Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

How Google Could Collapse

medium.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 81 posts

Re: How Google Could Collapse

#21

Post by partiallypro »

jeffjose wrote: post #3

Unnecessarily alarmist. It's true that Google isnt making free ad money anymore and other companies are viable threats unlike Yahoo and Microsoft of 2004. Google has lots of monetizable balls in the air - Cloud, Pixel line and few others.

But still ads are ~95% of their revenues. Google has a lot of balls in the air and only one of them is profitable. Microsoft and Samsung have made more money from Android than Google has. The alarmism is definitely overblown, but don't paint Google as a company with diverse revenue streams, because it's not.

Alexa and Google Home are mostly gimmicks at this point, they are by no means a threat to Google's core revenue stream. though, ad blockers are. But Google's biggest enemy is itself, because I think if Google goes the path they seem to be going in response to ad blockers, with Chrome's ad blocking, (blocking competitor ads, but not their own) the FTC could very well step in and destroy their momentum.

Re: How Google Could Collapse

#23

Post by skybrian »

JKCalhoun wrote: post #5

"Ads are cool as long as they are relevant to me," said no one ever (who wasn't in the business of selling online advertising). (EDIT: typo)

Game and movie trailers are ads. People not only don't mind them, they seek them out and share them.

(There do seem to be too many movie trailers these days before the movie starts, but I think we'd miss them if they were gone entirely.)

Re: How Google Could Collapse

#25

Post by obstinate »

panarky wrote: post #19

Summary: more people are blocking ads and starting product searches at Amazon, so Google will lose their core business. And yet, the growth of Google's core business isn't declining and it hasn't even leveled off -- growth is actually accelerating! Year-over-year revenues are growing faster now than they did last year. Same thing with earnings. And margins are expanding instead of shrinking. Source: https://abc.xyz/i…

People have been predicting the collapse of Google for years. Someday they'll be right and it will be looked upon as great foresight. Is this that time? Who knows. Really could replace Google with "x" and still be correct.

Re: How Google Could Collapse

#26

Post by soared »

It is obvious the author doesn't understand advertising. Honestly, skip this one. Here is a list of problems:

* OP is constantly misunderstanding the difference between search, shopping, display, native, and social.

* Unsubstantiated claim that youtube has 'insurmountable' problems

* Display ads having 0.06% is irrelevant - the goal isn't clicks

* Random claim that google lost a major portion of its audience already?

* "Google already missed its chance to pivot" with literally no explanation or justification at all.

* Alexa has clear monetization strategy, but google home doesn't?

This is a clickbait blog pretending to be a hit piece. Come on guy, you can do better than this.

Re: How Google Could Collapse

#27

Post by Markoff »

panarky wrote: post #19

Summary: more people are blocking ads and starting product searches at Amazon, so Google will lose their core business. And yet, the growth of Google's core business isn't declining and it hasn't even leveled off -- growth is actually accelerating! Year-over-year revenues are growing faster now than they did last year. Same thing with earnings. And margins are expanding instead of shrinking. Source: https://abc.xyz/i…

not sure about rest of Europe, but when I search for product I go to local price comparison website, which is much more popular than Amazon, since by my experience pretty much everything on Amazon is more expensive than in plenty of local shops, other option would be I guess Aliexpress if it's not rushing and doesn't have to be some specific brand

article seem to be as usual very US-centric, Google is huge in Europe, Amazon not so much. in China Google doesn't exist and Amazon has also only leftovers

can't say I would miss either of them, since pretty much only useful products from Google for me are search (easily replacable) and Photos (not that easy, but there are alternatives)

Re: How Google Could Collapse

#28

Post by empath75 »

mnm1 wrote: post #20

I find it hilarious that people think something like Alexa / Google Home is anything but a gimmicky ad, let alone the future of computing. Like other ad supported content--Gmail for example--it has some useful features. Also like other ad supported mechanisms of the past, it's a huge invasion of a user's privacy for little gain. When this thing is actually "smart" (whatever that means) enough to do something useful w…

I got a free dot at re:invent and we use it to check the weather and that's it. I've never ordered anything from it, and I don't see why I would.

Re: How Google Could Collapse

#30

Post by dragonwriter »

Markoff wrote: post #24

why is 35-44 years group least likely to use adblockers? looks odd to me compared to older groups https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1000/1*o6B3OtXfG9pqwRDru...

> why is 35-44 years group least likely to use adblockers? looks odd to me compared to older groups

Probably because the older group has progressively greater propensity to have other, younger people setting up their computers.

Post reply on HN