Re:YaCy: Decentralized Web Search
by Animats on Sunday December 14, 2014 @01:57AM
(#8747637)
This is a huge liability for google. Any company with 98% of its revenues tied to one product necessarily creates a fundamental liability for itself.
The cost of providing Google's organic search service is dropping as compute hardware gets cheaper. But the ad volume isn't dropping along with it. That creates a vulnerability for Google - their "free" can be undercut on price. The problem with having high profit margins is that, to a lower-cost provider, you're lunch.
"Ello" is trying to do that to Facebook. "Ello" is probably much smaller than they claim to be; almost all their Google hits were in the first week of operation. But someone else may be able to bring that off.
The cost of providing Google's organic search service is dropping as compute hardware gets cheaper. But the ad volume isn't dropping along with it. That creates a vulnerability for Google - their "free" can be undercut on price. The problem with having high profit margins is that, to a lower-cost provider, you're lunch.
"Ello" is trying to do that to Facebook. "Ello" is probably much smaller than they claim to be; almost all their Google hits were in the first week of operation. But someone else may be able to bring that off.