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Comment by itsoktocry | Hacker News Reader

Can you define "several years"? Google's revenues are at all-time highs, and still growing (albeit slowly). Seems pretty far from anything drying up...

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Yes, as long as it takes for competitors to build products that are more useful in access to knowledge than Google Search (here GPT + Bing is the most visible threat, but it could be anyone), and that capture your attention better than YouTube (TikTok is the biggest competitor in this space, but again, it could be anyone).

Google can't build products, they didn't build anything useful since Search and Docs, so they won't be able to compete. Add a couple of years for consumers to catch on and migrate.

So I would give it 5-7 years in which the employees will slowly be demotivated by waves of layoffs, morale will tank, and accelerate the process. In that time, the upper mgmt will scramble to increase their bonuses to get as much as they can out of the sinking ship. In the end the company will face restructuring and be left with maybe 10% of the current size, trending downward.

I agree with you. What people seem to forget is that Google simply did one thing even just marginally better back in the 90s and has been riding that heavy train ever since. All the other stuff, even YouTube is also essentially just dumb luck and a function of that initial success, not to mention that Google was going to shut YouTube down before someone made the case for making it an ad platform, which should have been obvious to Google of all organizations even at that time.

Frankly, Google is like the guy who invented a thing early in life and has been living off the royalties that just flood in, but has absolutely no touch with reality and is convinced of his own greatness as an illusion of that single act so many decades ago. And his kids are even worse and more rotten and spoiled.

They all just don’t know it yet.

> Google was going to shut YouTube down before someone made the case for making it an ad platform, which should have been obvious to Google of all organizations even at that time.

Where in the world are you getting this from?

Same, I've never heard this before either.

That's a little exaggerated though, Android, Google Maps, Photos, Gmail?

You're right about Gmail and Photos. Android and Maps are acquisitions.

Nokia sold about $50Bn worth of phones in 2007, another $50Bn in 2008. They made an enormous amount of money long after it was obvious to everyone their business was in massive decline.

iPhone 3G came out in summer of 2008. While Blackberry was doing very well versus Nokia, it was certainly not obviously in massive decline long before summer 2008. Perhaps the original iPhone in summer 2007 alerted people in the business, but still, that is just 1 year before. Until then, Nokia's smartphones were still considered among the top of the line.

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