What I am trying to say is that Google won in a blue ocean of internet advertising. Internet advertising didn't exist at one time and in it Google prospered.
Same thing happened with IBM, there weren't computers in corporations before them. There weren't computers in homes before Microsoft. There wasn't a computer in /every/ home before Dell.
Now there are several blue ocean opportunities being created. Cloud Computing is bringing scalability to the masses. Essentially we are looking at what Microsoft and Dell did for PC proliferation, cloud computing could do for web based information management. Mom and pops can use the same quality software that the Fortune 500 use. They can be efficient. We are going to see a rising and thriving of small businesses because now they to can have the same tools that the big companies have. Big companies spend millions and millions of dollars on software every year and throw it away. When small businesses can spend $50/mo for the same functionality, a new playing field will open.
The mobile market could reach every human alive via wireless. We have netbooks selling like crazy. The workforce is becoming more mobile as well.
Things are changing very quickly and there are lots of opportunities for the next google. The Google of the era when consumers become willing to pay for content and services on the web. We see great things in offerings in the SaaS market for example that consumers are willing to pay for.
Google makes money on tiny fractions of huge volume. There are huge markets out there where each click, each page view, each morsel of information is much more valuable to the customer.
Think about it this way, Google gets its money from advertisers, not consumers. So Google profits indirectly through the attraction of customers to the advertisers sites.
Today, there are more sites that are able to make money directly from the consumer, so the numbers are way way less than google's and the google model is getting gamed. It's not free to do SEO compatibility and keep content fresh and all that. Adwords aren't so great anymore. Too expensive and no one clicks... Just like social sites are great in the beginning, those who mastered SEO in the beginning won, but it's not so great anymore for newcomers. Their algorithms like old sites that have been around for a while, so newcomers are looking for other ways to build organic traffic.
There's a lot of room for another google and I suspect that as time continues, the rate at which new google's appear will become more frequent as technology become ubiquitous, smaller, and easier to use.
Companies are going to make a lot of money doing things we can't even imagine right now.
Shoot, this is the first president that uses email... We can live and work anywhere. We can hire anyone anywhere. Borders are coming down. I could move to Eastern Europe, Asia, Australia, South or Central America, or any number of places and have a way more fantastic life than I could afford in the U.S. and work entirely on the internet. Why wouldn't I do that?
There are plenty of Twenty and Thirty somethings that would do just that, gladly and in a heart beat and they will.
If you boil it down, Google isn't an internet company. They don't have scale because everyone at google still goes into the office. They don't work on their own schedule. They are bureaucratic. They are becoming a code shop.
The Google model is dead. The please the investors model is dead. The focus on the customer is alive and thriving and prospering.
There are countless companies out there who are making way more money in revenues than it costs to run their businesses. Google isn't one of those businesses and the way they make money... I don't know how long it can live.
For companies to survive, they have to have something their users are willing to pay for. I highly doubt any of google's users would pay for google. Live search is fine, Cuil is good. Yahoo isn't half bad, in fact I like what a lot of Google's competition is doing in search, maps, images, etc.
If Google topples, so will an entire ecosystem of consultants, programmers, designers, and startups that make money there. They'll be looking for something new and something new will be created to satisfy them and those who follow them to new oceans of opportunity.
