
Are we at Peak Google? - nagarjun
http://stratechery.com/2014/peak-google/
======
temuze
I disagree with a lot of this post.

This analysis breaks down because the transition from
IBM->Microsoft->Smartphone companies was because of newer and better
technology. Native ads hardly fit this category.

In fact, if you think about it, search ads _are_ native ads! Just like
sponsored Buzzfeed articles, search ads on Google pretend to be content. In
some ways, it's like they're the ultimate native ad because they're close to
what you expected to see when you typed in that query. They aren't annoying,
they're very relevant and they're easy to buy.

> IBM didn’t capitalize on PCs because their skills lay on the hardware side,
> not software. Microsoft didn’t capitalize on mobile because they emphasized
> compatibility, not the user experience. And now Google is dominant when it
> comes to the algorithm, but lacks the human touch needed for social or viral
> content.

Google has expanded way beyond search ads and everything in the internet is
their batting zone. They own:

\- DoubleClick, the biggest ad server on the Internet

\- Youtube, the biggest platform for videos

\- Display Network, the largest contextual network of display ads on the
internet

Google isn't going away any time soon.

~~~
jrkelly
Agree - commercials as "30 or 60 second fully produced dramas" is laughable.
Native ads can fall to wide adoption of AdBlock. It's like commercial skipping
on DVRs. The only "ads" that make sense long term are things like AMZN
rankings. That's what GOOG needs to fear. Ads that are valuable to the user
because they can't be bought - that breaks the business model.

~~~
dabei
AdBlock is not going to kill Advertising, because most publishers have no
better ways to monetize. If AdBlock continue to rise they will have to invest
in detecting AdBlock and refuse to serve content when their ads are blocked.

~~~
numbsafari
And that's already happening. If you embed JS necessary to finish delivering
the content (or make it visible) along with the Assets for an ad, then Adblock
also blocks the content.

~~~
jthol
I've never understood why you wouldn't proxy the ads through the server
providing the content. No more domain black holes.

~~~
gohrt
Because the X,000 ad servers are far more technically competent at ad serving
than the X,000,000 content servers.

------
ivv
To state that "few are even bothering to challenge [Google] anymore is to
misunderstand the nature of Google's competition. This competition isn't Bing,
DuckDuckGo, or any other generalized search engine, it's search engines that
focus on the most lucrative niches. It's Amazon -- it was fairly recently that
Amazon moved ahead of Google in the number of product-related searches
originating on its site. It's Yelp, TripAdvisor, and WebMD, and there will be
others. You don't need all of Google's search traffic to beat it -- a large
chunk of it doesn't make any money -- just the part that pays.

~~~
jquery
Don't forget Pinterest, already in my biased opinion a better search/discovery
engine than Google for a growing number of categories.

~~~
billpaetzke
> or a growing number of categories

For example?

~~~
kedean
Recipe's is a good one. I know a huge number of people who browse Pinterest
when, for example, they want a good chili recipe. It's especially good for
them because of the bookmarking functionalities, if they see something like
think looks good for later its so easy to store it and when you're hungry just
look through the list of ones you pinned.

Other areas this applies to are clothing and decorating.

------
nextstep
Working for Google today is a lot like working for the Microsoft of ~15 years
ago.

Employees are well paid, benefits are good, it's comfortable. The quality of
the hires are still pretty good, but definitely not what they were 5 years
ago. The engineering culture is still strong and permeates the entire
organization, but the company is so large that less and less flexibility is
allowed in each team's process. Thus, engineers (especially those at the
lowest levels, like right out of school) aren't exposed to as much interesting
work; many will find in 2-3 years that they have career opportunities at
Google and companies of similar size but few opportunities at more interesting
companies that are looking for someone with a few years experience with newer
technologies. Technologies that Google doesn't use. Processes that Googlers
don't know because they work in the confines of a huge corporation.

Still not a bad place to be 'cause Google pays well and they're comfortable.
But then the best and brightest stop coming to Google. And then the company
slowly dies a painful death toward irrelevancy that takes decades.

I think the comparison to Microsoft is spot on. The exact timeframe remains to
be seen.

~~~
curun1r
> many will find in 2-3 years that they have career opportunities at Google
> and companies of similar size but few opportunities at more interesting
> companies that are looking for someone with a few years experience with
> newer technologies.

What technologies would those be? I'm scratching my head trying to think of
the latest, cool stuff that people want to work with.

On the language front, among the hottest right now are NodeJS and Go. Some
might argue older languages like Erlang or Haskell are pretty trendy or
perhaps Rust, but none of those have the current momentum of the first two and
Google is behind the runtime for NodeJS and created Go.

On the data front, Hadoop is pretty trendy right now, but that's based almost
entirely off stuff that Google pioneered. Other NoSQL databases are pretty
popular and, again, Google has its fingerprints all over that. Hell, a bunch
of the NoSQL technologies even use LevelDB as a storage backend.

Distributed systems? You'll learn more about them at Google than anywhere
else. They were first with solutions to distributed consensus and they'll
likely be first with whatever new need develops simply because their scale
will ensure that they hit problems before almost anyone else.

DevOps technologies like Docker? Well, beyond the fact that Docker is
implemented in Go, Google has long used internal technology like Docker and
have supported Docker by releasing projects like Kubernetes.

Perhaps you mean cool hardware technology like self-driving cars, wearable
technology, gigabit home internet, balloon-based internet or stuff like
Chromecast?

So perhaps you can share with us what technology that they'd be exposed to
elsewhere that they can't find within Google?

~~~
defen
> Distributed systems? You'll learn more about them at Google than anywhere
> else. They were first with solutions to distributed consensus and they'll
> likely be first with whatever new need develops simply because their scale
> will ensure that they hit problems before almost anyone else.

What percentage of Googler's actually built that (certainly impressive)
system, vs just use it? If you go work at some other company, is that
knowledge of how to use Google's tech going to be portable, or are they going
to want someone with a couple years experience using Storm/Spark/whatever?

~~~
aiiane
A distributed lock server is a distributed lock server. Yes, there are always
going to be a few implementation quirks, but when it comes down to actually
designing a scalable system, the implementation quirks are noise - it's
knowing what general tools to use and how they interact with one another that
is the key insight. That knowledge _is_ portable.

------
sytelus
Another arm-chair pundit trying to fit present to past anecdotes and
predicting future... In 10 years of time Google might be self-driven car
company which has search as side business or a company selling robots which
walks and moves like humans quickly taking on cheap labor jobs. The strength
of Google, in my view, is not its current products but ability, desire and
enablement to innovate and take risks. This in part comes from its leadership
and the culture. How many other companies take on the expensive product
developments such as Fiber, city-wide wifi, online office, gmail, Android,
home delivery etc - _without_ a definitive business plan? During Bill Gates
era, there was a saying in Microsoft that your product pitch would fail if you
can't convince executives that your idea would yield another billion dollar
business because they thought it simply wasn't worth their time. Even at the
peak nobody thought IBM would take risks to start home delivery system or
experiment with balloon based radio systems.

~~~
pinaceae
completely disagree.

a company is measured by its profits, any new venture needs to have a business
behind it. xerox parc, ms labs - great hobbies, no monetization. google x?
nothing so far. glass is cooling off. car has driven 400k miles - on the same,
tightly controled circuit. no commercial products in sight.

i personnally have had discussions with google execs about new business areas
where google could easily transform established industries - to be shut down
with the phrase "we don't touch any market below 1bn". and that was 3 years
ago.

kids these days don't give a shit about google. search happens in the browser
url bar, not google.com. search is a commodity. how exactly is google still
relevant?

~~~
rcraft
"search happens in the browser url bar, not google.com. search is a commodity.
how exactly is google still relevant?"

Exactly his point and the one you are missing. Google had the foresight to
invest in chrome, android, gmail, and Chromecast years ago.

At the same time people like you thought they were silly for pursuing products
that had no short term revenue or ecosystem benefits.

~~~
pinaceae
that's a single platform. this is not the case on iOS and China Android
(AOSP). iOS in the US is growing vs. Android.

same for PCs, Search is moving out of the browser (Win8, OSX), just something
you type or say (Siri, Cortana).

yes, Google has Now, etc. but it _has_ competition now and has not launched
any new blockbuster since Android - and that one does not rake in huge
profits. for that, they only have ads, embedded in search.

------
andrewvc
One thing this is leaving out is that IBM existed, and was very successful,
long before mainframes. The company has existed since the 1880s for christ's
sake. Additionally, during the mainframe era it had a number of other
successful products, like the selectric typewriter. The history of IBM
([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_IBM](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_IBM))
is pretty damn long.

If you pick your dates right it's easy to find trends, but the real world is
much more complex. HP, for instance, has taken a long, meandering path to
where it is. It doesn't fit on a simple chart with simple graphics.

~~~
jacques_chester
Selection bias is useful for allowing all sorts of fascinating arguments to be
made.

------
rdlecler1
People were saying this back in 2011 ahead of Facebook's IPO. 2 years later,
Google was looking as strong as ever.

I'm willing to bet that Google will be the first trillion dollar company.
Their bench is just too deep. The only major mis-step I've seen is not
aggressively rolling out an apple pay competitor 1-2 years ago (Giving away
terminals if they had to).

The major threats Google faces right now are: (1) Precision marketing from
Facebook (2) Companies like Amazon get so big that users side-step the need
for Google discovery. Also an AI business can be as big as their search
business (AI as a service in the new smart economy.)

Addressing these: (1) Most people use Google far more each day than they use
Facebook so there are just more opportunities to monetize. Frankly if Facebook
disappeared it would be a minor inconvenience to most people, whereas if
Google disappeared it would be armageddon. Facebook is always at risk of being
superseded by another trend, but Google has become a necessary tool.
Furthermore, most people check facebook 2-3 times per day and the real estate
is far more limited in a facebook feed (Albeit far more valuable). Finally,
Google still has Gmail which is basically the world's second biggest social
network and it can be mined for far more valuable insight for even greater
degrees of precision marketing.

(2) We only have room in our brains for handful of companies like Amazon, and
Amazon is primarily limited to consumer goods. That still leaves the rest of
the economy that needs discovery: cars, investments, nose jobs, viagra and
fake twitter followers. Still, Google does need a mobile/local ad strategy.
However, they can pool search history, Gmail, and track your physical location
(Oh and they have maps) and start inserting hyper personalized ads/offers into
their search result feed. Add a payment system to that layer and they'll crush
it.

~~~
jyu
How much are you willing to bet and by what date?

Google has had multiple missteps. G+, terrible customer service, lack of
diversity in revenue, a lackluster post acquisitions track record besides
android. The specific examples stated rely too heavily on personal experience.
You site all these large companies in the US, but the world is much bigger
than just the US.

10 years from now things could look very different geopolitically. It's not
hard to imagine the "Amazon" of India or "Google" of China becoming the
biggest in the world due to population and growing economies.

~~~
rdlecler1
Getting timing right is much much harder than knowing where that trend is
going.

From my perspective, a mis-step is a missed opportunity to enter a market. The
pushed forward with G+ and it failed. Compare that to Microsoft which failed
to see these markets coming. Google had NFC support baked into the Android OS.
They just needed to develop the app and use brite force to push terminals into
the market. They could have even developed some kind of iOS bump app to get
ahead to apple pay. Otherwise they're firing on all cylinders better than any
company in history of that size and they've given themselves a ton of adjacent
white space. No evolutionary dead ends here.

------
lazzlazzlazz
Native advertising is so much more indirect and intrusive, I can't see how it
could "trounce" search advertising in as dramatic a fashion as your charts
suggest. Native adverts will definitely increase in prevalence, but search
advertising still uniquely shows ads to people as they're actually looking for
something.

~~~
waps
Native adverts are why I turn off my iPad's wifi when playing games. I wish
there was a way to use the notifier switch as a wifi switch. You wouldn't
believe how much things improve. Advertisers just don't trust offline views,
and probably for good reason.

I'm looking for a subtler approach though. Some way to keep browsing, keep
things like app store accessible, but disable ads.

~~~
rstupek
So you probably won't pay for the game and don't want to have ads to
compensate the developers of the game. How do you expect to continue to get
quality apps in your perfect world?

~~~
waps
If even 10% of developers actually gave me a choice, you'd have a much better
argument. In fairness, indie games often do, and I often pay for them, and I
have a much higher tolerance for ads when trying out the free game.

Other issues here are that I often turn off wifi for other games, then don't
turn it back on until I've got a decent reason to do so. Today, iPads are more
enjoyable with wifi off because of the ads that really push it.

I think it's also a function of the fact that free apps sell better, and that
makes them more likely to get my attention in the first place. When I want to
find an app, I want to find a "good" app, so I often use the top selling
lists, which are much more likely to have ads.

------
eva1984
Google has a serious problem right now: the new Mobile ecosystem is driving
users to vertical search services: individual Apps.

Want to buy stuff, open Amazon Shopping App; want to find restaurants nearby,
Yelp is at your service; Take a ride maybe? Uber is your best friend. Same
thing could be said for a lot of other stuff, like Airbnb for renting and
Flipboard for news(damn, poor Google Reader). What makes things worse is that
those kinds of traffic are Google's cash cows.

The point is, in the era of mobile, there isn't a unified entrance for
everything, not like the way Google dominates Web. I think that is why Google
Now comes to play, to ensure user can access google's search service with a
single swipe, but it is hard to tell whether this will work out or not.

Of course, Google has the best technology in town, but the internet is a more
diverse places right now. Even though it owns Android and Chrome, it won't
become the sole gatekeeper of all information. Google will not become the
microsoft of the internet, and maybe this is a good thing.

------
mbesto
One major flaw in this thesis. Advertising marketplaces where the bids on
eyeballs are competitive _in theory_ will always continue to increase as long
as the businesses in those markets continue grow. In other words, if the
market for cookies grew it at 6% every year, and thus the number of searches
for cookies grew at 6% per year, it means that as long as Google continues to
hold a static position, they can increase the bidding for cookie keywords and
thus increases revenues there without ever increasing market share. IBM and MS
on the other hand have to continue to convince customers (i.e. sales) that
their product rule. This is really costly.

The author suggest native advertizing will eclipse search. Really? This like
saying Infomercials are going to replace prime time TV dramas.

~~~
jasode
>, if the market for cookies grew it at 6% every year, and thus the number of
searches for cookies grew at 6% per year,

The author may have used poor examples to flesh out his thesis but I think his
point is the _contexts & triggers_ for advertisements can drastically change.
When that happens, it can make newer companies become dominant.

For example, if Facebook-Apple comes out with an Oculus-or-wrist-wearable-
augmented-reality-gadget, a user could be standing on a street corner and see
a car pass by that he doesn't recognize. He then sends a voice command to his
wearable to ask what the model is and it creates ads of dealers that sell it.
The "search engine" behind the scenes could be Bing or whatever Facebook-Apple
licenses.

The ads are still there. Searches (of some type) are still there. But the
contextual triggers have changed. There are no business guarantees that
google.com will remain in the pipeline of future (lucrative) ad triggers.

My example above may also be convoluted but I'm sure others could imagine a
future where the _majority_ of searches come from another mechanism besides
typing words into a little box on a webpage. Ad rates from google would
nosedive because advertisers would pay a premium for Oculus ads instead of
google.com ads. I think those are the scenarios that would "eclipse"
google.com.

This has happened before with newspapers. The car industry grew but newspapers
ad rates for cars and car dealers have declined. A lot of those ad dollars
shifted to television and google. Newspapers declined even though they _still_
run ads for cars today.

~~~
jfim
> My example above may also be convoluted but I'm sure others could imagine a
> future where the majority of searches come from another mechanism besides
> typing words into a little box on a webpage.

Google is definitely aware of it. For example, see this article from 2011:
[http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/eric-
schmidt/8873664/G...](http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/eric-
schmidt/8873664/Googles-Eric-Schmidt-Apples-Siri-could-pose-threat.html)

------
slykat
Google is just as well poised for getting brand advertising dollars.
Specifically consider this point from the article itself: "To date this type
of brand advertising has strongly favored television; targeting is certainly
nice, but channels like Lifetime (Dove) or ESPN (Axe) are specific enough..."

The majority of brand advertising dollars are currently in TV. What's the next
generation of TV? We don't know yet, but these are some contenders:

1) Apple - Apple TV / iTunes 2) Amazon - Streaming Prime Content 3) Netflix 4)
Google - Android TV & Youtube

Out of all these players only Google is taking advertising model for video
content; the rest of the players are monetizing through content itself. Thus,
it's very possible that Google will be taking the lion's share of brand
advertising dollars as consumers cut cable.

I wouldn't count Google out of the brand advertising game. Youtube has over 1
billion monthly actives who consume 6 hours a month in a format very friendly
to native ads.

------
MarkMc
This analysis is wrong for several reasons:

1\. Android is no longer just a way for Google to protect its search engine -
it is now a strong contender to become the biggest platform for watching TV
and movies in the world.

2\. Google knows more about me than anyone else. They know my age, sex,
occupation, where I sleep, who I email, what supermarket I shop at, and a
thousand other details. That's an enormous competitive advantage in the
business of selling brand (or 'Native') advertising.

3\. Unlike Facebook and Twitter, people who produce compelling TV and movies
usually just auction off the advertising rights to the highest bidder. Google
can simply buy the right to advertise in the next James Bond film or English
Premier League final.

~~~
72deluxe
Of the points you make, I think point 1 is very interesting but I am not sure
about it. I mean, they attempted with Google TV and it never took off. They've
had Google Play Movies for a while but do you see any good films on there?

Regarding point 2, the data they have is valuable but do people like being
advertised to?

Product placement in films is pretty nastily received though. Look at Iron Man
2 and the appearances of Oracle and Larry Ellison everywhere; it was not
enjoyable. It didn't make me want to switch database providers. (I didn't
notice that Elon Musk is in it too)

~~~
MarkMc
Yes Google TV was a flop, but the Nexus Player could be hugely successful.

People _hate_ being advertised to, but they put up with and and they clearly
identify 'native' ads as just more advertising.

Regarding point 3: Sorry, I wasn't clear - I didn't mean product placement in
the James Bond film. I meant that Google can simply buy the right to screen
the movie and run their 30-second ads at the appropriate points (ie. like
movies on regular TV).

~~~
72deluxe
That's an interesting point for point 3. I wonder if they'll do it? I know I
hate watching ITV here in the UK because of the adverts, and knowing that
there are data limits for broadband, being pushed video adverts in HD may be
obnoxious to some (but you'd have to watch adverts all day long for it to make
a difference!)

------
misterbishop
The argument eats itself on its most substantive point: native advertising.
The writer dismisses "youtube" as the exception to Google's supposed weakness
in native advertising.

Personally, I'd much rather be Youtube than any of the other examples cited
(facebook and so on). Not only is Youtube an absolute monster in video
streaming, Youtube is going to be even more important as set top boxes take
off. Plus there's a lot more social innovation left to tap in Youtube.

------
shanev
In an age when information is ubiquitous, with advertisers trying to monetize
every bit of it, filtering becomes an important skill. Today advertisers run
ads alongside content, tomorrow advertisers and brands will dictate what
content gets written. It's already happening with native ads as this post
shows, but will soon become standard. The Truth will become increasingly
elusive to the unskilled: a new kind of digital divide.

~~~
Taek
This has been true for a while though. Consumer behavior is clearly
manipulated by advertising, and it's common that an inferior and more
expensive product wins as the result of superior marketing.

I don't think it's something we're permanently tethered to though. As reviews
are getting better, consumers are realizing more and more that knowing which
product is best for them is a very valuable tool. We're seeing stuff like
yelp, tripadvisor, healthgrades really take off. The idea of being an
"informed" consumer is gaining a lot of traction and that's going to dilute
the effectiveness of targeted advertisement.

------
danso
I skimmed this article 3 times...Sorry, was there any actual substance to this
link-baity headline, other than "Mainframes were big, now they're not and PCs
were big, now they are not, ergo, Google is big, and someday they will not
be"?

The OP provides little to no hypothesis on what will takeover Google...more
"human" content, a la Buzzfeed? Seriously?? And then the OP goes on to dismiss
all of Google's next-gen research (self-driving cars, Google Glass, etc) with
a conclusion akin _" Well Microsoft Research sucked so Google will to"_.

The OP is link-bait wankery at its worst. I'm sorry to even have spent 15
minutes trying to interpret it.

~~~
missserenity
? The author specifically mentions companies like Facebook, Twitter, and
Pinterest. Plus the point isn't that one company will replace Google, it's
that Google isn't positioned to take advantage of the next wave of online
advertising - digital brand advertising.

And Google is not 3M. They have not proven to any significant degree that any
of their research projects will provide lasting value to the company. In fact,
almost all of their successful non-search products were acquisitions, not the
result of internal R&D. Android was an acquisition; Maps was an acquisition;
Docs was an acquisition.

------
r0h1n
I would challenge the core of Ben Thompson's argument, namely:

> _$50 billion for worldwide search advertising (of which Google captures a
> huge majority) sounds like a lot, but it’s only a small percentage of total
> ad spend, projected to be $545 billion in 2014. The vast majority of that
> spend is not about direct response – i.e. ads that spur you to make a
> purchase on the spot; rather most of the money is spent on brand
> advertising._

Essentially his point is direct response is ~10% of brand advertising, and
that other players are better positioned than Gooogle to capture that.

But what if that ratio itself were a legacy assumption? And thus, why should
we take his following statement at face value:

> _The idea behind brand advertising is to build “affinity” among potential
> customers._

I posit that brand advertising has traditionally been orders of magnitude
larger than direct advertising because options for quality direct response
advertising were limited. But thanks to the rise of the web and mobile, we're
now moving into an era where the line between brand advertising & direct
advertising is blurring. Not just that, but the time/distance between a
customer's latent desires to purchase action is also shortening, thanks to
24x7 e-commerce.

In this world, why should direct response be 1/10th of brand advertising?
Heck, why should direct response always be distinct from brand advertising?

Sure, companies will continue to run brand adverting, including ads
masquerading as stories (advertorials once, "native ads" today). But the split
(or even distinction) between direct response and brand advertising will
continue to reduce.

~~~
missserenity
Is Coca-Cola ever going to move away from brand advertising? Is Bud Light? Is
McDonald's?

There are too many products where value comes from building a lifelong
relationship with the customer, rather than directing a single purchase.
That's stuff only branding can do.

------
ChuckMcM
I find the 'Peak <x>' meme somewhat tired but the point that everyone guns for
the monopoly and is a valid one. I've noted over the years that Google's CPC
has been falling steadily, and the amount they have been spending on paid
distribution has been growing even faster. But mostly that means that they are
no longer the 'new thing' and now are the 'old thing' where 'stream
advertising' is the 'new thing' now. And while they really pushed hard on
making G+ their stream I don't think it has been as successful as they would
have liked.

I've also noticed that search hasn't been about finding every web page for a
long time now, now it is a service that is part of some app or other
environment, and it isn't unique. The article's point about Amazon doing more
product searches, I can believe it based on experience that nearly always a
search on Google gives an amazon link that I seem to invariably click on, if
only to read the reviews. So why not search on Amazon first?

In my opinion, it is only a matter of time before Google tries to monetize the
non-commerce queries. Once the RPMs on Bing, Yahoo, and Google Ad feeds are
all about the same the underlying crawling and indexing search infrastructure
will become a drag on profits. That will be an interesting time for me.

------
adventured
Google will continue to own search on mobile.

As such, their ability to monetize that avenue will remain intact. And it's an
extraordinarily lucrative position. It does not matter whether the ideal
format for mobile ads is native or not, if it is then Google will adapt their
search dominance to that approach and print money the same as they have been.

There has been no drop off in their mobile search position of power, and
there's nothing likely to displace their role there.

There's no particular reason mentioned in the article, for why Google can't
benefit with the reach of mobile in regards to advertising. I saw no
explanation for why search won't get bigger with the mobile market's growth in
the next decade. Nor why Google isn't just as well positioned as anybody to
take a big cut of native ads via search.

The only way in which this is approximately peak Google, is that their PE
ratio is likely to compress to half what it is now over the next decade, while
their profits increase, leading to a flat stock for a very long time (as
happens to most companies in their situation; eg Microsoft, Apple, IBM,
Oracle, Cisco, Intel, etc).

~~~
millstone
The concern about mobile search is twofold: mobile ads are less effective than
desktop ads, and people search less often on mobile than on desktop. So
"owning search on mobile" may not end up being a position of power at all.

I don't see an easy avenue for adopting their search dominance to native ads.
Native ads are "in-stream" ads: think Buzzfeed instead of banners. "Native ads
via search" doesn't make sense: search is finding content, but is not itself
content. Google doesn't have much in the way of content, with the notable
exception of YouTube.

------
Doctor_Fegg
Google Search is vulnerable for the first time in years.

If I type "king" into Safari's address bar on my iPhone, even with Google
search suggestions turned off, it prominently suggests "Wikipedia: King
Games". Spotlight on Yosemite does the same.

Apple are quietly relegating Google results to second place or worse. Is there
a better result in Wikipedia? In iTunes? In the App Store? On Maps? Spotlight
highlights that; it's probably what you want. It's not hard to imagine deals
with Amazon (tablet/ebook rivalry aside) and Yelp, too.

The remaining search results are supplied by Bing for Spotlight, Google for
Safari. But I expect Bing to replace Google in Safari for iOS 9.

This is how Google will be dethroned. Not by someone building a better text-
based search engine, but by Apple and Microsoft routing around them. And this
is why Android remains so important to Google, and why Google were so anxious
to prevent Samsung going their own way.

~~~
adventured
What share of the global market for smartphones does Apple + Microsoft
currently possess?

Most of the rest of the growth in smartphones - the next two billion users -
will come from poorer countries where relatively few of the people can afford
iPhones. That means that market share for search will, as of today, go to
Google via Android.

Apple and Microsoft pose zero threat to Google's search dominance unless they
can unseat Android globally.

------
spindritf
Google managed to ride two subsequent waves: web (not pc which came before)
and mobile. Between Glass and Magic Leap, they're well on their way to catch
the third wave of virtual/augmented reality.

And native adverts, really? Let's hope this is not the grand industry of the
future. Not for Google's sake but for our own.

~~~
acgourley
Claiming that VR/AR is a wave on the same order of magnitude as mobile a
_bold_ statement. Mostly AR/VR extend existing waves. They make gaming better.
They make mobile better. They are not by themselves the same kind of shift as
PC -> Mobile.

~~~
natrius
Claiming that virtual reality is a wave on the same order of magnitude as
mobile is an _understatement_. High fidelity virtual reality will change the
way we communicate. It'll change the way we _live_.

------
ajessup
"The problem for Google is [...] they’re an ad company, but the key to native
advertising on the Internet is the capability of producing immersive content
within which to place the ad [...] Google has nothing in this regard (with the
notable exception of YouTube"

Google has plenty of other assets here to build immersive advertising
experiences on top of if they chose to leverage them, not the least of which
is the most popular mobile OS in the world.

"Moreover, all of the things that make Google great [...] translate to the
more touchy-feely qualities that make a social service or content site
compelling."

Google has the best asset of all here - an empowered sales force that has
direct relationships exactly the agencies, creatives and buyers that would be
the first to jump on an innovative immersive ad format.

------
cromwellian
I find "native" advertising pretty shady. Google is already heavily criticized
for ads that are hard to make out as ads in SERPs or product searches.

I also think consumers get wise to it over time and it starts to get mentally
blocked out.

I'd say YouTube is probably Google's most effective hedge against a future
where all the revenue is in branding/display ads. However, if you look at last
quarter's results, non-ad "Other" revenue is now 10%, whereas ads used to
supply 98% of revenue. The "Other" revenue is also growing 50% year over year.
It may very well be that Google gets eclipsed or disrupted, but might end up
eclipsing or disrupting its own ads business, especially as "apps" tend to
take over user attention, and "Web" ads decline.

~~~
72deluxe
It's true that people quickly mentally block out adverts. Even on YouTube, I
ignore the advert and anxiously wait for the "skip ad" button to appear.
Doesn't everyone?

------
wildermuthn
All companies founded upon one core technology will diminish once a new
technology becomes more useful and prevalent. Ads aren't going to displace
Google — some new and better technological platform will.

IBM brought the mainframe. MS brought the PC. Google brought the internet.
Apple brought the smartphone.

These are all platforms, and they all built off one another. So what new
platform will build off the last platforms?

What new device is powered by the screens and sensors of smartphones? What new
device was funded by zealous crowds coordinating their money and development
through the internet? What new device requires what only the PC can provide:
affordable and massive processing power?

Oculus brought Virtual Reality.

------
sutterbomb
A few others have noted, but search ads are actually perfectly native ads. The
form and function are identical to the rest of the stream they are shown in.
Setting aside the term "native" then, as the point was much more about brand
vs. direct response ad markets.

I'd reword the author's thesis (while keeping the intent) to look like this:

1) All mediums develop native advertising styles over time, which web & mobile
are just in beginning stages

2) The market for brand advertising will continue to be larger than the market
for direct response advertising

3) Google won't win the market for online brand advertising

------
chubot
This article is a huge non-sequitur. Yes, every big company will eventually be
eclipsed. That says nothing about "native advertising".

There was already something like "native advertising" for search: it was
GoTo.com. You could pay to appear in the search results. It's not hard to
imagine that, as a result, the search result quality was inferior to Google's,
and users chose to go elsewhere.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yahoo!_Search_Marketing#Origins...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yahoo!_Search_Marketing#Origins_of_GoTo.com)

------
minor_nitwit
Google is both dominating smart phones and search at the moment. The examples
given were of particular products that superseded other products. Is there a
product that going to supersede Google Search or Android? If not, I don't see
Google at its peak. In fact, with their efforts to take over the last google
free screen in your living room, it might be that they're due to break into an
even bigger advertising market.

------
shadowmint
Lack luster thesis aside, does anyone have any solid stats about the
effectiveness of these new 'in steam' / 'native' advertisements?

Quite curious.

In theory they _should_ be effective at engaging because they can be so
narrowly targeted, but I still have such a hard time believing that they
_actually_ convert into user action (eg. purchase).

~~~
imjk
For one thing, native ads tend to be more viral oriented versus paid, so they
have much lower costs which can be as low as free.

It's not so much about the narrow targeting as it is about the engagement.
These "advertisements" show up in your FB news feeds and Pinterest pages
because someone else in your community thought it worthy to share; they go
viral when many people find it worthy to share. They're also much more
integrated to the platforms as they don't initially appear as advertisements,
unlike say banner ads.

"I still have such a hard time believing that they actually convert into user
action (eg. purchase)."

To your last point, the author argues that native advertising is more akin to
Brand advertising versus direct response, so in the same way, they're not
intended to function as direct response ads that encourage you to buy
immediately. But I'd argue that these native ads are even more effective
because they can serve both purposes; they can serve the purpose of bringing
brand awareness as merely being subtly place subject matter into and article
that brings awareness to a brand, or they can be as direct as a product
endorsement by a celebrity on their Twitter feeds or Pinterest pages. Native
advertising can be versatile enough to cover both direct response and brand
building advertisements.

------
mncolinlee
I beg to differ. Google may have the strongest native advertising platform.
It's called Gmail/Inbox/Now.

Google knows exactly when you're thinking about a major purchase like an
automobile because they see your e-mail and search traffic. Nudging you
towards that car brand via Now or Inbox may be quite effective.

------
rvn1045
I don't think we are at peak google. I think we are having this conversation a
bit prematurely. Some other company in the future will disrupt google (who
knows in how many years?), that is just the nature of this business. For now
Google will enjoy it's dominance.

------
msabalau
Perhaps, in a world where direct response advertising is growing ever more
relevant and useful, brand advertising can wither and die, taking the
Wanamaker problem with it. Do we need to hear stories that try to make us have
emotional relationships with floor waxes?

------
tantalor
Was this written in 2014 or 2008? This happened years ago when Facebook wiped
the floor with Google in social networks.

~~~
72deluxe
Is Facebook still such a big thing to people? There was a time when everyone
and their dog were asking "are you on Facebook?" with eagerness and then
looking at your as if you had publicly fluctuated when you said "no". With
over 271 million domains on the Internet, it seemed odd that people were going
crazy over one or two (Facebook and Twitter).

But now people just accept that you don't have an account and are happy with
emails or face to face communication, whether that be in person or via
conferencing of some form.

If social networks were relevant to everyone, then I could understand you
saying that Google was in decline. However, they're not important to everyone
- they might be in your circle though. Finding things on the Internet is still
pretty big though, as is email.

------
PSeitz
You forgot to mention Google Inbox in your article.

------
iamthepieman
all the other upsets the author mentions were consumer product driven.
Mainframe -> PC. PC -> Mobile. Advertisement is business driven. It doesn't
seem to be even in the same league as the other upsets and search
advertisement will likely upset by "Death of a thousand cuts" than some plucky
upstart.

------
cromwellian
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge's_law_of_headlines](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge's_law_of_headlines)

