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That's a great line of thought. The worst possible future for Google is that the bottom drops out on the valuation of their product - paid ads. The only way th
by ryandvm 12y ago
That's a great line of thought. The worst possible future for Google is that the bottom drops out on the valuation of their product - paid ads.
The only way that happens is that somebody figures out how to deliver the same quality of advertising at a much lower price point (perhaps a company that isn't employing quite so many PhDs or bankrolling so many moon shots). Or alternatively, somebody comes up with a much higher quality product. Frankly neither of those seem particularly out of reach.
- Animats 12y agoThe only way that happens is that somebody figures out how to deliver the same quality of advertising at a much lower price point. No, the way that happens is that somebody figures out how to deliver the same services at a lower price point, i.e. with fewer ads. As the cost of computing declines, it becomes cheaper to do what Google or Facebook does. You could probably do Facebook now as a paid no-ads service for about $1/month on your phone bill. We're starting to see new social networks that aren't ad-based. So far, they're somewhat narrow in focus - Ricochet for right-wingers, Ello for drag queens, etc. Maybe someone will figure out a way to federate them into one big interlinked network without the thing becoming a spam magnet. (Diaspora was supposed to do this, but they make GitHub look user-friendly.) Remember what happened to Myspace. Ad revenue started to drop, ad density was increased to compensate, users became fed up and left, company went into a screaming dive and was sold cheaply. Who's in that position now? Twitter? Facebook? Pinterest? We're probably closer to "peak social" than "peak search".