[gregshap]

But the parent didn't say they can't go down, just that they won't implode within a decade of today. If IBM, Microsoft, or Cisco are dying it's a multi decade process. The dot-com companies that imploded 15 years ago were mostly losing money from day one.

[patrickk]

Perhaps it would be more accurate to say they are now longer relevant in the sense they are not at the cutting edge. IBM like you mentioned is a good example. They earn billions still, and will for the foreseeable future, but they're hardly technological pioneers.

[WWKong]

Do they have to be? No glory in being a multi-billion successful business?

[ethanbond]

Fair enough. I'm perhaps overly cynical when I see this much optimism.

[adventured]

Optimism? It's simple extrapolation and a quick historical reference on how equivalently massive companies hold up over the near-term (5-10 years). I wasn't offering up an optimistic scenario.

In just three years they'll very likely hit $13 to $15 billion in annual profit or so (it'll be $8.5 to $9 billion in the next 4 quarters alone), and have $50+ billion in cash. What is inbound in the next three years that will hammer down upon a network carrying 1.7 billion users, that is still expanding and has no presently known threat to it, while possessing such extreme financial resources?

Absolutely nothing, that's what. No threat other than perhaps Snapchat could get enough scale in that time to be listed as a potential threat to them in the next three years.

Five years: $70 billion in cash, conservatively. $16 to $20 billion in annual profit, assuming a significant slowdown in their ad growth.

Then from the 5 to 10 year span, what's going to come flying in that is going to steal their $70 to $100 billion in cash? Or make their business disappear in just a few years. I can't name any other example of such a wild outcome happening, outside of maybe AOL, and they never had the financial muscle or scale that Facebook already commands.

[joosters]

It's simple extrapolation

That's the problem though. There's a good reason why just about every financial prospectus includes the phrase "Past performance is no guarantee of future results".

Then from the 5 to 10 year span, what's going to come flying in that is going to steal their $70 to $100 billion in cash?

Why are you so confident that you can predict everything that might happen in the next 5 to 10 years?

[nl]

Why are you so confident that you can predict everything that might happen in the next 5 to 10 years?

The conservative, baseline prediction is generally "things tomorrow will be the same as today". Even if you stop their revenue growth (and there doesn't seem any good reason to think that is happening) then the parent's predictions are still basically true.

For the opposite to be true, FB doesn't just need to stop growing, it needs to shrink, and shrink very very quickly.

Can you think of a possible way Facebook could lose all their traffic in that 5 year timespan? All of FB, WhatsApp and Instagram disappearing all at once?

[joosters]

The conservative, baseline prediction is generally "things tomorrow will be the same as today"

Note that this line of thinking means that you'd never predict the rise of exceptional giants like Google & Facebook in the first place. If your line of thinking can't entertain the creation of these companies, it's unlikely to be any good at predicting their fall either.

Can you think of a possible way Facebook could lose all their traffic in that 5 year timespan?

My point is that since we can't imagine all the possible things that can or will happen in the next 5 years, the fact that we can't think of a possible way Facebook could lose all their traffic becomes meaningless and useless as a reliable source of predictions.

[bduerst]

> what's going to come flying in that is going to steal their $70 to $100 billion in cash?

Snapchat's growing revenue streams and social competition for eyeballs. Geo filters are growing quite fast.

[ethanbond]

I mean that I took a cynical read e.g. skimmed that you were specifically talking about the near term.