The interesting thing is, how battle-proven is the current ad/monitoring obsession as an actual business? It's trendy, but not every successful firm has to-- o

The interesting thing is, how battle-proven is the current ad/monitoring obsession as an actual business? It's trendy, but not every successful firm has to-- or should-- get on board. Microsoft's classic businesses are pretty comprehensible. Software (boxes or as a service) and cloud services are pretty solid business models. They don't require unrealistic expectations or gimmickry to work. There might be shifts within that market (the MSRP of a browser is 0, and that of an OS is plummeting towards 0 quickly), but you can realistically say "I want to sell a software package" or "I want to run a cloud service provider" and make a business case without fantastic assumptions. In contrast, much of the value of Google and Facebook and similar companies is based on anticipation of the future value of those big data stores, a largely unproven asset. Will consumers reach an "uncanny valley" moment for personalized marketing messages, resulting in a downturn in click-throughs? Will advertisers always be willing to pay a premium for improved targeting? I could see a competing product offering spray-and-pray banner ads with .01% click-through rates at a few cents per click outperforming hyper-targeted ads that draw a 5% click-through rate at several dollars a click. Will they be able to successfully retain, grow, and monetize their data hoard after the inevitable regulatory backlash? (I could imagine a sufficient data breach resulting in regulations that make the GDPR look small potatoes)