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by tom_rath 6193 days ago
Actually, the more you use Google's free services the more you cost them. It's the non-techies who are clicking their ads which are making money for Google so, for all their technical marvels, Google's revenue source(s) are pretty narrowly defined.

I can almost picture Steve Ballmer slapping his cheeks with a mocking "Oh, no! Google's dominating yet another money-sucking cost pit! Whatever shall we do?!?!" before bursting out in laughter.
2 comments
moe 6193 days ago
I think Ballmer stopped laughing at google sometime between them crawling out of their garage 10 years ago and them approaching MSFTs market cap today.
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tom_rath 6193 days ago
Until GOOG approaches MSFT's revenues, I don't think Microsoft will worry. If there's a 'war' between those two companies, Microsoft is probably handling it as one of attrition.

Google has one strong source of revenue (search advertising) and has been thrashing about for years in an attempt to build at least a second source without notable success.

Microsoft has many different sources of revenue and continues to build on each. To take out Google, all they have to do is have Bing, Yahoo and the rest patiently chip away at GOOG's search advertising dominance by a few percentage points each year and that revenue will dry up. Then, without that revenue, all of Google's vanity projects will collapse in a heap.

Google's many projects remind me of the Flying Lawnmower: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kNWfqVWC2KI

You can make anything fly if you have a strong enough engine shoving it and Google's engine is its search advertising revenue. Once that revenue decreases enough, their lawnmower will fall to earth, and Microsoft is surely happy to see them tack on new expensive doodads like YouTube and Chrome O/S to hurry that day forward.

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philwelch 6193 days ago
Somehow the anecdotes of Ballmer throwing chairs and threatening to "fucking kill" Google run counter to your speculation. Either Microsoft is getting worked up over a non-threat or Google is more dangerous than you think.
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req2 6193 days ago
Have you seen youtube comments? They probably are coming from the non-techies.
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tom_rath 6193 days ago
...and yet, populated with hordes of non-techies, Google still hasn't been able to move YouTube from substantial loss to minimal profit (even when the world was in the middle of a "Web 2.0" tech boom!).

Now that we're in a bust, what does that tell you about their future prospects?

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