4 ms·

Google’s Time at the Top May Be Nearing Its End

24 points by psbp 12y ago

graycat 12y ago
To me, the article is mostly just trying to fool people into aiming their eyeballs at the NYT's ads. For the future of Google: (1) Right, Google gets competition for eyeballs and, thus, ad revenue from Facebook, PInterest, Twitter, SnapChat, and any popular Web site/service that is ad supported. No surprise here. (2) What the article misses is that search is a super big problem, issue, opportunity, and business. Why? Because (A) now there is a lot of content on the Internet, (B) due both to desktop and laptop computing and now due to smartphones that can generate content as text, audio, still images, video, and other data, the total amount of content is growing quickly, (C) finding the content really want is often super tough to do, and (D) so far Google is one of the best tools for finding content. So, Google gets lots of eyeballs and, as the content grows and, if Google's search technology improves, stands to get a lot more eyeballs and, thus, revenue. For Web sites/services that can get a larger chunk of the ad revenue, in the larger scheme of things, the Internet is a better bet than anything like TV, and for that future Google has about the best opportunity and they seem to be trying to take it. And if some start up has something close to that future Google wants, then Google has plenty of cash to buy the start up, make it an offer it definitely will not refuse. Google's doing fine and still looks like one of the best bets for the future. The OP is standing on traditional formula fiction that tries to deliver an experience, vicarious, escapist, fantasy, emotional experience entertainment (VEFEEE), both as the content and the ads. Okay, that's their 1000 year old drama hammer that has a very long history from current TV shows, movies, novels, Dickens, Shakespeare, Chaucer, the Greek dramas, etc. Okay. That's long been the 900 pound Gorilla in media and remains the main hammer of the NYT and maybe most of the NYC ad industry and its $155 billion a year in ad revenue. Okay. But with that one hammer, the OP sees the Internet and Google as an appropriate nail -- it's not just such a nail, and that hammer is not all there is that is important or will be important in the future. E.g., a lot that is there in mobile now is teenage girls, from the US, and especially in Japan, using their smartphones for what apparently teenage girls commonly have done for centuries, likely millennia -- gossip. But, even if VEFEEE is the content someone wants, mostly they still need a search engine to find it. For the OP and yet another NYT story, the main question I would ask is, where do they get that really strong funny stuff they've been smoking?
- sidcool 12y ago
  You have a great eye for details, I see.
- nugget 12y ago
  Google makes the majority of its profits from web search. The problem is that as search habits change, that entire market could become less valuable. Google could still dominate, but would just make less $, e.g. if search RPMs decline from $70 to $50 in the US, they are in real trouble. There's a lot of downward pressure on display ads also. The move to programmatic platforms will cut CPMs in half or worse. Google is not immune from this Trend either.
- MildlySerious 12y ago
  The biggest problem Google has, in my opinion, is it's identity crisis. It's becoming a stranger. Googles popularity came from it's simplicity. The services Google started buying (looking at YouTube here) were gaining traction because they were the simple equivalent to their competitors. Today? Not so much. YouTube has gradually become more alienated since 2009. Yesterday I was watching a video, and not a single video listed in the sidebar (once called "Related Videos") was actually related to the video I was watching. The uploader was a popular YouTuber with easily over a hundred videos (No idea how much exactly because I couldn't find that number) yet all the suggestions were music videos from my usual browsing. Context switching is no more, because everything is being overengineered to keep you in your own content bubble. Yet, that stupid auto generated playlist in the sidebar that I've never clicked, keeps lurking there on every video, for days at a time, before changing into another playlist that is no more appealing to me than the previous one. If all the effort of that huge datapool we are selling our souls to is to make advertisers happy, and the users don't get anything out of that effort but more abstraction and more generalized data science slapped onto a new UI every couple years, it's not a fair trade. And people won't put up with that forever. Google is still going strong. The foundation that put it in its place, is crumbling. A big chunk of their business still relies on that, though, so I think these articles have a fair point.
  - graycat 12y ago

24 points by psbp 12y ago

To me, the article is mostly just trying to fool people into aiming their eyeballs at the NYT's ads. For the future of Google: (1) Right, Google gets competition for eyeballs and, thus, ad revenue from Facebook, PInterest, Twitter, SnapChat, and any popular Web site/service that is ad supported. No surprise here. (2) What the article misses is that search is a super big problem, issue, opportunity, and business. Why? Because (A) now there is a lot of content on the Internet, (B) due both to desktop and laptop computing and now due to smartphones that can generate content as text, audio, still images, video, and other data, the total amount of content is growing quickly, (C) finding the content really want is often super tough to do, and (D) so far Google is one of the best tools for finding content. So, Google gets lots of eyeballs and, as the content grows and, if Google's search technology improves, stands to get a lot more eyeballs and, thus, revenue. For Web sites/services that can get a larger chunk of the ad revenue, in the larger scheme of things, the Internet is a better bet than anything like TV, and for that future Google has about the best opportunity and they seem to be trying to take it. And if some start up has something close to that future Google wants, then Google has plenty of cash to buy the start up, make it an offer it definitely will not refuse. Google's doing fine and still looks like one of the best bets for the future. The OP is standing on traditional formula fiction that tries to deliver an experience, vicarious, escapist, fantasy, emotional experience entertainment (VEFEEE), both as the content and the ads. Okay, that's their 1000 year old drama hammer that has a very long history from current TV shows, movies, novels, Dickens, Shakespeare, Chaucer, the Greek dramas, etc. Okay. That's long been the 900 pound Gorilla in media and remains the main hammer of the NYT and maybe most of the NYC ad industry and its $155 billion a year in ad revenue. Okay. But with that one hammer, the OP sees the Internet and Google as an appropriate nail -- it's not just such a nail, and that hammer is not all there is that is important or will be important in the future. E.g., a lot that is there in mobile now is teenage girls, from the US, and especially in Japan, using their smartphones for what apparently teenage girls commonly have done for centuries, likely millennia -- gossip. But, even if VEFEEE is the content someone wants, mostly they still need a search engine to find it. For the OP and yet another NYT story, the main question I would ask is, where do they get that really strong funny stuff they've been smoking?

sidcool 12y ago
You have a great eye for details, I see.
nugget 12y ago
Google makes the majority of its profits from web search. The problem is that as search habits change, that entire market could become less valuable. Google could still dominate, but would just make less $, e.g. if search RPMs decline from $70 to $50 in the US, they are in real trouble. There's a lot of downward pressure on display ads also. The move to programmatic platforms will cut CPMs in half or worse. Google is not immune from this Trend either.
MildlySerious 12y ago
The biggest problem Google has, in my opinion, is it's identity crisis. It's becoming a stranger. Googles popularity came from it's simplicity. The services Google started buying (looking at YouTube here) were gaining traction because they were the simple equivalent to their competitors. Today? Not so much. YouTube has gradually become more alienated since 2009. Yesterday I was watching a video, and not a single video listed in the sidebar (once called "Related Videos") was actually related to the video I was watching. The uploader was a popular YouTuber with easily over a hundred videos (No idea how much exactly because I couldn't find that number) yet all the suggestions were music videos from my usual browsing. Context switching is no more, because everything is being overengineered to keep you in your own content bubble. Yet, that stupid auto generated playlist in the sidebar that I've never clicked, keeps lurking there on every video, for days at a time, before changing into another playlist that is no more appealing to me than the previous one. If all the effort of that huge datapool we are selling our souls to is to make advertisers happy, and the users don't get anything out of that effort but more abstraction and more generalized data science slapped onto a new UI every couple years, it's not a fair trade. And people won't put up with that forever. Google is still going strong. The foundation that put it in its place, is crumbling. A big chunk of their business still relies on that, though, so I think these articles have a fair point.
- graycat 12y ago