https://marco.org/2008/10/08/rhodyram-in-response-to-googles-stock-woes-is
rhodyram in response to Google’s stock woes:
is anyone really worried for Google? I mean really?
Google’s not as infallible as tech geeks like to think. They don’t have significantly diverse revenue — it’s mostly online ads. If the online ad market crashes and prices plummet (this has happened before), Google loses a lot of their income.
Some of their side projects have been relatively successful (Gmail, Maps, Docs, Reader), but they still depend on a healthy web-ad market. The majority of their side projects haven’t been worth the trouble or haven’t brought significant revenue (Pages, Checkout, Code, Chat, App Engine, OAuth, OpenSocial, and a million others that we’ve forgotten about — I bet we’ll be adding Android to this list next year). Their famous “20% time” really hasn’t produced much of any profitable significance.
Many of their talented people have left to form startups. And Google still hasn’t figured out how to effectively manage such large quantities of very smart but often less-useful people — many of the people who pass their ridiculous hiring process.
They seem to have no strategic direction. Their product releases are all over the place.
They’re not going out of business tomorrow, but they’re certainly not impervious to problems in the market or internally.