4 ms·

People were saying this back in 2011 ahead of Facebook's IPO. 2 years later, Google was looking as strong as ever. I'm willing to bet that Google will be the f

People were saying this back in 2011 ahead of Facebook's IPO. 2 years later, Google was looking as strong as ever. I'm willing to bet that Google will be the first trillion dollar company. Their bench is just too deep. The only major mis-step I've seen is not aggressively rolling out an apple pay competitor 1-2 years ago (Giving away terminals if they had to). The major threats Google faces right now are: (1) Precision marketing from Facebook (2) Companies like Amazon get so big that users side-step the need for Google discovery. Also an AI business can be as big as their search business (AI as a service in the new smart economy.) Addressing these: (1) Most people use Google far more each day than they use Facebook so there are just more opportunities to monetize. Frankly if Facebook disappeared it would be a minor inconvenience to most people, whereas if Google disappeared it would be armageddon. Facebook is always at risk of being superseded by another trend, but Google has become a necessary tool. Furthermore, most people check facebook 2-3 times per day and the real estate is far more limited in a facebook feed (Albeit far more valuable). Finally, Google still has Gmail which is basically the world's second biggest social network and it can be mined for far more valuable insight for even greater degrees of precision marketing. (2) We only have room in our brains for handful of companies like Amazon, and Amazon is primarily limited to consumer goods. That still leaves the rest of the economy that needs discovery: cars, investments, nose jobs, viagra and fake twitter followers. Still, Google does need a mobile/local ad strategy. However, they can pool search history, Gmail, and track your physical location (Oh and they have maps) and start inserting hyper personalized ads/offers into their search result feed. Add a payment system to that layer and they'll crush it.

jyu 12y ago
How much are you willing to bet and by what date? Google has had multiple missteps. G+, terrible customer service, lack of diversity in revenue, a lackluster post acquisitions track record besides android. The specific examples stated rely too heavily on personal experience. You site all these large companies in the US, but the world is much bigger than just the US. 10 years from now things could look very different geopolitically. It's not hard to imagine the "Amazon" of India or "Google" of China becoming the biggest in the world due to population and growing economies.
- rdlecler1 12y ago
  Getting timing right is much much harder than knowing where that trend is going. From my perspective, a mis-step is a missed opportunity to enter a market. The pushed forward with G+ and it failed. Compare that to Microsoft which failed to see these markets coming. Google had NFC support baked into the Android OS. They just needed to develop the app and use brite force to push terminals into the market. They could have even developed some kind of iOS bump app to get ahead to apple pay. Otherwise they're firing on all cylinders better than any company in history of that size and they've given themselves a ton of adjacent white space. No evolutionary dead ends here.
Donzo 12y ago
The only genuine threat to Google's core search business at this time is government regulation.
- Sven7 12y ago
  Or an open index with unlimited API access
ISL 12y ago
There are plenty of people willing to take that bet at odds (this evening) of 2.8:1 . The buy-in price (right now, after-hours) is $545.
mvec34 12y ago
I am afraid you got (1) backward. If google search fell off the face of earth, bing will more than enough compensate it. However if facebook disappeared it'll be a lot more work establishing all the friend connections and migrating the entire network and content off to a different one. And no myspace did not even come close to the scale and depth of facebook.
missserenity 12y ago
People use Google more than they use Facebook? This says people spend an average of 40 minutes per day on Facebook: http://techcrunch.com/2014/07/23/facebook-usage-time/ http://techcrunch.com/2014/07/23/facebook-usage-time/ I can't find quite the same statistic for Google, but this says 22 billion minutes / 47 million vistors / month, which is about 15 minutes. Of which 60-some percent is YouTube. http://mediatel.co.uk/newsline/2014/08/07/22-billion-minutes-spent-on-google-sites-in-one-month/ http://mediatel.co.uk/newsline/2014/08/07/22-billion-minutes... Now thats two different countries, but I suspect the numbers are pretty similar.

jyu 12y ago

How much are you willing to bet and by what date? Google has had multiple missteps. G+, terrible customer service, lack of diversity in revenue, a lackluster post acquisitions track record besides android. The specific examples stated rely too heavily on personal experience. You site all these large companies in the US, but the world is much bigger than just the US. 10 years from now things could look very different geopolitically. It's not hard to imagine the "Amazon" of India or "Google" of China becoming the biggest in the world due to population and growing economies.

rdlecler1 12y ago
Getting timing right is much much harder than knowing where that trend is going. From my perspective, a mis-step is a missed opportunity to enter a market. The pushed forward with G+ and it failed. Compare that to Microsoft which failed to see these markets coming. Google had NFC support baked into the Android OS. They just needed to develop the app and use brite force to push terminals into the market. They could have even developed some kind of iOS bump app to get ahead to apple pay. Otherwise they're firing on all cylinders better than any company in history of that size and they've given themselves a ton of adjacent white space. No evolutionary dead ends here.

Donzo 12y ago

The only genuine threat to Google's core search business at this time is government regulation.

Sven7 12y ago
Or an open index with unlimited API access

ISL 12y ago

There are plenty of people willing to take that bet at odds (this evening) of 2.8:1 . The buy-in price (right now, after-hours) is $545.

mvec34 12y ago

I am afraid you got (1) backward. If google search fell off the face of earth, bing will more than enough compensate it. However if facebook disappeared it'll be a lot more work establishing all the friend connections and migrating the entire network and content off to a different one. And no myspace did not even come close to the scale and depth of facebook.

missserenity 12y ago

People use Google more than they use Facebook? This says people spend an average of 40 minutes per day on Facebook: http://techcrunch.com/2014/07/23/facebook-usage-time/ http://techcrunch.com/2014/07/23/facebook-usage-time/ I can't find quite the same statistic for Google, but this says 22 billion minutes / 47 million vistors / month, which is about 15 minutes. Of which 60-some percent is YouTube. http://mediatel.co.uk/newsline/2014/08/07/22-billion-minutes-spent-on-google-sites-in-one-month/ http://mediatel.co.uk/newsline/2014/08/07/22-billion-minutes... Now thats two different countries, but I suspect the numbers are pretty similar.