[psychoknk]

Google is today what AOL was in the 90's. So take heart, like AOL, they won't last.

Can I call you on that in ten years? Google has a different market than AOL; AOL was a service provider for dial-up. It was just a matter of time before dial-up went extinct, and AOL did not diversify into broadband (they just "piggybacked" other broadband suppliers, charging $5 a month extra for their software). Google, on the other hand, has something that probably won't go extinct: a search engine. Theirs is the dominant search engine, and I don't see that changing. In addition, Google is branching out. Some of those branches are probably dead ends, but many of them are and will be successful. Google is here to stay, like it or not.

[CountryBumpkin]

Google, on the other hand, has something that probably won't go extinct: a search engine. Theirs is the dominant search engine, and I don't see that changing.

I take an entirely different view. It was not all that long ago when Google did not exist and the top search engines were the likes of AltaVista, Lycos, Yahoo, and Excite (with significant minority showings from players like Northern Light and Dogpile). Google eventually came along, introduced some revolutionary advancements, especially in terms of income-generating search engine "results" for Google and its customers, and quickly became dominant. Now Google is getting arrogant, possibly too big for itself, and unashamedly leaning hard left. Google is quickly becoming the new monolithic "Microsoft" that every tech savvy person wants to hate. Consequently, a golden opportunity is developing for one or more new players with something fresh to offer. Many years ago, most people assumed IBM would forever dominate the home computer market. More recently, most people assumed AOL would forever dominate the internet. All of those people were completely wrong. Google may very well continue in those footsteps, for the simple reason that the U.S. free market economy fosters extremely intense and often cutthroat competition, competition that often succeeds (especially in David and Goliath scenarios).