
Google isn’t safe from Yahoo’s fate - dineshp2
https://techcrunch.com/2016/08/11/google-isnt-safe-from-yahoos-fate/
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CodeSheikh
As many commenters have pointed out, this is indeed an horrible article. The
author premise goes something like "Yahoo did search. Yahoo was so $$$. Yahoo
failed. Google is doing search. Since Yahoo failed Google must fail. Hurp derp
chirp"

Google owns a vast stake in mobile domain through Android. If mobile native
ads is the way of future then I am sure Google will use it to their advantage
and thrive at it. Plus Google has been diversifying it's revenue stream a lot
lately. Also, a few people had internet and personal computers at home back
then. People are more tech and internet savvy these days.

A bigger problem that a lot of people fail to acknowledge when it comes to
demise of Yahoo is the brain drain. Top talent left Yahoo when Mayers joined.

~~~
tn13
The real issue with Yahoo! was that they focuses less on engineering and more
on "we are a media company" thing. While in reality all FB, GOOG etc are media
companies engineering culture is what is at the heart of their success.

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nabla9
77% of Google ad revenue comes from their own sites.

Only 10% of google revenue and almost none of the profits come from other
business than ads. Google has tried but has not been successful in creating
profits from elsewhere. Motorola Mobility was huge blunder.

Google is successful there is no moat that keeps it safe. It hast to keep
running to to stay ahead.

~~~
sharpercoder
> Motorola Mobility was huge blunder.

Is there public info from Google available stating the goal of the Motorola
Mobility buy?

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JoelBennett
If I had to guess: patents.

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forgotpwtomain
I tend to disagree that Google is similar to Yahoo in 2000. If you look at
Yahoo in retrospect, portal to the rest of the web is pretty banal. Google has
a lot of core things going for it which are no longer the search-market:
Android (and store), Google Maps, Youtube, Cloud Business, Office Suite,
research into self-driving vehicles, that should make it more comparable to
Microsoft than Yahoo.

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ocdtrekkie
Except for Android, which is facing legal challenges across the globe,
advertising remains pretty much their sole profit channel. While Google may
exist in many product areas, they need to find a new source of actual revenue.

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unluckful
Don't forget about Google Apps, Vault, and Google Cloud. Google Apps for
Business with Vault costs my employer over 18 million dollars a year and my
department has a five figure monthly Google Cloud budget.

~~~
ocdtrekkie
They're definitely trying here, but from my understanding, Google Cloud
Platform is a distant third to Amazon and Microsoft's clouds, and the revenue
total barely is worth mention in Google's earnings calls.

~~~
dragonwriter
> and the revenue total barely is worth mention in Google's earnings calls.

"Barely worth mentioning" because they don't even break out the $2 billion in
quarterly revenue from non-advertising sources beyond "non-advertising
sources" in financial reports, but in the most recent, the $400+ million
increase in quarterly revenue in that category was primarily attributed to two
sources -- increases in Play store revenue, and increases in "revenues from
cloud and apps offerings for enterprise".

Its just hard for _anything else_ to seem significant against the background
of $18 billion in quarterly advertising revenue.

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niftich
_Some_ of the analysis in the article is rather on point; but to me it
solidifies the belief that the 'Google of the Future' will be like the
'Microsoft of Today': possessing a large portfolio of diverse, user- and
business-centric services, some premium, some free.

They'll collect data from their free services, they'll run an ad network,
they'll run several social and/or communications networks, so they still have
access to social graphs and interests. They may even produce or aggregate some
content on content portals like Microsoft does with MSN. They'll make some of
their money from display ads, but less than they do now. Meanwhile they'll
have subscription-based products from which they'll derive the rest of their
revenue.

It's tempting to look at where Google's current revenue comes from and accuse
them of being a one-trick pony, but they've done what like Microsoft did in
the 1990s and have ingrained themselves into the daily lives of people,
through Gmail, Android, Chrome, Drive, Docs, and more niche ones like
Hangouts, Allo/Duo, Google Photos. They're even guilty of some of the same
mistakes as Microsoft: confusing product strategies and messaging, letting
some services stagnate for years, sudden shutdown of others and releasing a
hip new but slightly inferior alternative soon after.

The transformation of ad consumption and the relevance of search in the app-
driven, app-curated world; these are all good points raised in the article.
But I think Google's current set of non-money-making products is exactly what
will save them from Yahoo's fate -- you may no longer search with Google, you
may not even _like_ Google, but all your files and personal data is still
going to be with them, their OS running on your phones and laptops, and
network effects and platform lock-in (in the sense that it's not worth the
effort to switch) will keep people with Google for years to come.

~~~
nabla9
>'Google of the Future' will be like the 'Microsoft of Today'

Microsoft has diversified it's revenue but most of it's profits comes from
Windows & Office licensing. Its' amazing how little Microsoft's' way of
generating profits has changed while it has changed so much.

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Thaxll
What a poor article, Google in 2016 has a very large portfolio of services,
something that Yahoo never had.

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allendoerfer
If you give me a few billion dollars, I will build you a nice portfolio of
services, too. What Google lacks is a large portfolio of services that
actually make money. From a money making point of view, Google has Adwords.

~~~
Thaxll
You could say the same for Facebook, if facebook.com is no longer relevant
Facebook dies they don't have anything else. The fact that Google has Search,
#1 mobile platform + many other services is a good sign of diversity.

~~~
samfisher83
Android is kind of become like windows mobile. It is on a ton of devices. Its
super popular in Asia and other countries, but they have morphed android to
their own needs and at times don't have google products on there.

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ckastner
_Yahoo went from a $125 billion valuation in 2000_

2000 was the height of the dot-com bubble, so comparing it to 2016's Google
(with strong revenues and earnings) doesn't seem that apt.

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KasianFranks
Here's one reason why Google is safe. Explained in one graphic:

"In Pursuit of Simplicity" [https://blog.codinghorror.com/in-pursuit-of-
simplicity/](https://blog.codinghorror.com/in-pursuit-of-simplicity/)

Another reason they are safe is because they are not a social network.

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Nullabillity
Pretty hilarious that this post in itself seems to be sponsored by one of
those dodgy native advertising companies.

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tanqueray
What would be so bad if they did go through a bad patch? I can't see it being
like Yahoo's though.

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xapata
A better argument would be to simply publish a chart of company lifetimes.
It's rare to live forever.

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ucaetano
"Google in 2016 = Yahoo in 2000? It’s possible"

Is such a thing even possible?

Yes it is!

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meeper16
Apples and Oranges. This is like the way bloggers used to compare facebook
(the next AOL, like yahoo) with Google.

Google was founded based on a set of highly algorithmic methods for Search
(part of today's AI), which is something that is extremely difficult to do
correctly and even harder to duplicate (just ask Apple). Google never morphed
into a 'content' site, like AOL. It was not founded based on easy-to-to
duplicate code and content of others.

They've come a long a way in terms of real innovation and real technology in
addition to revenue that is 10x greater than twitter, facebook, yahoo and
others. Now add to this traffic reach, if you look at the top 10-20 sites on
the net in terms of traffic, Google actually owns several of them including
YouTube, Gmail etc.
[http://www.alexa.com/topsites](http://www.alexa.com/topsites) Add to this an
entire operating system that runs most of the worlds mobile devices. If you
aggregate all their platforms and properties, it's orders of magnitude greater
than any other.

There are deep technology companies and then there are not so deep technology
companies that have limited lifespans.

Google probably has another 10 years before it begins to crumble within.
Meanwhile and in a larger historical context, the new AOLs will come and go,
repeating a cycle of duplicating one anothers content and so-called
technology.

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ohstopitu
I feel that the article is not complete. Google is way more diversified
(Google Apps, Cloud and so on). Furthermore, it also takes risks (with Google
X).

While Google does make a lot of it's earnings from Ads, Google Cloud is
supposed to surpass it's Ads business in the next 4 years.

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cairo140
> While Google does make a lot of it's earnings from Ads, Google Cloud is
> supposed to surpass it's Ads business in the next 4 years.

Where do you hear this goal? Google Q2 Ads revenue was $21.5B. AWS Q2 revenue
was $2.6B. Google is currently small compared to AWS.

~~~
ohstopitu
I should have added a source: [http://www.businessinsider.com/urs-holze-talks-
google-cloud-...](http://www.businessinsider.com/urs-holze-talks-google-cloud-
beat-search-2015-11)

