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Google IT Technology

Are Google's Best Days Behind It? 283

Posted by CmdrTaco from the aren't-they-always dept.
snydeq writes "InfoWorld's Neil McAllister questions whether slowing product development, legal woes, and rising bureaucracy will signal trying times ahead for Google. 'With Google's rapid growth have come new challenges. It faces intense competition in all of its major markets, even as it enters new ones. Its newer initiatives have often struggled to reach profitability. It must answer multiple ongoing legal challenges, to say nothing of antitrust probes in the United States and Europe. Privacy advocates accuse it of running roughshod over individual rights. As a result, it's becoming more cautious and risk-averse. But worst of all, as it grows ever larger and more cumbersome, it may be losing its appeal to the highly educated, impassioned workers that power its internal knowledge economy.'"
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Are Google's Best Days Behind It? More

Are Google's Best Days Behind It?

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  • I'm gonna go with... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by iRommel ( 1684036 ) on Monday August 08, 2011 @10:38AM (#37022006)
    No.

    • Re:I'm gonna go with... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by jellomizer ( 103300 ) on Monday August 08, 2011 @10:52AM (#37022258)

      The real question is to define best days.
      I remember looking back to when I was a Teenager. I remember all the good times I had, without any responsibilities weighing me down. However I remember being miserable (however looking back with my adult brain, I felt I should have been able to deal a lot better then I did at the time). Then College I remember fondly having a much better time then in high school, however I remember feeling far more isolated and lonely. Then as an adult, I don't have much time for all that good time and I am very busy and I don't really remember too much good times in a few years, and having a lot of things to worry about... however my emotional state is much more happier, and fulfilled then at any other point in my life.
      I kinda wish I could go back in time and relive my childhood and early adult years with my current brain and coping skills, Then I would really have ad a blast years ago.

      Now for Google... Starting out everything was new and exciting everyone was giving them praises, However they were more cash strapped and had to do a lot of scrounging and pushing to get every dollar in. Then they have a good flow and development was exciting however they had to make sure that they didn't make any major mistake or they would be toast. Now Google in maturing, It knows that it needs to do and has the money to do it. However a lot of the excitement and praises are going away as Google has become more predictable.

      • Re:I'm gonna go with... (Score:5, Insightful)

        by rtfa-troll ( 1340807 ) on Monday August 08, 2011 @11:15AM (#37022578)

        The real question is to define best days.

        I think the real question is: "who's paying for the continual stream of anti Google stories in the tech media; why are they so desperate; and do they really think we are that stupid"

        We have no idea whether Google's best days are behind it, but Google's main failure has been in social networking where it has finally released a product which, even though it is terribly incomplete, limited and difficult to get into, is considered by most people who've used it as much better than Facebook. The article is so desperate to discredit Google that it links to what seems to be an MS stooge review rather than actual information about sales [technologizer.com].

        • Google's main failure is that they haven't had a real big success after their search business.

          For 10 years, they've recruited the best minds in the industry, and still they haven't got much to show for except their large profits in search -- something that they developed when the company only had a few dozen people (what is the army of CS PhDs doing there?). Their search business is booming, largely because the business of selling online advertising has expanded at a crazy rate -- and that's where most of t

          • an..droid?

            • Re: (Score:3)

              by jimicus ( 737525 )

              Not to mention apps for business, which is growing at a rate of knots.

            • Google purchased from Android Inc., in 2005 and Android is based on Linux ker. I am not downplaying the additional feature set added and changed made to Android but it isn't something they cooked up in Google Labs.

          • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

            by kelemvor4 ( 1980226 )

            Google's main failure is that they haven't had a real big success after their search business.

            You don't consider the world's #1 smartphone OS to be a success? What do you want, every competing OS to be completely obliterated before it's successful? Gmail is pretty successful as I understand it, Maps is also successful.

            Like search, Google gives most of it's products away for free in order to feed their advertising engine. Since they're not making money DIRECTLY on the other products they might also get the benefit of being able to write off development and legal defense of other projects, too.

          • Gmail?
            Maps?

            It also seems disingenuous to claim that their search engine was developed ten years ago by a few dozen people. Their search engine is very different now to what it was ten years ago, probably because of the army of CS PhDs working on it. One frequently overlooked aspect is the several orders of magnitude increase in the size of the index - not many products scale up by that amount in their lifetime. The current search engine and the original are very different beasts. Google had to develop whole

        • Re:I'm gonna go with... (Score:4, Interesting)

          by Danzigism ( 881294 ) on Monday August 08, 2011 @11:58AM (#37023258)
          I agree with you. InfoWorld has composed a barrage [infoworld.com] of Anti-Google articles for years now mostly because of Microsoft's hands being in their back pocket. Sorry but I'm getting tired of hearing their same crap. Google is simply not going anywhere. Especially when on the other side of the spectrum, you hear news about 25 million people signing up for Google+ in the matter of just a couple weeks. AdWords alone will grow substantially thanks to G+.
          • It isn't only infoworld. The Register (URL:http://theregister.co.uk/) forums and articles have taken a extremely anti-google slant. At the same time, pro-apple and pro-msft comments and votes on comments have raised like crazy. All this after some stories on companies specializing on "reputation management", selling astroturfers and astroturfing campaigns. Here on /., some have been identified and shamed, but new accounts pop up all the time. Enough to make even a non-conspiracy adept suspicious...

        • Probably the same people that are paying for the pro-Apple stories.

        • We have no idea whether Google's best days are behind it, but Google's main failure has been in social networking where it has finally released a product which, even though it is terribly incomplete, limited and difficult to get into, is considered by most people who've used it as much better than Facebook.

          Err, you forgot about Google Wave. And Google Power. And Google Catalog. And Google Answers. And Google Coupons. And Google Checkout. Mind you, so did everyone else, which is why they are failures.

          Google has come out with more than just a great search engine - maps is really good, and gmail is wildly popular (although I suspect that's because of all the hype originally. I don't like it, but me by myself is merely an anecdote.) Even Google Docs, which I think is next to useless. But to claim their only failu

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by npsimons ( 32752 ) *

          I think the real question is: "who's paying for the continual stream of anti Google stories in the tech media; why are they so desperate; and do they really think we are that stupid"

          If I were a betting man, I'd wager that the answer to your first question would likely be Apple, Microsoft, Oracle, or all three. As for your second question, it should be obvious why they are so desperate. Unfortunately, the answer to your third question is that they don't care what *we* think - if they can convince enough end

        • I think the real question is: "who's paying for the continual stream of anti Google stories in the tech media; why are they so desperate; and do they really think we are that stupid"

          Agreed
          There is also a constant stream of anti Google comments in many forums and discussion boards i visit. And they seem to follow along the same mantra "Google falis to 'indemnify' its partners" "Google is stealing others 'Intellectual Property' and using it in Android" "Google stole Android from Apple because the origi

        • In fairness, Google brings this round of criticism on themselves with their whiny, self-righteous blog post.

          "Oracle, Apple, and Microsoft are evil and awful. Never mind the fact that we engage in the same business practices and do the same things they do - right down to bidding on the same sets of patents they outbid us for, and offered to let us join the consortium to buy. Ignore that. Continue viewing us as the embattled underdog, because that makes us more sympathetic."

          Imagine if Tim Cook posted a blo

          • Never mind the fact that we engage in the same business practices and do the same things they do - right down [...]

            But not including suing other companies. That may change, but until it does they are the underdog and should be supported in any battle with companies that consider suing the best way to compete.

  • Are Tech Journalism's Best Days Behind It? (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward

    That is the question.

    • No.

      There are morons who are banking everything based on what John C. Dvorak or whatever moron in InfoWeek or CompuTron monthly is publishing.

      In short, lazy stupid journalists will never die as long as those who are too lazy to be properly informed are willing to buy.

      That being said, Google's best behind them? Probably. Is Google going to crash like Yahoo or Altavista? No. God no.

  • Fun (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 08, 2011 @10:38AM (#37022022)

    When it stops being fun, it's all downhill.

  • Deja Vu All Over Again (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward

    This question comes up every year. This is just a typical shit-stirring piece, trying to round up pageviews and clickthroughs.

    If your article's headline is a question and the answer is "No", don't bother publishing it. It's like journalistic masturbation, you're doing a service to no one but yourself..

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by bonch ( 38532 ) *

      Until you can prove that the answer is, in fact, "no," your dismissal of the question is meaningless. Google is under a lot of fire these days. They haven't innovated in over 10 years; all there new products have been me-too follow-ups to competitors. Just because anonymous Google supporters on Slashdot don't want to hear any negative news doesn't mean there isn't something worth talking about.

      • They haven't innovated in over 10 years; all there new products have been me-too follow-ups to competitors.

        I should respond to someone who doesn't know the difference between "there" and "their"? But, anyway here goes...

        Google doesn't need to innovate that much anymore. With Google, the platform is simply the come-on. They expand the number of interrelated web services and market these to more people, they've expanded their [Ed.: Note proper usage of "their"] viewership and increased the amount they can ch

  • Long story short, (Score:5, Insightful)

    by redemtionboy ( 890616 ) on Monday August 08, 2011 @10:41AM (#37022054)
    No. People have been saying this about Google for the past 5+ years. The difference between Google and Microsoft is that Google has maintained the mindset of a startup. Things like 20% time will always insure that Google has a fresh set of ideas brewing and working their way up.

    • Re:Long story short, (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Frosty Piss ( 770223 ) * on Monday August 08, 2011 @11:04AM (#37022426)

      Its newer initiatives have often struggled to reach profitability.

      I know lots of people here like to parrot the nonsense that profit profit profit now now now is legally and ethically the sole objective of publicly traded corporations, but that's simply hogwash.

      And in Google's case, it isn't.

      There is no particular reason any particular "product" needs to be financially profitable for Google now now now in the way that these parrots are thinking. It's really better to think of many (most?) of Google's "products" as research projects, and remember that in many cases those "failed products" end up as parts or foundations for future products.

      It is exactly this profit profit profit now now now bullshit that is stifling innovation in the world today and in the US in particular.

      • Re:Long story short, (Score:4, Informative)

        by jalefkowit ( 101585 ) <jasonNO@SPAMjasonlefkowitz.com> on Monday August 08, 2011 @11:29AM (#37022786) Homepage

        It's really better to think of many (most?) of Google's "products" as research projects, and remember that in many cases those "failed products" end up as parts or foundations for future products...

        Google appears to disagree: under Larry Page's leadership, they have begun pulling back on the "throw lots of things against the wall and see which ones stick" strategy. [blogspot.com]

        • I think you're misreading the post. They're not winding down the skunkworks, they've just hit the point where they're in as many areas as they can comfortably manage right now and they'll be restricting most of the experimentation to those areas. That is until they've strengthened their positions.

          One of the reasons I don't own any Google stock is that the strategy they were using didn't seem to have any predictability nor did they seem to be worrying about future profits. It is good to experiment and keep o

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by bonch ( 38532 ) *

        I know lots of people here like to parrot the nonsense that profit profit profit now now now is legally and ethically the sole objective of publicly traded corporations, but that's simply hogwash.

        The sole objective of publicly traded corporations is whatever the stockholders want it to be.

      • I know lots of people here like to parrot the nonsense that profit profit profit now now now is legally and ethically the sole objective of publicly traded corporations, but that's simply hogwash.

        This doesn't hold with Las Vegas casinos, if you believe this animated anecdote from Derek Sivers [youtube.com]. I also thought that originally corporate charters were about protecting the public interest?

    • Those ideas have to get in front of users. Google Labs used to provide a way to do that, without the hurdle of a product launch. I worry about having it shut down.

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by bonch ( 38532 ) *

      They've maintained the mindset of a startup? Not according to what ex-Google employees have publicly blogged about.

      Let's be honest here. Slashdot is practically a hangout for Google fans and is on Google's side in nearly every story. Of course the comments are going to be full of "no" responses to the question. In reality, Google hasn't come out with an innovative product in 10 years. Everything since has been either a me-too endeavor chasing a competitor or some engineering pet project. They have become wh

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by tlhIngan ( 30335 )

        Let's be honest here. Slashdot is practically a hangout for Google fans and is on Google's side in nearly every story.

        [...]

        Because of the negative emotional connotation "Microsoft" has and the positive emotional connotation "Google" has, people here will refuse to see the similarity, but objectively

        I think it's just the infatuation cycle. I can recall similar things happening to Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Second Life and it's happening to Google now.

        People like company X because they do something cool, then 5

    • Re:Long story short, (Score:5, Insightful)

      by rabun_bike ( 905430 ) on Monday August 08, 2011 @01:26PM (#37024476)
      Actually the more fundamental difference is the Microsoft is a certified monopoly by US district court Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson. Aside from that, Microsoft derives the majority of its revenue from license fees of software and hardware products. The hardware products make up a tiny portion of that revenue. Google, on the other hand, derives something like 97% of their income from selling adverts. That makes then an advertising company. And if you parallel most advertising based firms with Google such as ABC, CBS, Turner Broadcasting, NewCorp, Viacom, etc. you will find that in order to sell advertisement you need shows or products to attract viewers which then drive advert sales. Some produce their own content such as CNN via news gathering and others buy it like ABC, CBC, and the main stations. In Google's case they produce their own shows but those shows have names like Gmail, Google Search Engine, Google+, iGoogle, etc. It is hard to have hit shows and Google needs hits to keep the advert dollars rolling in. The Google Search Engine is like the Simpsons. But even the Simpsons can't bring in all the money you need for your "station." They need other hit shows and they are having trouble coming up with them.

  • Best days for what? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Hatta ( 162192 ) on Monday August 08, 2011 @10:45AM (#37022138) Journal

    Best days as a search engine? Probably, yes. Best days as an advertising revenue machine? Probably not.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by yanyan ( 302849 )

      I find their search results annoying a lot of times. For example the engine would insist on a spelling that is different but apparently more well-known than what i typed. I remember in the past it used to search for the actual term and then suggest its alternate spelling. Another example would be when searching for phrases with spaces. Even if i quote the entire phrase the engine would return results with only some of the words in the phrase. Very frustrating.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Hatta ( 162192 )

        Yes, Google's default assumption that you didn't really mean to type what you typed is extremely annoying. I find that I have to revise most queries with "" and + before I get what I want. That didn't used to be the case.

        These days it's even common to get query results that contain none of the words in the query. What's up with that?!

        • And they've yet to get version numbers right. Granted the same is the case with everybody else, but I'd probably go back if they'd make searching for software with a particular version number a reasonable proposition.

          Granted there are ways to restrict the version number to appearing near the other term, but that's not a default. Granted historically that's how they got to be so fast, but if you're not doing a deeper investigation of the results you're going to force the user to look through results that the

  • It can't be said for sure (Score:5, Insightful)

    by erroneus ( 253617 ) on Monday August 08, 2011 @10:47AM (#37022166) Homepage

    At this stage in the game, it can't be said whether or not Google can turn things around, but it is quite certain that the direction of things at the moment is not the best for its users. Google has put out many useful services that many people use out there. (Personally, I just use search and though I do have a gmail account, I don't really use it...) But lately, Google has been tying things together with their services and now this Google+ thing really worries people.

    Perhaps the minds of the masses haven't been made yet, but I am always cautious when it comes to marketers and advertisers and Google is definitely one of those.

    I think this tying together of services is a way of locking in and firmly identifying its users. Their push against pseudonymity/anonymity has me and many others worried.

    • Perhaps the minds of the masses haven't been made yet, but I am always cautious when it comes to marketers and advertisers and Google is definitely one of those.

      Agreed.

      I think this tying together of services is a way of locking in and firmly identifying its users.

      Then you'll be happy to know that Google themselves discourages lockin [dataliberation.org].

      Their push against pseudonymity/anonymity has me and many others worried.

      I as well, but one of the amazing things about Google is that most of the time, when someone calls them

  • I have noticed on my home webserver that I have had a lot of spider traffic lately form the Baidu search engine, and very little from the googlebot. From my perspective it looks like the competition is ramping up its search engine database building...
  • And let him show a better place than google for tech employees at this moment. 'losing its appeal to tech workers' my ass.

    actually, what is behind is tech journalism's best days, apparently. since they started to making up arguments out of asses.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by npsimons ( 32752 ) *

      And let him show a better place than google for tech employees at this moment. 'losing its appeal to tech workers' my ass.

      Precisely. I wouldn't consider working for Apple or Microsoft, and it's not just because my experience is primarily with Linux. Google is the place to be for software guys, even if you're not staying there permanently. Everything I've seen and heard leads me to believe it's an incredible work environment, whether you are a code monkey or want to do research in computer science. Could the

  • And I remember when a major tech magazine had a cover touting Microsoft's NT server and saying "Unix is Dead". Actually, the magazine died first.

  • Really? (Score:2, Offtopic)

    by bmo ( 77928 )

    >It faces intense competition in all of its major markets,

    It does?

    There's Google, and then there's Bing, and Bing isn't eating any of Google's market share. Not in search and not in selling ads.

    Everything else may as well be Cuil.

    5 Cuils: You ask for a hamburger, I give you a hamburger. You raise it to your lips and take a bite. Your eye twitches involuntarily. Across the street a father of three falls down the stairs. You swallow and look down at the hamburger in your hands. I give you a hamburger. You

  • I switched to bing for most of my searches because it usually gets me links I want and not some local copy of the original article. I think Google searches are too localised and too much centered around my search history among other things. I'm always logged in as I have mail account with them and logging out and in to that to perform searches is a pain and not only that but it still localises the search results to bias for my country. Sometimes I want an outside opinion about what is going on. Google j

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Bengie ( 1121981 )

      Google should give the option to not use history to "enhance" search results. Based on your description, I could see how that could be useful.

      Personally, I do a lot of tech based searches, so my history is extremely useful.

  • The Infoworld story sounds like FUD (Score:3)

    by dtjohnson ( 102237 ) on Monday August 08, 2011 @11:05AM (#37022450)

    Honestly, the 'best days are behind it' kinds of stories about any company should automatically set off the FUD alarms unless they are based on specific events which support the point like dropping market share, declining revenues, product recalls, mass layoffs, etc. Yesterday, there were newspaper columns about how people are allegedly turning away from Apple MacBooks because they allegedly don't render fonts as well as Windows 7. Shame on slashdot for providing a platform for such a story. Google may be dying or its prospects may never have been brighter but the truth of it will never be known to us from reading stories which germinate in fud-infested soil.

  • ...Well, instead of giving us real news, say about what happened or what is likely to happen given current conditions, 'non news' makers go on the line and speculate with questions posing for real stories. I am tired of this.

    Please get us some real news. A lot is happening in the tech sector. What's wrong with that?

  • Meal Ticket Lottery. (Score:4, Insightful)

    by 140Mandak262Jamuna ( 970587 ) on Monday August 08, 2011 @11:15AM (#37022582) Journal
    The number of predictions made by these analysts, talking heads, policy wonks, think tank shills etc far exceed the actual number of companies. There is a constant stream of such predictions. At some point some one has to be right. Then the guy who won the lottery, i.e. the guy who predicted it exactly at the right moment, is going to beat his chest and make loud noises about how he got it right, when everyone else was wrong. The prize for winning that lottery is a life time supply of meal tickets. Essentially this guy will be invited to occupy one square in the talking heads matrix that is de regour (sp?) in the business news channels.

  • That's the only thing I worry about. As long as I have free space and the service is working, I do not even care about Google search.

  • ...it may be losing its appeal to the highly educated, impassioned workers that power its internal knowledge economy.

    I never understood the appeal to highly educated people; I mean, 1. they are an advertisement company 2. the software they create is hardly revolutionary, it's all office software; I don't want to bash anyone but imho the paperclip is at the same level on the revolutionarity scale; well yeah, it's "on the internet", but that is something we are used to by now.

    Why aren't these so called smart people not working in physics, or medicine? That would make more sense.

  • Another "Ohh no any company who stands against MS and Apple is doomed!" article. Please drop this sensationalist crap.

    Have Google acquired quite list of enemies during last two years? You bet. Do they struggle to fight them? Hardly. Yes, mobile patent war is going on with full power, but in fact they can't keep pressing on because soon courts will issue judgements and will invalidate patents. They work as long as Google feels threatened by them and therefore can be controlled. HTC doesn't back down, heck, t

  • The thing about Google is that 90%+ of its entire revenue comes from search. This isn't true of Microsoft, or even Apple, or Oracle. They have multiple lines that generate revenue.

    If Google loses 5% on search (not a lot) the blow to them is a LOT bigger than if MS loses on search, or Apple loses on iTunes. So as far as their best days being behind them, I'd say yes; but the same is true for MS and Apple, but in different respects.

    Google needs to innovate outside of search, but everything they do keeps comin

    • The thing about Google is that by the time most people (even those more technically minded like those here on slashdot) realize that it is in decline (actual decline, not just suffering a temporary setback) it will be, for all intents and purposes, finished as a viable company. Between now and when that happens, Google may be able to turn itself into a company that is more resilient than that, but right now, if Google loses its search engine dominance, it will fall apart rather quickly.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Jerry ( 6400 )

        If you think that Google is in decline you must be looking at that graph standing on your head! lol!

        • Where did I say anything about Google being in decline? I said that by the time most people would realize that Google was in decline it would be, for all intents and purposes, finished as a viable company. I do not claim to have any special knowledge about the state of Google as a company. What I said would apply to me as well, by the time I would be aware that Google was in decline, it would be essentially finished as a company.

  • Decline started years ago when they broke search (Score:3)

    by harl ( 84412 ) on Monday August 08, 2011 @11:36AM (#37022910)

    This started years ago when they broke search.

    You can't search for exact text. Quote marks are ignored. No + operator. Case is ignored. Special characters are ignored.

    This renders Google completely unusable at times.

    Try searching for . It returns a million useless hits and 265 maybe hits.

    The first result is an URL not a content match.

    Then results contains FILE:HARD. That's not what I searched for. That's a failure state.

    Then it starts giving results containing "file hard". That's not what I searched for. That's a failure state.

    Anything that does not exactly contain the string is not going to be applicable to my problem. There's just no way to tell Google that.

    They've completely thrown away usability in exchange for speed.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by harl ( 84412 )
      Bah It ate my error messages.

      Try searching for <FILEHARD>. It returns a million useless hits and 265 maybe hits.

  • One-trick pony (Score:3)

    by Animats ( 122034 ) on Monday August 08, 2011 @11:42AM (#37022986) Homepage

    Google remains #1 in search and incredibly profitable at it. Nothing else they've tried makes much money. This worries their management, because if someone with a broader product line (like Microsoft) gets any real traction in search, Google could be toast. (Consider what Microsoft did to the video game industry.) Google has no other revenue stream.

    That's not a bad place to be. Consider Oracle. They've been a database company for decades. Everything else they've tried to do, from video streaming to supercomputers, has been disappointing.

    Personally, I think that Google's biggest problem is that they're not focusing enough on the search engine and search quality, which is their cash cow. They've made some big mistakes in search since last October. The press on Google has been very critical. That's new for Google. Until late 2010, they received very little bad press.

    Most of their engineering talent is going into money-losing projects. What I hear is that the cool kids there want to work on mobile and social, not the big boring search engine. Page told his people that their bonus this year depends on how Google does in "social".

    The trouble with focusing on "social" is that Facebook is about a fifth the size of Google and has probably peaked. Ads on "social" systems are an annoyance, unlike search ads, which are sometimes useful. The only way for a social network to increase revenue is to become more ad-heavy. Myspace tried that. We know how that came out.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Bauguss ( 62171 )

      I think you have a short term memory.

      Every google search algorithm change has come with criticism by those who are negatively effected by it. I can't recall a change that didn't. In fact, as a web developer (but not an SEO person) I often find out there was a change from bad press.

      The thing is, bad press doesn't matter. Outside the technical community, no one notices these things. And as long as Google has great revenues, wall street won't give a rats ass either.

  • google is getting sloppy (Score:3, Insightful)

    by FudRucker ( 866063 ) on Monday August 08, 2011 @11:42AM (#37022994)
    content farms looking for "click-thru" revenue as p0wned google for quite some time now....

  • Some say the same about slashdot... (Score:3)

    by kaizendojo ( 956951 ) on Monday August 08, 2011 @11:50AM (#37023132)
    That the "news" here is all second sourced and second-hand, not the latest or the fastest, and that there are better sites to keep up on the tech/g**k side of the news.

    But then later in that same hour, I'll read something genuinely interesting that was missed by the main stream or read a take on a well tread story that I never considered, or read a reply that makes me laugh, choke or think...

    To paraphrase Twain, rumors of Google's best days behind it are greatly exaggerated. (And usually from the same people who tried to sell us derivatives...)

  • Google are doing just fine (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Flipao ( 903929 ) on Monday August 08, 2011 @11:55AM (#37023204)
    Android is growing massively, they lead in search and they've finally cracked social networking. Microsoft on the other hand are losing billions in both the search and mobile markets every single year. They've been so focused on Google they didn't notice Apple sneaking by and their OS business is far closer than most people realize to fading into irrelevancy over the next decade or so.

    People bring up software patents all the time but these only really apply in the US. They're screwed.

  • and they will be cast as the Evil Empire as Microsoft was.

  • No. (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Jerry ( 6400 ) on Monday August 08, 2011 @12:39PM (#37023816)

    These are coordinated attacks on Google by those whom Google is out competing on a level playing field.

    If marketing the best smartphone OS in the market to give them the #1 market share is evil then Microsoft is a pure saint, so soundly did the public reject Win Phone 7. If helping a company drive its 44% smartphone market share to less than 15% in one year is good competition then Microsoft is saintly indeed. I also noticed that it was that saintly company Microsoft that PR'd a lot about Google's "evil" in tracking wifi with geocordinates, but Microsoft published their own public website with the same information.

    And, please tell me you'd rather have Larry Ellison rather than Larry Page influencing your web experience. IF that were the case you'd be paying a micro payment for each search, with extra added for narrowing to specifics, and there wouldn't be any other search game in town. One only has to look at how he's trying to abuse Java to realize what would happen if he ends up winning against Google, which I doubt he will unless he buys off the judge.

    • And, please tell me you'd rather have Larry Ellison rather than Larry Page influencing your web experience

      I'd rather have several alternatives, some of them without the hunger for personal information that Google has, thank you ...

  • Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • The goodness of a company is pretty much measured in growth, and well they have ready taken over most of the internet.
    They simply cannot sustain the same growth rate as they are used to anymore because they are rapidly running out of places to grow into.

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