Hacker News Reader

Comment by YmMot | Hacker News Reader

I agree for the most part that Google is not "fighting for it's life", though I think it has faltered a bit.

> people are not defecting away from search to use Facebook's search or Bing or whatever.

You are perhaps missing the point a little.

It doesn't matter what people are doing, it's what advertisers are doing. The fact that everyone still uses Google search won't be worth much if advertisers are only interested in putting ads on Facebook.... Google would be running an expensive, but popular, charity.

I don't think the day like that will come, but it is clear that Google's revenue can be threatened from things like Facebook which don't directly compete with their products.

View on HN

Yeah, absolutely.

I think iPhone vs. Android is a good analogy. Google is never going to kill Apple and Apple is never going to kill Google. Google provides a phone platform for two groups: people who want the cheapest smartphone, and people who want the most freedom to customize their phone. Apple provides a phone platform for people willing to spend a good amount of money on a phone that works perfectly without tweaking. Android will never satisfy John Gruber. Apple will never satisfy Jon Rockway. So there are two platforms and they happily coexist.

Google phones aren't very customizable by the users. They are customizable by carriers. Rooting is a pain and buggy, so that is no defense.

Heck, Google won't even let me remove Facebook and Twitter from my unlocked Nexus One!

I disagree, and in my opinion this is the exact logical flaw that has lead google down it's current path.

Facebook might become more profitable at some point, yes, but google's revenue was not threatened if they kept their spot as search engine and innovator.

Every time I hear concern that advertisers will suddenly throw all their money at Facebook instead of Google, I am reminded of my experiments at Facebook advertising and the 0.00[...]001% click-through rate I achieved after a few dozen attempts.

This notion is laughable. The notion that Facebook will look into the minds of my friends and determine the answers I am searching for is also laughable.

The fact is that the only ads I have ever (deliberately) clicked on IN MY LIFE are ads on Google, because they were the only ads that were 1) relevant and 2) timely. Facebook is nowhere near getting #1 and hasn't a chance in hell of getting #2.

Facebook ads are far more relevant to me than google ads. But then I'm quite free with my posts and likes on facebook. IE, I'm using it as they envision.

I've clicked many, many more ads on FB than I ever have on Google.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com