|
I'm not afraid.
Stockpiling user data is useless. Will site data taken today be worth anything in 5 years? Think about web usage statistics from 5 years ago, it's not even relevant to what people do today on the web. You couldn't give it away.
They are not collecting data for some huge power play in the future, they simply don't have a plan to make money with anything other than adwords right now.
Bing grew 20% last month. Imagine if they steal 30% of search from Google in the next 18 months. Google would be severely hurt by that as they have no other revenue streams other than adwords. They would have to launch a shit load of free services smothered with their ads to try to recapture those lost impressions and clicks.
Google is also in a shitty position as the leader in a field like search. They can't take any big chances which sets them up to be easily leapfrogged. That's the sucky part about being number one in the internet age.
|