>I don't think mobile search/advertising threatens web search - it's a new industry
I imagine someone in the buggy whip industry said that when cars started to hit the road. A more adept business mind would have probably try to adapt their business for the obvious future.
Mobile devices are getting more powerful and more usable. Google is a hundred-plus-billion dollar company built around search. The landscape of how people search is changing. Of course they need to pay very close attention to it, not for today but for tomorrow. Voice search on mobile devices is brilliant, as an aside.
>I think there's a difference between a threat to existing dominance and a threat to future opportunity.
Indeed, when you're a small company that's the general thought process. Google is a very large, very successful company. They don't want to be AOL or MySpace or Excite@Home. They want to continue to be successful by adapting to the world, and ensuring that the world adapts with them. Their Android initiative has no hope of ever making them any more than rounding figures on their balance sheet, but it does ensure that they remain engaged in search and mobile advertising.
It's interesting that you mentioned Microsoft because almost everything Microsoft does can be tracked back to concern about Windows and/or Office. Microsoft got into gaming not because they saw it as a lucrative opportunity (they've been pissing away billions on it), but because gaming and convergence represented a beachhead that could upset their domination of the home. It goes on and on and on.
I imagine someone in the buggy whip industry said that when cars started to hit the road. A more adept business mind would have probably try to adapt their business for the obvious future.
Mobile devices are getting more powerful and more usable. Google is a hundred-plus-billion dollar company built around search. The landscape of how people search is changing. Of course they need to pay very close attention to it, not for today but for tomorrow. Voice search on mobile devices is brilliant, as an aside.
>I think there's a difference between a threat to existing dominance and a threat to future opportunity.
Indeed, when you're a small company that's the general thought process. Google is a very large, very successful company. They don't want to be AOL or MySpace or Excite@Home. They want to continue to be successful by adapting to the world, and ensuring that the world adapts with them. Their Android initiative has no hope of ever making them any more than rounding figures on their balance sheet, but it does ensure that they remain engaged in search and mobile advertising.
It's interesting that you mentioned Microsoft because almost everything Microsoft does can be tracked back to concern about Windows and/or Office. Microsoft got into gaming not because they saw it as a lucrative opportunity (they've been pissing away billions on it), but because gaming and convergence represented a beachhead that could upset their domination of the home. It goes on and on and on.