In this week’s episode Ben and James discuss Ben’s article “Peak Google” and the future of advertising.
Links
- Ben Thompson: Peak Google – Stratechery
- Benedict Evans: The Irrelevance of Microsoft – Ben-Evans.com
- Peter Kriss: The Value of Customer Experience, Quantified – Harvard Business Review
- Ben Thompson: Mobile Makes Facebook Just an App; That’s Great News – Stratechery
- Ben Thompson: I Love the Blackberry Passport (on Generic Strategies) – Stratechery (members-only)
- Ben Thompson: The Cord-Cutting Fantasy – Stratechery
Hosts
- Ben Thompson, @monkbent, Stratechery
- James Allworth, @jamesallworth, Harvard Business Review
Podcast Information
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The operative terms introduced here are “dwarfed” as in transcended, topped. “Eclipsed” is even better.
Now, about eclipsed not being disruption of a kind? Isn’t it, in fact, the purest form of disruption. The insurgent’s army simply bypasses the incumbent’s castle. Like the Wehrmacht bypassed the Maginot Line. Or like jets trumped tanks.
It is about entrenchment, isn’t it? We make commitments to certain behaviors, procedures, processes, services and necessarily our choices close the door on alternatives. Choices harrow alternatives, by definition. Isn’t it, then, silly to imagine we can avoid being eclipsed?
Or is it, maybe, how we understand our choice? If Apple, for instance, is committed to “the best computers for the rest of us,” then all the forms of computer it produces fit, from watch to Mac.
Isn’t mission is the quintessential issue?
Loved the google discussion and I really look forward to new posts every week.
While a point was made that Google (as a company) will be dwarfed, reasons were not discussed in very much detail as to why. Considering Google (as a company) is different then google as a search + ad product, what limits Google (as a company) in equally succeeding in the world of native advertising?
One point is “conflict” between owning content and owning search, (may be a weak parallel from Microsoft – owning OS and owning browser) that might lead to potential anti-trust issues. But how much search bias a native ad platform needs/can be leveraged at Google before running afoul of anti-trust is debatable.
Do you think that search business is really all that much conflicting with other content businesses? If so, why? What about Youtube?