1) (Google as Page and Brin's bull session fantasy): Schmidt has been there for a long time, sure, but it's only in recent years that they've so clearly polariz

1) (Google as Page and Brin's bull session fantasy): Schmidt has been there for a long time, sure, but it's only in recent years that they've so clearly polarized between the "the guys" and Schmidt, the former representing vague hype and themselves and Schmidt being the voice that calms investors and analysts. As a small example, in the business press, Schmidt is being portrayed as the guy who spins cut-backs on employee perks as prudent business while Page and Brin are being portrayed as guys who own a love-shack jet, invest in eccentric and nepotistic genomics projects, and treat reporters rudely. 2) (Collapse of advertising): Yeah, the on-line ad market ain't growing like it did for a while and in some sectors is contracting. Meanwhile, the "fat middle" of the long tail of the blogosphere is undergoing contraction and professionalization which suggests it is going to evolve into an industry that has far greater leverage in brokering its ads and is not so reliant upon Google. Don't get me started on the coming collapse of the (remaining) major "social networking" sites (which, to a first approximation, have yet to generate a return for most investors other than insiders). By "decision engine" I mean we'll see ad delivery based less on what a person happens to be reading or searching for, and more on what they explicitly declare to some service that they want to shop for. We've already seen that to some degree in some of the most easily commoditized markets like air travel between A and B, or car insurance, or cars, or electronics parts (http://octopart.com/ http://octopart.com/). That trend is accelerating. Check out a page like: http://octopart.com/parts/category--interface+ics--ethernet/search?c=5491 http://octopart.com/parts/category--interface+ics--ethernet/... Aren't the Google ads down the right column of that page just a bit ironic? 3a) (Google's data center potential to fail because of their impulse to monopolize what apps run on them): Ok, well, I have an app that uses (let's say) Oracle Berkeley DB/XML and newLisp atop a GNU/Linux distro of my choice. I'm willing to tweak it for their particular network and storage topology. What's the price? 3b) (overcapitalized): I simply mean that they have to spend more money per quarter than they are competent to spend (or than any other organization with that executive structure could be competent to spend). The same investment dollars would likely perform better if invested with a more diversified set of controls on how they are spent. If you're skeptical of big government, you oughta also be skeptical of big corp.