[techdog]

I agree with much of what ianamartin said. Google is unlike most big companies in that it thinks 10 to 20 years out (but pays scant attention to short-term strategies). Their problem as I see it is not to have great products in 10 years but to build a bridge from here-and-now to the 10-year mark. Clearly, their ad model is fading in significance. Ad spends are shifting (rapidly) from classic PPC search ads to timeline ads (on FB, TWTR, Pinterest, and other "timeline providers") and "native" content ads. In the meantime, Google has suffered a lack of focus, spreading itself rather thinly over a large surface area of products and projects that haven't become big moneymakers. Its efforts in social media (Google+) have brought mixed success. With the decline of classic PPC search ads, the SEO value of Google+ has become moot. Google is attempting to compete with Amazon in cloud services but is unlikely to get further than "also-ran" status.

Over the short term, Google will remain profitable, but whether it can build a bridge to a future of driverless cars, etc., is less certain.

$0.02