How Google Could Collapse
hackernoon.com
hackernoon.com
Author's comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14223780
"Honestly I just wrote this for fun to play devil's advocate and see how convincing an argument I could make. It was intended to be more creative writing than a serious market prediction. (The title used to be "How Google Collapsed" -- Startup Grind changed it and added the subtitle when they published it on their blog).
I don't think it's likely that Google is going to collapse any time soon. I just wanted to imagine a world where they had, and try to work backwards from there with current data.
It's my first article, and I'm only 21 so I definitely got a lot of things wrong and oversimplified/combined others. But I do have almost 2 years of work experience in online advertising, so I have /some/ idea of how things work.
I was honestly expecting 12 views and a mean comment about how stupid I was -- I didn't expect the article to pick up traction. The editor in chief of Startup Grind reached out to me and asked if I would like to have it published on their blog, and I said sure."
Google will have plenty of time to show me ads on screens in the future (if not directly in search, then via app stores and video ads). And even if their voice assistant just exists to direct me to their screen presence more, in my experience, google as a voice assistant has been 10x more reliable than either Alexa or Siri.
Can someone provide links to current microphones that are good at this?
I would be so much more willing to use voice control systems if they ditched the stupid code phrases, and just used a push-to-talk button instead. Something about saying "Okay Google/Siri/Alexa" creeps me out way more than just talking to a computer. I already use voice search and say "timer 10 minutes" rather than navigate the awkward clock app, but I'd love to be able to just squeeze a reliable button on the side of my phone (or even smart watch) to do that instead of fiddly swiping.
And PTT would also reassure me that the mic isn't listening in when I don't want it to, and help to minimise latency (which IME is a major impediment to using voice control) by providing immediate feedback when you're done speaking instead of having to wait for silence.
But, you know, maybe they're right. Maybe online advertising is a dying business, and maybe that's why no one solicits for advertising partnerships at the bottom of their articles.
Who knows. Maybe their article is, seriously this time, completely correct, and maybe that flashy graph they've got at the top of the page -- you know, the one asking about whether or not you search for products on Amazon or Google -- isn't because no one really feels the need to google for toilet paper before buying some off whoever is convenient.
You know what will help? Some pullquotes from CEOs saying things like "brand owners are detemined to take the lead". Of course they are. That's why the Internet is now devoid of atrocious ads.
Quick. Put some more graphs in, but make sure you don't put the one in that shows their rising profit margins.
Who thought giants like SGI, DEC, Sun would fall? But they did, and when it happened it happened quickly. Isn't Google in SGI's old building now?
Doom articles are dime a dozen.
GGGP isn't saying that long-term successful outcomes are the probable or most likely result of being large at one point in history, so your criticism is inapposite. What he's saying is that, contrary to the OP's seeming position, a paradigm shift isn't always fatal to established players, i.e., "doom articles are a dime a dozen."
My reaction to advertising in all forms is visceral and strong. I don't really understand it, but I know that I am willing to go to some lengths to avoid it. Reading HN threads over the years has shown me that I'm not alone.
For this reason, I've come to believe that this era of internet advertising will be a brief flash in the pan of history. I have no idea what the next step will be, but it's hard for me to imagine the future internet being one held up by something that is genuinely despised by so many.
Mass quantities of free, mediocre quality content will give way to something else in this new equilibrium. But what will pay for all the infrastructure? All a subject for science fiction writers at the moment.
There are still a lot of people who just rent a (virtual) server, or rent space on someone else's platform, to post whatever they want. They might have tens, hundreds, thousands of viewers. They could easily scale to even more viewers with the help of some off-the-shelf CDN, while keeping the total expense well within the realm of "hobby spending" for most people in the developed world.
Producing and distributing content only costs a lot of money if you want to deliver a lot of content to a lot of people. But I would much prefer a decentralized network where a lot of people each produce and distribute a little bit of content. Each of them would only incur a small expense, if and only if they want to. It will probably cost less than what they're already paying for advertising anyway.
Even in a world like that, large content producers who actually have a concrete revenue stream, such as Hollywood studios and a small number of world-famous and/or publicly funded news outlets, will continue to reach billions of people at a time. We don't need to worry about BBC as we say farewell to thousands of content mills who had no reason to exist in the first place.
It can deny the use of it's services to people using ad-blockers.
It's possible that we see a migration from youtube. Maybe some people will be ok with migrating from gmail (probably not the majority though. I did it and it was HARD). But very few people will stop using the search engine or google map, because it has absolutely zero decent competitor. I tried them all for months, fairly. Their are not even on the same planet.
So apart from a few geeks, people will just disable the ad blocking software if google decide to force their hand.
Besides, wait for the W3C DRM standard + webassembly to be used to hack very hard to block ads...
Search anything in another language than english, and it works.
Search something in a very specific area of expertise that is not computing, and google will find it.
Search for something with a very weird, contextual explanation with terrible typos, still works.
Ddg, as much as I like it, is very far away from delivering this experience.
I used ddg for a year, but realized I ended up typing !g for most of my queries.
Besides, the HN crowd is very tech saavy, they can do without the Google magic. Most people don't even know what a URL is.
Meanwhile, Bing gives me "10 reasons why sugar is bad for you" and "Sweet Poison: Why Sugar is Ruining our Health".
It's not even close.
Sometimes DDG feels less convoluted. Not just because of Google's excessive ad overload, but also because Google guesses too much for my taste. They think they know me better than I do and that turns out to be incorrect often enough to be annoying.
Where Google does have an unassailable lead is in maps. Their "explore" feature is extremely useful for finding places to eat & drink. Directions are great. Google maps is simply excellent.
Search engine wise they are clearly on top. On the other hand, do enough social engineering and people will start using a worse product regardless.
Youtube could of course force ads on its users, but that would also make those users less interested in youtube compared to competing platforms.
This is not overly simple.
Apple map ? Outside of the US, not even close.
Google search, just forget about it.
Traffic is accurate, although it is be a little slower to update than Google Maps (it seems to be ~5 mins behind). Directions are spot on and the UI (at least in CarPlay) is clear and detailed. The only thing that's poor compared to Google Maps is the search but it's certainly a decent alternative and it's come a long way since it was first released.
I'm in the UK I use both Apple maps, Google maps, OpenStreetMap and Bing maps regularly (in addition to the built in nav system in my car) and for me the only noticeable strength that Google has is streetview. The "satellite" view in Google Maps where I live is actually so old (12+ years) that it's actually becoming useful for researching historical stuff...
I can speculate that outside of Europe its even worse.
Who do you think click on ads, you or her ?
True. The insane loudness of youtube ads got my girlfriend to install an ad-blocker for the very first time even though she is not opposed to relevant ads at all.
I am using https://openstreetmap.org and have no problems with it.
No doubt, real time traffic information can be developed for openstreetmap. But if and when it happens depends on where others drop the ball.
For example, current navigation systems built into cars tend to be completely out of date and mostly unsupported long before the car itself is end of life. So this is an area where openstreetmap might take over.
Though since OSM predates Google Maps, it makes sense that OSM would have another first :P
In fact, OSM is perfectly capable of representing lane restrictions (http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Lanes) and some of the existing OSM clients (such as OsmAnd) offer 'lane assist' (arguably, it might not be as good as Google's but there's no fundamental problem in achieving feature parity).
And while the GMaps feature of offering you route alternatives based on the current traffic is nice, the "price" you are paying for it is unconditionally sharing your location with google while the GMaps app is running (or even at all times, depending on you settings). I personally don't feel comfortable with that compromise.
Sure, but if you're going to make that argument, all software is equivalent, because you can just implement the stuff you want and delete the stuff that gets in the way.
So it can definitely change.
Google Maps now has a live busynessometer for some businesses. And 3D models of entire cities, even non-London ones.
As a traditional paper map OSM is fine, but Google Maps is now far more than that.
Traffic and street view are hard, and expensive, to do because you need to drive around the place to take photos, or to have enough data points for traffic information.
Reviews are hard because they are subjective, and how do you deal with spam, with moderation, with fake reviews, etc.
The other things? They're in OSM (to varing degrees of completness):
* Business opening times: https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Key:opening_hours * Phone Numbers: https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Key:phone * Simple 3d modelling: https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/3D * Directions/turn-by-turn has existed for a long time, e.g. on the main website itself, or software like Graphhopper or OSRM.
Yes OSM is has much less features than Google, but the OSM Foundation only has income of about £97,000 per year. Google has considerible more financial strength.
(BTW there isn't one osm map app for mobile devices)
Far from perfect, but it exists: http://openstreetcam.org/map/
This would be a good way to finish off Google search and Gmail, and Calendar, and Drive.
> google map, because it has absolutely zero decent competitor
Dedicated navigation device from Garmin in the car and Openstreetmap for everything else.
As Openstreetmap, the debate is already active in other comments.
I have been using DuckDuckGo as my search engine for a couple of years now, and I don't miss Google at all. bang! and instant answers are fantastic.
Funny you say that because I don't use any of Google's services save for YouTube. I'm a musician and that's simply where the musicians are. Other than that I don't use any other Google products or services - no search, no maps, no docs - nothing. Only YouTube.
Many news websites in India did this recently. Of which many have rolled back. Why? There is always a competitor to which your customers can go. And when they do, you lose users to them, may be even permanently.
Sooner or later you realize its better they come to you, instead of going to competition.
Isn't this the whole point behind Android? You want your OS to run on most of the worlds mobile devices, even if you give it away for free, you still get traffic in return.
Pirating is free, instant, with no DRM and no waiting time.
But when a service offer a tremendous value, it can't be quited easily.
Bing now controls 33% of the search engine space, and Google's share of the market is in decline.
Google has a monetization issue, not a product issue. People love their products, but they hate their ads.
When the article said that Search is the only product that Google was a winner on, it seems to have forgotten about gmail. And how a large number of enterprise customers are moving their internal email to gmail, and thereby their Office Suite to Docs. If Google fills in the gaps that custom software development fills in the enterprise (small department level workflow apps, content management, industry-specific forms, processes, and data flows, etc)... THAT is what will make a whole new Google over the next 10 years.
In any case, between startups and enterprise there's "SMB", which is a huge market, and often with nary an IT professional in sight. Getting Google to do backups for them is an improvement over not doing any, which is the reality on many of these companies.
Who the hell wants to deal with Exchange?
And if Google's future is dependent on Gmail and Docs, I'm afraid their future is bleak. They certainly face very serious competition from Microsoft in these areas, and Microsoft has a lot of advantages.
But, Google's revenue is ~ $90 billion. They certainly can afford to make smart investments to avoid the fate of the dinosaur.
Another way to look at it is: if Google no longer needs all that computing power & bandwidth for search (which has hypothetically failed/not as profitable), how much can they discount it for 3rd parties and undercut Amazon?
As far as today's market share of the cloud... I just don't see the relevance. We're talking about what Google will become, not what the cloud market will become. We are at the early stage of an industry. Today's players may or may not be relevant in 10 years. So whether Google becomes a top player or a niche, the bigger point is that the future Google, big or small, won't be about Search ads.
P&G spent $7 billion on online ads in 2016, and has been making a lot of noise about moving away from them. Many of those consumer products can be sold to almost anyone, and hyper-targeting users by keyword may not help much.
For the sake of the Internet, it'd be stellar if the value of personal data corrected to a level that stopped the war on user privacy. If it turns out that the value is propped up by hype/FOMO-driven ad purchases by larger companies, it could very well happen.
But those data are also sold for other things like spying, market analysis, cost evaluation, targeting prospects, etc.
No, P&G spent $7 billion on ads in 2016.
People have been speaking to their phones for decades now; the only difference is there isn't someone listening directly.
I know that size alone does not make you immune to failure but come on, the amount of money and brainpower they command is obscene! It is somehow unimaginable for me that they can not find a way to get out off this, given their resources.
Despite Android and Gmail and self-driving cars and this and that, the overwhelming majority of its revenue is plain ole advertising.
Alphabet profits have increased but profit margins are down.
Amazon revenue is rocketing in the expense of not making profits.
2016 net income margin: 21.5%
2015 net income margin: 21.7%
2014 net income margin: 21.3%
2013 net income margin: 20.4%
2012 net income margin: 21.6%
That you're not an accountant must be the reason you don't understand spending on R&D isn't hiding profit. If you spend the money, it's not available as profit.
Now, you use the term "hide" in relation to profit - which blatantly implies illegal activity. If that's the case, please provide the financial statements that you used to derive that immense legal claim. Amazon is a half a trillion dollar corporation with a vast number of very wealthy shareholders that would love to see all of this stolen profit that is being kept from them.
Because almost every travel customer starts by typing their destination into google, and whoever has the top ad gets the booking.
It's a fierce bidding war on keywords, and the only winner is Google.
This article grossly understates the number of companies and industries that begrudgingly play this game to acquire expensive traffic with hopes that it converts to cheap organic repeat traffic in the future.
Google is doing fine.
Exactly right. Seen it over and over again.
That's the difference, if you own the platform / app, you get 100% ad views.
By putting more DRM on the web and 'sneaking' ads on the web, they will prevail.
Like one where they were unambiguously exposed - say - channelling all the good leads to people at the start of campaigns and then once the spend was established starting to feed them the shit leads, until they convinced them to spend more money. In short like a Casino that would let people win to give them a taste and then reef them.
But of course that's purely speculative and probably that type of thing couldn't be unambiguously proved even if it were true - which it isn't.
That said, Microsoft didn't die off in the "post PC" era even after spectacular failures in things like trying to make inroads in mobile phones. So with Google yes there are dark clouds on the horizon, but they could pull off a change in revenue streams and still do quite well.
The clock is ticking though... they're spending tons on these other pet projects that have yet to pay off so the pressure is really on to prove that they can actually create a viable business with revenue outside advertising.
I think you can can see the difference between Microsoft's model (which never did go out of style and won't any time soon) and Google's model (which was doomed from the start).
Regardless, the relevance to my point is still there; PCs are a product that will have worthwhile demand for the foreseeable future while internet advertising could disappear with little fanfare. That isn't a good fit for Google.
ASM.js or similar like Webassembly. Use it, create a polymorphic VM in the browser that forces a user to compute the ads in order to get content.
Now, trap the content in each VM (and no, not as a downloaded plaintext). This will be an encoded bytestream, that the easiest way to decode will be through the browser VM, and displaying ads along the way.
That's evil, and I would highly assume it works.
Anyway... I think facebook is still the most vulnerable of all the big tech companies. And I think Mark Zuckerberg feels the same way deep down inside. Why else did he pay $1,000,000,000 for Instagram? And feels he has to copy SnapChat? Because he's scared his empire is going to be the next MySpace. And you know what, it probably will go the way of MySpace eventually.
Regarding Cloud computing, although I have no numbers to back this up, I'm pretty sure Google Cloud will also grow nicely in the next decade.
From an AI perspective, they're clearly leading that field over amazon, without a doubt.