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Comment by ori_b | Hacker News Reader

What happens when Adwords gets disrupted? Well, first, it will take a long time for the competitor to establish itself. Businesses don't change overnight. Second, even if the competitor manages to steal ALL of Google's income overnight, Google has billions in the bank.

There will be years for them to find a way to recover, or, in the absolute worst case, years for you to reinvest.

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There will be years for them to find a way to recover, or, in the absolute worst case, years for you to reinvest.

No, there wouldn't be years for him to reinvest. If it was revealed that Google's best days where behind them -- i.e. revenue was shrinking and they were dipping into their cash reserves to keep things rosy -- then investors would sell, sell, sell and drive down the stock price in a relatively short period of time.

There tends to be a tipping point when stock prices drop, from what I saw. But there are years of warning signs and slow decline before this happens. If you were watching RIM, for example, their trouble started when the first iphone came out, but it took years for it to reflect strongly in their stock prices. Nokia was in a similar state -- they had problems for years, but it was only recently that their stock dropped heavily. It was declining, but there were warning signs in the company long before.

However, it should be mentioned stock prices already go up and down like mad. Diversify, regardless of how solid a company is.

Not only would they have to steal ALL of Google's income, they would have to steal ALL of Googles network. Highly unlikely at any point in the future.

Not to mention the google search product IMO is better than any other available.

No, they'd have to steal just enough income from Google to slow its growth rate. Google's high P/E ratio is based on an expectation of rapidly increasing revenues over time. If its revenues became flat, its stock price would plummet.

Stock prices may change dramatically whether or not Google remains a going concern. Any share investment involves risk.

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