[yuhong]

>The key being that all of the knobs that Google has at its disposal will eventually be turned to their maximum point

I wonder what this would exactly look like. As a side note, I wonder what would happen if for example an economic collapse happened and Google's ad revenue was significantly reduced.

[ChuckMcM]

I see early signs of knobs at the extreme in the news, harder to get projects approved, people being told they can't do 20% projects any more, groups losing people that don't get replaced, web properties that are hard to monetize (I'm looking at you finance.google.com) getting starved.

I would expect that once a quarter there is a meeting which goes like this, "Ok folks our profit margin is going to be 22% and our revenue is $xxx. That leave $yy in expense we have to get rid off or revenue we have to develop. Who wants to go first?" We've seen both efforts on the outside, more adds on search pages, pay to be in the 'Google Shopping' bar, Etc. for revenue enhancement, and cancelling things like Reader, Wallet, Glass, and other projects or ideas that haven't added to the bottom line. You can see the moves in Youtube (the latest being you can't keep a video running in the background tab unless you have "Youtube Red" as an example) to either get profitable or die.

As for cash flow? I can tell you that I was there when the Mortgage Crisis hit and it scared the crap out of them. That crisis killed TechStops[1] and that did way more damage than the financial crisis did.

[1] Techstops were Google's tech help on demand group that, when they were employees, was a really awesome service. When it got switched to a vendor it really lost its utility.