A few decades from now, when someone writes up an HBS case study on Google, how will it read?

My suspicion is that Google is going to treat us to a very painful object lesson: what happens to your business when you compromise the values of a beloved core product.

Here's the thing: having the most complete, most accurate, most relevant search results means never having to say you're sorry. You can add ads, you can do additional products, you can add a kind of clunky single-signon, whatever. Because at the end of the day, the user needs the thing you have that no one else does.

Now, Google had this. But one day, maybe around 2009, something happened. Where once I was delighted with Google's search, it started getting annoying. Things like automatically showing you a SERP for a different spelling of your query, because Google thought you were looking for that. Then they started matching to synonyms (tear and rip, say). And so this tool that used to do exactly what it was asked became too clever by half.

Meanwhile, SERP quality began to deteriorate as well. We suffered for something like 18 months under the regime of those Stack Overflow scrapers and their ilk, with plenty of equivalent nonsense in other verticals (hello, ebooks!).

So, already, Google took its eye off the ball for the one thing that previously had been inviolable. And now there's the comically titled SPYW.

Google's not stupid: they get that the rise of mobile and specialty apps/services that go with it are going to whittle away at the searches they'll be asked to do.

They've bet the company on Android and Google+ giving them an out. Android was a good call, as it puts them in the driver's seat for a lot of this mobile action. But they need the web, too. Can they get away with compromising their search with this nouveau portal strategy?

My hunch is that they're going to pay dearly in the process of finding out the answer is no. They're too big and too smart not to make the transition to whatever the next big thing is after search.

But boy – screwing with the golden goose that earns both reputation and cash?

Well, give 'em this: they're willing to take risks.