"If I were Google, I would start buying stakes in new search start-ups." So what you're saying is that if you were Google, you'd provide a subsidy to anyone wi

"If I were Google, I would start buying stakes in new search start-ups." So what you're saying is that if you were Google, you'd provide a subsidy to anyone willing to make some sort of plausible search engine? They're stuck, here. They can't buy stakes in smaller companies without eventually paying someone to build a better Google (at the expense of the current Google), but there's not much else they can do to get around the fact that, as the best company in their business, they have nowhere to go but down.