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Ask HN: What's the worst thing that could happen to Google?

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Re: Ask HN: What's the worst thing that could happen to Google?

#21
post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

True, that would really hurt them. I can't even immediately come up with any reason why they couldn't do that, ad blockers are a very legit piece of software after all. Given how much sense this makes, what's been stopping MS from doing it so far?

Ad blockers create an unlicensed derivative work of the copyrighted works that are received, and they could likely be sued for that.

Fair use.

Re: Ask HN: What's the worst thing that could happen to Google?

#22
I don't think there's any one silver bullet that's going to take them by surprise. For search I think the biggest danger is not being able to keep up with spammers and tricksters. People may not abandon Google search but it would make their advertising platform far less appealing and open the door to competitors. For everything else there's the privacy & reliability concerns. A few big high profile privacy breaches, some frequent outages, or any hint of corruption in how Google handles personal data would take their toll.

Purely on competition I think Google Docs is a weak spot. IMO it's pretty bad and has not been improving. Microsoft's Office Online looks pretty good. As inept as Microsoft is it would be unwise for Google to let them get a foot in the door. They might end up regretting the years they decided not to make any significant improvements to Google Docs.

Re: Ask HN: What's the worst thing that could happen to Google?

#23
post #4

I don't think advertising is going to be able to sustain Google indefinitely. As more tech-savvy users get on the web, their tolerance for advertisements will dwindle, along with advertisers' return. Google probably knows this, which is why they've moved into other markets like Android and Google's office tools. As far as search goes, I think they're either going to be king forever as we know it, or a 'better' search…

Dark fiber is great for peering but it's the last mile that costs real money. Even Google doesn't have enough money to pull it off on a really large scale.

Re: Ask HN: What's the worst thing that could happen to Google?

#24
post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

True, that would really hurt them. I can't even immediately come up with any reason why they couldn't do that, ad blockers are a very legit piece of software after all. Given how much sense this makes, what's been stopping MS from doing it so far?

Ad blockers create an unlicensed derivative work of the copyrighted works that are received, and they could likely be sued for that.

No, they don't.

Re: Ask HN: What's the worst thing that could happen to Google?

#25
Commoditization of search: at some point people will stop caring whose servers stand behind that little search box in the top right corner and whoever controls user experience will just pick the best provider out of many, driving down search profit margins.

This is why Google wants their own browser, this is why they want to control cell phones and other mobile devices.

Re: Ask HN: What's the worst thing that could happen to Google?

#27
The Semantic Web blossoms beyond the need to infer meaning from bodies of text. If the information on the web becomes more structured, structured beyond the need for Google.

If web pages and web services were to all completely expose their information as RDF and embed rich metadata inside bodies of text the need for Google's fancy AI and Entity extraction would be none.

Google's bread and butter is advertising. That advertising is driven from their search domination - their ability to extract meaning from web pages and match that meaning up to searched terms. Semantic web completely commoditizes that function - if you can crawl, you can search.

Re: Ask HN: What's the worst thing that could happen to Google?

#28
A scandal related to personal data large enough to spook your average consumer. We're talking serious stuff, like records being sold to criminals or given to the government without a warrant. The only thing that could cause a user to get over the large cost of migration is a massive breach of trust.

It doesn't even have to be related to search. A scandal involving Gmail or Google Voice would have a large impact on search.

Re: Ask HN: What's the worst thing that could happen to Google?

#29
post #2

How about Microsoft including an ad blocker in the next Windows Update.

There must be some contractual or legal reason for them not to. Otherwise, they'd have done it a while ago, to try to "kill" the web as a platform.

That said, yeah, this would hurt Google bad if it somehow happened.

Re: Ask HN: What's the worst thing that could happen to Google?

#30
post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

True, that would really hurt them. I can't even immediately come up with any reason why they couldn't do that, ad blockers are a very legit piece of software after all. Given how much sense this makes, what's been stopping MS from doing it so far?

Ad blockers create an unlicensed derivative work of the copyrighted works that are received, and they could likely be sued for that.

Plagiarism checkers that store copies of whole essays are considered fair use, so I doubt ad blockers violate copyright law.
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