| Refreshing response from Sergey. The Guardian article made him come off very immature. The article brought to my mind a presentation Roger McNamee (Elevation Partners) has been circulating -"10 Hypothesis for Technology Investing." A number of the points in the presentation illustrate a challenging future for Google: - Index Search has peaked: Google's position of dominance on the web is fading, due largely in part to their own success. - Apple's App Model Threatens the World Wide Web: a walled garden, un-indexable - Rise of Social. Facebook owns. Again, a walled garden, un-indexable - Lack of searches on mobile Similar arguments were made in Wired's "The Web is Dead" feature, and they all point towards Google's core business going downhill. The Guardian article made Sergey seem... well... butthurt. As if recognizing his lousy position, but instead of owning it, whining about it. I've always thought of Sergey as smarter than that. He's always seemed much more pragmatic than The Guardian article made him out to be. It didn't feel like the Sergey I [don't actually] know. Certainly Sergey has gripes with Apple and Facebook, and certainly he has self-preserving motivations for responding as he did. But I feel like giving him more of the benefit of the doubt here and calling slight nanz on The Guardian for rabble-rousing as press outlets do. Also - kudos to Sergey for his extremely diplomatic clarification there. We've all seen much less tactful responses to press spins. 10 Hypothesis Slides: http://read.bi/GMHoYQ 10 Hypothesis Video: http://bit.ly/w0qpeh |
I agree with almost all his points, insiders are very bullish on Apple, the feeling's that %600 is nowhere near the peak, it'll be more like $1K. On the other hand, Google has started to give off the "has-peaked" vibe: the silly badmouthing of rivals, huge reorgs, half-thought out failed projects, not being clear of where to go next and milking the usual cow, etc.
One important point that he makes that I think is important to reiterate is how open the mobile area is, since non of the big guys currently have good extensions. So I think we'll see more of the Instagram-type successes (probably not on the $1B level, though).
Takeaways if you're an up and coming, young (or otherwise) developer: Learn the Apple stack (70% of your time) and learn HTML5/JS (20%).