Ballmer Was Right: Google a One Trick Pony
June 4, 2016
Years ago Steve Ballmer allegedly said that Google was a one trick pony. In my Google Legacy (2004), I identified potential revenue streams for the Web search system. As time unspooled, my nifty diagram became less and less relevant. The early promise of diversified revenue at Google faded. Google, now the Alphabet thing, could not find a substantive stream of non search revenue. I was wrong about the Google. Ballmer, it seems, was spot on in his assessment.
I read “Advertising Will Always Dominate Google Despite New Tech Expansion, Says Ex CEO Eric Schmidt.” I learned:
…despite the exponential growth of these new tech formats, the money still lies, and will always lie, in advertising. This was the opinion of Google’s former chief executive Eric Schmidt, appearing just a week after the I/O conference at the Startup Fest Europe conference on May 24, to tell audiences that Google’s revenue stream is never likely to change.
Here’s the allegedly accurate statement I highlighted:
I have been at Google and Alphabet for 15 years and it has always been advertising and I suspect it will always be advertising, because advertising is such a large part of the global phenomena, and because our advertising is more accurate as a return on investment.
What does this mean for the moon shots? What about the myriad efforts to create an alternative to Facebook? Doomed from the start, perhaps?
Stephen E Arnold, June 4, 2016
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