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Google Considered Too Big To Fail
theodp writes "Doc Searls is worried about the way Google makes money. 'Nearly all of it comes from advertising,' he frets. 'That's what pays for all the infrastructure Google is giving to the rest of us. As our dependency on Google verges on the absolute, this should be a concern.' Have we reched Peak Advertising? Blogger Dave Winer says amen, asking if Google is already 'too big to fail.'"
Nothing is "too big to fail".
At the current rate, people will shy away from Google as it's becoming an omnipresence on the internet which is raising concern.
There are numerous examples of things that could not be that happened, like the Titanic, Yahoo and Enron.
I think we can keep recursing like this until someone returns 1
Just because lots of people use Google doesn't mean they can't and won't switch to something.
I'll miss Google if it goes, but really I'm not dependent on it - Yahoo search and Bing search are actually OK.
If your business or life is dependent on Google, then either you accept that, or you take measures to not be so dependent.
That's what pays for all the infrastructure Google is giving to the rest of us.
Let's get this out of the way: Google is not a bank.
So, what would happen?
If Google goes away, there would be other search engines that would fill in instantly.
Same for advertising.
Google goes away, so what?
Think of advertising as oil and Google as one big emirate. What happens when the oil runs out?
That's an incredibly stupid thing to say - equating oil with adverting!?
*condescending snicker*
If we've reached "peak advertising" its not Google which will suffer but TV and print...
Part of the beauty of what Google has done is made advertising cheap, quantifiable, and universal. Anyone can do it, anyone can measure it, and its cheap.
If a company wants to spend advertisement money efficiently, they spend it through Google. If they don't, they throw it away on the Superbowl, where the audience is 100M, and $3M an add, so that costs $.03 for each person who sees the add, regardless of whether they are interested, paying attention, or relevant.
Compare that with advertising through Google, where if you say, advertise on slashdot, not only is it cheaper per person, but its only geeks who may be interested in the ads presented.
Test your net with Netalyzr
That's why there's no such thing as Google for Domains. No such thing as the Google Search Appliance. Google Checkout? Figment of the imagination.
And as for advertising not being a sustainable form of revenue - you'd better tell that to all the world's television and radio stations. They think that's formed their core business for decades.
How about we just let them fail and have other more agile companies take their place? Should have happened with the banks and automakers. Those were political payoffs though. (Think Saturn. They weren't unionized, but profitable.)
--fatboy
Really? How dependent are you on Google?
For searching, you can always use Yahoo or Bing, or a few others. For replacing GMail, you can always use POP access to download your mail and keep it locally, run your own mailserver (after informing people of your new address), use your ISP's mail system, or another free email service. If you're using Google Maps for something, you could make do with Mapquest. If you're an advertiser on Google, there are lots of sites that would be happy to have you advertise on their sites instead. If you're doing SEO, you can follow Yahoo or Bing's rules at least as easily as Google's. If you had no Android phones, you'd still have iPhones. The list goes on for the vast majority of their offerings.
In all cases, Google has its dominant position not via lock-in, but by delivering services that are on par with or better than its competitors. Either that or sheer habit. But that's significantly different from, say, a Windows user's dependency on Microsoft.
I am officially gone from
Google has positioned itself to survive on the Internet once we move past point and click ads, pop-ups and direct marketed emails.
At the end of the day people need marketed to because they don't know where to go for the things they want/need. Google is positioning itself to do this directly with its overly large suite of products.
When businesses stop spending traditional advertising dollars they won't be able to bank them they'll just be forced to redirect them into Google.
Handsets, Buzz, GMAIL, Search engine data it all rolls up into a marketing profile so Google can predict what you're looking for. If Google can help get you to the right place and you buy something they will ultimately get a piece of the final sale.
Driving to work and need a coffee? Google has the data to get you to a Starbucks or a local Mom and Pop. Do you really think this will stay free for the businesses?
As a small business owner I am happy to turn them over a commission on sales I would have otherwise not received without their help.
I truly believe Google will become just another cost of doing business similar to how Visa/Mastercard charges are.
$FLOATNG GOOGLE ADVERT
There, fixed that for ya.
How much is Google paying you to say this? Is Yahoo, Bing, not to mention startpage not capable of filling the void?
When you search on almost anything on Google, all you get is a listing of people who sell some item with your search term in the product name. Sometimes it isn't even that. Sometimes it a page that is another advertising search page.
At least when you search for something in Wikipedia you get to a topic, not an advert. The fact that people select Wikipedia to go to so often is likely why a Wikipedia search result is almost always near the top of a Google search. Most of the time, it is the only type of information a person is looking for. 'Tell me about subject xyz', I don't want to fucking buy it, just learn about it. A lot of the time now, except when looking for product (one I have already bought) or programming forums I just search Wikipedia immediately. The articles also usually have enough external links to get me surfing for more info without needing to use Google too much.
-- I ignore anonymous replies to my comments and postings.
I have never used google docs, and never will.
Hey, google docs is GREAT for tracking treasure and experience points for role playing games.... but yeah, I wouldn't trust it for anything else.
If a job's not worth doing, it's not worth doing right.
How about we just let them fail and have other more agile companies take their place? Should have happened with the banks and automakers. Those were political payoffs though. (Think Saturn. They weren't unionized, but profitable.)
Automotive, maybe. Banks are a trickier proposition, because so many other businesses rely on them for lines of credit, and their model was so incestuous that one or two big failures would bring down a lot of others, and while the banks might have deserved that, the customers arguably didn't. Not shoring up banks is a great way to sit back and watch your economy tank because nobody has the liquidity to move goods and services around.
LOL
you forgot to mention the grinding pain and poverty of the general population because of that for years
your attitude seems to be "malaria? well then lie in the bed with fevers and chills until its over. forget this quinine crap, suffer like a man! walk it off!"
you bail these companies out to save a lot of common people who did nothing to create this horrible mess form a lot of financial pain
THAT'S the point of the bailouts
not because we like to save banking asshats from themselves
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
and while the banks might have deserved that, the customers arguably didn't.
Right. That's why the government set up the FDIC long ago, to protect bank account holders in case of a run on the banks.
If we're just going to bail out the banks when they screw up, then what's the point of having an FDIC?
All those car factories would still have existed, just with new owners now. They could still make cars, or perhaps something else. They would have needed workers, and would have been in a position to offer a fair, but less ridiculous salary and benefits package for factory work.
A real bankruptcy and liquidation is that, stuff gets sold, the new owners use it. Stockholders would have been taught a lesson that they need to do due diligence on their executive employees better, management would have learned you can't be stupidly top heavy, and the rank and file boys would have realized they need to not expect as much as they think they are worth, not in a global economy.. So all around, it would have been better for that to happen, long range.
I feel the same away about those bloated tick parasite casino banks, they should have been allowed to go bankrupt, then we could have sorted out what all those scam paper financial products are really worth, which is..not near as much as they contend now. I think society has hit "peak wealth leeching" with those guys.
Ya, it would have sucked a little for a couple of years, but the resulting economy would have been MUCH better. Less stupid overpaid fatcats sucking out of the system, more middle class actual productive wealth creation jobs back.
As it is now, all they have done is reward those who failed in the first place, and given them incentive to just follow the same failed policies. Quite dumb really. Slap this generation and the next several in debt for this to happen, too. That's not dumb, that's outright criminal.
i am not arguing that saving banking asshats is fair. i'm saying the banking asshats are so embedded, that it is impossible to make them suffer and only them suffer
if you are saying suffering by everyone is inevitable because of what the bankers did, i'm not buying that. nothing's inevitable. we can still suffer in 5 more years, or maybe not. you take it as act of faith that we have only forestalled the inevitable rather than actually cured the disease
what do i believe? perhaps we have only forestalled the inevitable. i have an open mind about the future, we might not have solved the problem. meanwhile, if you are telling me with CERTAINTY we have only forestalled the inevitable, then you are just announced yourself as a brainwashed partisan hack. no one knows the future, including you
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
the tragedy we are living in is this great mass of ignorants, propagandized into fighting that which will only help and save them
in the healthcare townhall "debates" last summer an old deranged lady shouted "keep your socialist hands off my medicare!"
that about sums up the "principled" opposition to braindead obvious simple progress in this country. its demagogues, in the employ of big business, and the lobbyists buying off their representatives, who are selling the american people a state of impoverishment. because they should be afraid of "socialism"
pathetic, tragic, sad
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
the '20s was a bubble, you idiot
just like the one we are crawling out of now. hello?
the roaring twenties was borrowing against the future, the bubble collapsed, and we suffered, horribly, for a decade
that you should be celebrating such financial ignorance and irresponsibility as "a great time to be an american", you are only announcing your abject ignorance. it is because of thinking like yours that we are in the current mess we are in. thanks a lot, shortsighted asshole
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Rather, Dave Winer is considered too stupid for us to read the click-bait drivel he throws up on his blog.