Yet More Google Gazing

povvell writes "Bob Cringely has joined the club and just set out his personal vision for the future of Google now that it's flush with cash, thereby joining a happy band of Google gazers. But is he right, and are they? My own guess is that the company intends to become the biggest advertising platform in the world. What's yours?"

Re:Microsoft buyout

[astrotek]

no they can't or at least its not very likely

Movement Beyond Internet and Market Cap

[artlu]

Google's adsense technology will ultimately grow outside of the Internet realm and include instant advertising during movies, tv shows, billboards, etc. Imagine that you are watching a movie on NBC without commercials, but whenever someone says the word "soda" an ad streams across for Coke/Pepsi. Maybe Google will grow into that realm of advertising.

Second, as reported on my website [groupshares.com] Google's stock price is still fairly attractive from a P/E basis. If Google stays on track to grow for the rest of the year, Google should be valued more than Yahoo, which could mean the stock should still be attractive above $100.

Just my thoughts,
Aj

Business messaging and search

[CdBee]

Google's biggest assets above its staff, are its name and reputation for solid, advanced technology effectively implemented. I figure they could move into any web-based application field but expect that it will begin with licensing out search technology for company intranets (already available from them actually) and instant messaging/conference software. (Jabber?)

Biggest Ad-Platform

[Anonymous Coward]

I think you're on to something. Google's googlesyndication.com has already found its way into my list of blocked domains, right next to doubleclick.net. I wish they kept their tracking to their own site. When Doubleclick set cookies through their banners on third party sites, people were up in arms. Google apparently gets away with collecting data from webhits on third party sites, personally identifying information from GMail and Google Groups, social networking information from Orkut and of course their search engine. Let's hope that people stop being blinded by cuteness now that Google is a multi-billion dollar corporation.

Distributed google

[taylor]

As Cringley points out, the possibilities for google are extremely broad, but limited nonetheless by the necessity of playing to the "technology" strength of google management and employees. Presumably the 20% project time (i.e. where employees develop pet projects) will help in the short term and long term. The bazaar model may work, but in terms of making money off of technology, they need to expand their bazaar thinking beyond just new technology, into market creation and the like. Otherwise all that creative R&D time is lost in a sea, like many sourceforge projects. Presumably they allow _all_ their employees the 20% time, not just engineers, in which case this works.

Only vaguely relatedly, it seems that utilization of their distributed computing expertise and power (as per previous slashdot discussions) is an immediate area they can capitalize on. I wonder what a google-backbone based MMORG (with _ultimate bandwidth power_) would be like?

Why not just ask Google?

[GillBates0]

The future of Google" [google.com]

Wired 12.03: The Complete Guide to Googlemania! [wired.com]
... The Complete Guide to Googlemania! (continued). 4 Scenarios for the Future of Google Sometimes a liquidity event changes everything. By Tom McNichol. ...

GooOS, the Google Operating System (kottke.org) [kottke.org]
GooOS, the Google Operating System. He argues that Google is building a huge computer with a custom operating system that everyone on earth can have an account on. His last few paragraphs are so much more perceptive than anything that's been written about Google

Personalized Results: Exploring The Future Of Google ... Personalized Results: Exploring The Future Of Google. [webmasterworld.com]
msgraph Moderator view user profile joined-Nov 29, 2000 posts:1330 msg #:1, 7:29 pm on Feb 12, 2002 (utc 0). ...

MacMinute: The future of Google and Web searching? [macminute.com]
* WWDC 2004: Discover how to put Mac OS X to work for you at WWDC! *. The future of Google and Web searching? March 31, 2004 - 07 ... www.macminute.com/2004/03/31/google - 29k -

Google's demise will go as follows:

[Anonymous Coward]

As with all young companies that go IPO Google's course will go as follows:

1. All founders and current top executives will cash out and leave within the first year. Right now they are dizzy with possibilities and future ideas for the company but that will quickly fade to watching the stock ticker, taking long lunches, shopping for real estate, and counting the days to when they can legally cash out and leave.

2. Within 8 months new executives will be hired to take over when the founders and top executives jump out.

3. The new executives are have long resumes, short contracts, short attention spans, big dumb ideas, insane salaries, and lots of stock options. They will announce "a bold new vision" several times and sell out the company for all it's worth.

4. After 3 years and various layoffs the second generation management cashes out and jumps ship.

5. The third generation management comes onboard with a round of layoffs and useless new hires and looks at what else can be sold off. They change the name of the company and start shopping around for buyers to sell the whole company too.

Re:Microsoft buyout

[turambar386]

You're forgetting that buyouts are not the MSFT way. Sure, they bought Hotmail, but they prefer to bury their enemies rather than buy them.

Eric Schmidt.... hmm, where have I heard that name

[sphealey]

From the Cringley piece:

Remember, Google's CEO is Eric Schmidt, who used to be Chief Scientist at Sun Microsystems, so technology doesn't scare these guys.

I like the leaving out of the part where Schmidt was CEO of Novell, failed entirely to figure out a strategy to counter Microsoft, and ran one of the world's great technology companies into the groud. Nope, nothing important there.

sPh

Re:Microsoft buyout

[Anonymous Coward]

Sybase and Symantec [kpcb.com] as well.

Re:Attitude

[adamh526]

And for a company that's historically been very secretive, how will that play out in the publicly listed world?

Google may be much different, but I'd say secrecy has worked out pretty well for Apple.

What does google really do?

[mveloso]

Is google an advertising channel or a search engine? Right now the advertising channel only exists because of the search engine, and the channel is what's making them money.

How does google make its advertising independent of its search?

How do you broaden search to make it more useful?

What kinds of things are people searching for?

What's happening to their enterprise search business?

When businesses want information, how do they get it?

I'd expect them to buy doubleclick as their first acquisition.

Amusement park

[liryon]

I think google should use the money to build their own theme park. With hookers! And blackjack! In fact, forget the theme park!

Re:Google Conquers Online Advertising

[Toresica]

As long as google can remain my friend, I hope they do take over all of online advertising. Adds that arent' hideous in some way and actually advertise things I'm interested in will, in my eyes, revolutanize the online world.

The key to that is "a long as Google can remain my friend".

Little useful text links are great, and actually get seen by people like me who only load images for the originating web site. :p

But watch out for how much trust you put in them, how do you know they won't start doing popups etc?

Stem Cell?

[MindStalker]

"Google's strengths are its technology, its brand recognition, its current status as a stem cell of Internet business"

Wow, first use of stem cell as a metaphor.

Re:Microsoft buyout

[maxchaote]

Because the stock comes with no voting rights. It is in my opinion much like the queen of England: worth the price only for its symbolic qualities.

Re:i hope

[gordgekko]

This was also part of the reason why Yahoo! was also so successful. They too had a clean front page, quality service and two founders who augmented their schooling and created a nifty search (well, directory) tool. Then they chased the cash and we all know what happened to Yahoo! after that.

I'm not saying that Google is going to pull a Yahoo! but if there's anything I've learned in life is that history repeats itself.