It's funny, but i think i now know what will be Google's undoing.
It will be everywhere.
Consider that nearly every page on the internet has Google Ads on them. (Why not? You can make money off of them?) Still, that's not all. Google is pushing to have a presence in newspapers, magazines, malls, cars, phones, radio, television, and any other channel they can think of. While the initial efforts for these have failed, i'm quite certain that Google's pockets are deep enough and their motivation strong enough to eventually pull this off. Within five to ten years, i'd expect that for every ten ads you're exposed to, three of them will be from Google.
To quote Ron Popeil, "but wait, that's not all". People are creating huge billboards solely so that they can appear on Google Earth. Of course, considering that Google is also pushing into billboards, i fully expect the two to be merged as some future pharmaceutical company creates huge buzz by plotting various billboard buys in order to produce a huge, pixelled ad visible from high altitude. In some, very real essence, Google owns the planet.
Consider the amount of saturation people will have with that brand. Google, in a very real sense, will be inescapable. It won't be as prevalent as Starbucks, it'll be more so. Add in the fact that they are an advertising company (not a search engine) and folks might suddenly realize that turning over every facet of their personal lives may not be such a good idea.
Thing is, much like Starbucks, Google is showing no signs of stopping in it's quest to "organize the world's information" oh, and by the way, sell ads on it.
It's one thing to say you want to conquer the earth, it's a very different thing once it actually happens.
i honestly think that is Google's biggest challenge in the years ahead and probably what will lead to their eventual decline. Right now, they make most of their money because not enough folks have tin foil beanies and are doing things like blocking Google from collecting and collating their information. Personally, i don't give Google a lot of my information, so no, i don't really see a huge reason to use them. The ads i get are generally not highly relevant to my personal interests, they're not predictive, and they're no better than any other ad provider, and that's just jim-dandy to me. Frankly, i don't want ANY company to have that level of information about me, including the one i work for.
It's interesting to see how much personal information we're willing to give away. i wonder how many folks realize you can never get that information back?
