance of a $1.5 trillion valuation in 10 years at 60%

nostrademons 9y ago

Or rather, John Q Millenial is already using Google for most things and will search 5% more, but his dad John Q Boomer will finally be convinced to save $50/month by cutting his TV subscription and using the Internet only and will search 45% more. Or if that doesn't happen, John Q Boomer dies off and his place, as a consumer, is taken by John Q Student who already uses Google for 100% of his consumption. That's what happens when you get a technological revolution - the new means of production completely replaces the old. Imagine you were born into a wealthy Virginia plantation in 1830. Your mental model of the world is that cotton is king, wealth comes from working and owning the land, slavery is just how things are done, traveling beyond your plantation is prohibitive in time and cost, and your family is part of the landed aristocracy and secure in its social position. If you live to the ripe old age of 90 and die in 1920, you will have seen cotton become just another commodity, inconceivable wealth generated by newfangled machines that you could not have imagined, over half the population move to tenements in cities, people crossing the Atlantic in a matter of days, slavery outlawed, and your plantation burned and its title stripped from you and divided amongst your slaves. And yeah, if the state survives, it will absolutely get involved. I would bet even money that the concept of a nation state fractures and starts to disintegrate within 20 years, though. The idea of a nation-state as it currently exists is a construct of the Industrial Revolution: the new technologies being developed benefitted from vastly increased scale and social organization, and so those populations that organized themselves as nations were able to defeat those that did not in battle. (Note that in the example above, the "state" was Virginia in 1830 but the United States in 1920; the U.S. of 1830 was organized as a loose confederation of states while that of 1920 was organized as a nation-state with a strong central government, and it took the "Union" defeating the "Confederacy" to bring that about.) I don't know what sort of social organization the information age will demand, whether it'll be city-states in a trade confederation or corporate feudalism where you pledge loyalty for your employer in exchange for protection, but it'll likely not be the nation state as we currently know it.

sova 9y ago
Thanks for sharing your view, I find it very illuminating. The notion of a nation-state must now adapt to be both regional and digital. We still need voting for local things, I want our =water supply to be clean, etc. Having people who are able to vote through the internet would theoretically strongly increase democracy-in-participation but it also brings in a lot of strong questions of how to do regional decisions when some people are casting their ballots remotely. If everyone became an absentee voter, the whole structure for regional decision making comes into question. Thanks for writing your write-up. I don't think I ever heard of an instance when a plantation's land was divided amongst the slaves that worked it, but that would be a form of social justice I can get behind.
tryingagainbro 9y ago
Yeah but the state, union of states, confederations or whatever will exist in a form or another. Antitrust in pretty much hard coded into every country's legal doctrine.

MarkMc 9y ago

Here is something that could reasonably occur in 1 year: - Number of people connected to internet grows by 7% - Average income of existing users grows by 2% - Amount of time on internet spent by average user grows 7% - Number of ads served to an average user per hour of internet time grows 2% - Effectiveness of an average Google ad grows 9% Total growth in Google revenue: 30% Also keep in mind that most of Google's costs do not need to rise in line with revenue - it wouldn't take twice as many employees to serve twice as many ads. Including dividends, I would put the chance of a $1.5 trillion valuation in 10 years at 60%