Secondo Ben Thompson, Google potrebbe aver raggiunto l’apice del proprio successo. Nonostante sia ancora dominante in diversi settori (e lo resterà, come la ricerca), circa il 90% dei suoi profitti vengono tuttora dalla pubblicità che si trova sulle pagine dei risultati del suo motore di ricerca.
Google cattura $45 miliardi di un mercato che ne vale $550, e che sempre più si sta spostando online. La stessa pubblicità online sta cambiando — sia a causa degli smartphone sia a causa dei social network, entrambi settori in cui la posizione “dominante” di Google non è da dare per scontata.
Ne ha scritto Farhad Manjoo:
“The movement of brand advertising into digital will probably not be winner-take-all, like it was in search,” said Ari Paparo, a former advertising product director at Google who is now the chief executive of an ad technology company called Beeswax. “And if it were to be winner-takes-all, it’s much more likely to be Facebook that takes all than it would be Google.”
That spending, on projects like a self-driving car, Google Glass, fiber-optic lines in American cities and even space exploration, generates plenty of buzz for the company.
But the far-out projects remind Mr. Thompson of Microsoft, which has also invested heavily in research and development, and has seen little return on its investments.
“To me the Microsoft comparison can’t be more clear,” he said. “This is the price of being so successful — what you’re seeing is that when a company becomes dominant, its dominance precludes it from dominating the next thing. It’s almost like a natural law of business.”