“Is Search the Best User Interface for Mobile?” …I say YES!
Search is the new “distribution” in the ongoing battle for value between content and distribution. As content development proliferates and becomes theoretically available across multiple UIs, the only real way for consumers to find it is through search.
Long term, search (particularly good, relevant search) gets more valuable…as does (and always will) really good content (or at least good content that doesn’t cost too much to produce relative to the size and engagement of its audience).
If don’t buy this — go get an iPhone and ask yourself how much more searching you do than you did before when the carriers laid out your content choices on the front screen.
Check out TechCrunch post about Google’s patent addressing an “open wireless world” — a world where user’s would tap in to wireless access on a metered basis (the diagram below is great!).
Use case: Bob jumps on iPhone in morning via AT&T 3G Network, hops on Verizon’s Network via laptop on the bus to work and then his company’s wi-fi network at the office. At each point along the way Bob has ability to choose from multiple networks or “dumb pipes” (TC’s words, not mine). Obviously this is a few (several?) years off — the carriers and ISPs have way too much invested to be turned in to commodity bit providers.
But, this is where it’s going — in fact this is where everything is going: all Auctions, all the time. Think about online advertising — the race is on to create the uber ad network exchange which would connect advertisers directly to publishers in a real-time auctioning of ad inventory.
Guess the drill will be to become the scarce Auction item — the one that will warrant multiple bidders and therefore prices that go up, not down.
Google grows Q2 revenue almost 40% YOY and adds almost a dollar per share…and the stock gets slammed.
Alley Insider has an interesting piece handicapping where the share price will be in the next year – one analyst believes $1,000 is a fair value for GOOG. Of course that assumes 30% revenue growth and implies an earnings multiple of like 60X.
I would tend to agree that that revenue growth rate will be challenging to sustain (unless some of GOOG’s other lines of business take off). More questionable is that multiple. Without they growth story and/or stellar margin efficiency story, 60X is quite a stretch.
Of course AI has their own forecast of GOOG getting to $2,000 per share — just that they expect that to take 10 years!
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