[dstein]

The bottom line is this - if you were to place a bet (as in betting your career) on which company will be dominant 20 years from now and which will become yet another dying Internet fad, I'd bet in favor of Facebook. Absolutely everyone overestimates Google's chances of continuing to dominate forever.

[jerf]

Let's see, looking back at 1990... I'd bet on neither, but I sure wouldn't bet on the one far more easily replaced by a distributed secure system. Diaspora may seem like a joke now, but 20 years of development on Diaspora('s great grandchild)? Getting a standardized distributed social networking account will be like getting an email address is today.

[dstein]

If we compare whether Facebook or Google can be more easily replaced I could argue that Google has a higher chance of being replaced because some startup can come along and build a better search engine for less than 1% of what it cost Google. Whereas I don't see Diaspora really being much different than a Jabber protocol with social networking features. Jabber didn't kill any instant messager protocol, it just further fragmented the instant messager market, which is now dominated by Facebook because of it's critical mass.

You're forgetting that open standards can also threaten Google's entire business model. Semantic Web standards (and related technologies being worked on) will eventually make conventional search engines like Google completely obsolete.

[jerf]

Google is harder to replace because to replace Google, you actually have to replace Google. Develop their search bots, scale up your operation to their scales, sell ads in a market Google dominated, etc. Building a "better search engine" merely gets you a better search engine, you have to monetize it all the way to actually replace Google. This is intrinsically a multi-billion-dollar effort, competing with them the whole way. Distributed internet search has not been shown to be practical, I'm not sure it is even in theory.

Facebook on the other hand can be replaced with open standards and tons of little nodes everywhere. It isn't even all that hard, coordination is the biggest problem. (Or if you prefer, yeah, it's hard, but the original timeline was 20 years. It's not 20 years worth of hard. Again, think back to 1990. Consider the history of open source software since then. Creating distributed-Facebook is not harder than KDE or the Linux Kernel, each of which is only a vanishing fraction of the open source world's output in the last 20 years.)

Semantic Web standards will make Google obsolete? You haven't noticed them leading the charge to actually get these things out into the wild? The little tables of contents, phone numbers, etc in search results? And they're the best in the world, from what I can see, at semanticizing content that wasn't semantically labeled by the originator.

[dirtyaura]

You underestimate Google's own ability to take advantage of new web standards and technologies, and Google's inhouse skills of running huge data centers efficiently. In the pure search tasks, Google is likely going to be really good in the future too.

At one point, the serious future threat for Google was Facebook, because Facebook was a big walled garden, that Google couldn't crawl. If Facebook is the number one web page for a few hundred million people, businesses start to operate inside Facebook more on more, which would make Facebook a good starting point for your searches too, making Google the second choice.

Although other aspects of this scenario have happened, the search part hasn't, and it seems that Facebook has changed the strategy from walled garden to more open place, and try to become a critical infrastructure piece of the whole web with like buttons and instant personalization.

[stakent]

Google will be replaced but not by search engine like better Google.

There will something completely new, like visible now in mass personal computing shift from desktop (Windows) to mobile (it looks like the Android is next main OS).

The great question is what will push Google into oblivion.

[drewstock]

Seems like Google's continued ability to dominate will hinge upon whether web browsers remain the dominant mode of navigating the internet, right? Future could be a bit tricky for them, then...

More and more internet activity is taking place in 'closed-wall' communities like apps and Facebook that Google Search can't touch (and, hence, can't monetize) for the most part. This trend is gaining real traction as it seems well equipped to satisfy folks' demand for better, more relevant filters. The power of social networking to help build and refine such filters is pretty telling... just think about how much of your 'news' you get off your Twitter or Facebook feed.

Unless Google figures out a way to penetrate closed-wall communities (via strategic partnerships, licensing of some sort or whatever) or innovate some super useful product that brings in revenue on the scale of AdWords (GoogleMe?), we'll probably see a piecemeal dethroning happen.

This is probably one of several reasons why smart people are migrating from Google to Facebook.

[maw]

Do you really think so? Google handily passes the "actually does something useful" test. Facebook, not so much.

[tlack]

One way of looking at it: Facebook has changed the way people communicate and socialize with each other. I think in some ways that is more fundamental than what Google has done - change the way people search. Furthermore, Google has seemed to have trouble innovating in the past couple years, but Facebook has been accelerating the pace of its innovations.

[nostrademons]

FaceBook is 6 years old and has roughly 2000 employees. Google was 6 years old and had roughly 2000 employees in 2004. Does anyone remember what Google introduced in 2004 and early 2005, and how revolutionary they seemed at the time? GMail, Orkut, Local, Books, Scholar, Maps, and Code ring a bell?

There seems to be an inflection point in just about every major tech company's history. First they have to dominate their initial core market. Then they need to figure out how to make money off it. Then they can use the data gathered from their core, and the top-notch employees they hire with the money, to launch lots of innovative side projects. Then everybody starts taking their innovative products for granted, but they make so much money that management can't justify letting people work on further innovative side projects that will fail 90% of the time.

FaceBook is currently in stage 3. Google would be in stage 4, except that the founders still actively push through projects like Wave and Instant and self-driving cars. I predict that ten years from now, both companies will be in stage 4, and the new hotness will be some company that hasn't been started yet.

[tlack]

Ok, so does that mean you'd rather work at Google instead of Facebook? Right now, Facebook is doing stuff that is more interesting for programmers I suspect.

[nostrademons]

Considering that I do work for Google and have been contacted in the past by FaceBook recruiters - yes, I'd rather work for Google. FaceBook has some cool technology, but so does Google, and I'm more excited about Google's overall mission.

[waterlesscloud]

Facebook has about a million times stronger lock-in though.

Changing my primary search engine requires no effort at all on my point, and I lose practically nothing by doing so.

Gmail is probably Google's most-likely-to-last product.

[rmc]

Social Network sites have come and gone, e.g. MySpace, Bebo, etc. Lock-in to social network sites isn't so big a deal.

Also, people might want to change from Facebook, now that their employers and parents are on it.

[cabalamat]

> The bottom line is this - if you were to place a bet (as in betting your career) on which company will be dominant 20 years from now and which will become yet another dying Internet fad, I'd bet in favor of Facebook.

You statement is ambiguous; it doesn't say whether facebook will be the former or the latter. (my take is it could easily go either way).

[dstein]

Ugh, I hate arguing grammar.

Technically what I said was not ambiguous.

If you quote the first sentence alone, it could only be considered ambiguous if you consider "dying internet fad" as a favorable bet. My 2nd sentence confirms my intent.

[ct]

What more can Facebook do vs. Google? Seems there's more options at Google IMO. (I don't work at Google, but wish I did).

[mfukar]

Companies that will dominate 20 years from now won't exist for another 19 years, so..

[mahmud]

So it takes a year to go from zero to a position of global dominance?

[mfukar]

If that's all you got from that sentence, I'm terribly, terribly sorry.

[Radix]

That's also all I got. Maybe you weren't as clear as you believe and your sarcasm is misplaced.

[mahmud]

mfukar, I think you have been unjustly burried with the downvotes there, but I really wish you would come back with an explanation.

Did you mean that in 20 years, technology would progress so rapidly that change will be near instantaneous?

[mfukar]

I meant that even today, it's near impossible to predict the state of the economy next week, let alone in 20 years.

We're also talking about a completely different society, like most societies changed from the '60s to the '80s and so forth. Different needs, different priorities, different state of affairs in a global level.

Take Google, for instance. Google first offered a useful product on 1998. Turned a profit first in 2001 ($105 mil). Its IPO took place in 2004 ($23 bn, wasn't it?). Even if one were so dense as to deny the upcoming global dominance of Google (at least in online search) back in 2000, those timeframes are so off the 20 year mark it's not even funny.

And yes, of course I expect progress (regardless of scale) in the future to take place a lot faster. We've already seen trends spread overnight. Who says someone won't be able to capitalize on such internet behaviour? Even if I'm too irrelevant to tell, I seriously doubt there won't be someone in 20 years' time.

[mahmud]

Woah, I think I like you better when you're wordy and spell everything out.

Thanks for the exposition!