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Comment by rbanffy | Hacker News Reader

Mobile ads are a tiny fraction of Google's business.

Mobile ads are going to be near 100% of future online advertising business. If you think most computer users want to be tied down to a desk all day, you're kidding yourself.

The future of small, handheld computing devices is coming.

What matters is not whether people want to be tied to a desk but whether they are.

I seriously doubt that. A real desktop computer is still the easiest device to use for work or non-casual activities. I don't think it's going away, and I don't think that the whole internet will be ported into individual apps for mobile platforms. Real websites can still display normal ads when you visit from your phone's browser.

I've personally heard Eric Schmidt say that mobile is the future of of Google (and this was several years back--they saw it all coming). Mobile phones will provide more people access to the Internet than PCs in the very near future. The phones are already there, it's just your definition of Internet access as many are very low-tech devices that can only use SMS to get mobile data.

Desktop computers will remain popular for work in information based economies like ours, but there are billions of people out there who will access the Internet soley from mobile devices.

(I'm currently sitting in front of my computer but am writing this on a mobile device.)

100%? I doubt it... What about advertising in the social space?

Is iAd going to compete with AdSense presented on notebooks? I don't think so.

It's not whether or not you are tethered to a desk, but what OS you run and what your relationship to your computer is. I have been using notebooks for the past 5 years and I would not call me mobile in any but the most literal sense.

But a rapidly growing fraction of Google's business.

It's not that easy to grow 1000% when you start little...

Mobile advertising is growing, but that doesn't make it a big part.

Google has said themselves they think mobile advertising is their future. That is the reason behind the huge android push. It isn't their main cash cow now, but they know it will be and I think I heard they think that within a 5 yearish span.

The focus on mobile doesn't change the fact that it's online advertising, and that's what Google wants to keep control of the most.

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