Monday, September 21, 2009

One Site To Rule Them All

I have been predicting the downfall of Google for a couple of years now. I thought at some point an independent auditor would prove that no one actually buys anything as a result of clicking on a Google Ad. Then the bubble would burst, investors would pull out. A new company would come up with a new model and all the free google aps would fade away.

Last week in St. Louis changed my mind. I had a work conference with our software vendor. They have teamed up with Google (.org) for a couple of product upgrades. A google engineer spoke during one of the morning meetings, and among other interesting facts revealed that Google works with the CDC because they can correctly predict disease outbreaks 6 days ahead of the medical community based on searches from the different areas.

Now I'm pretty sure that puts Google in the "too big to fail" category. And at least for the next 5 years, regardless of any actual revenue stream, people are going to be willing to dump money into the company. Even if it comes down to the Federal Government. Bailing out Google might be considered a necessary step for the public good.