GOOGL - Google

[Guest valueInv]

Compare this:

http://gigaom.com/2013/10/17/as-googles-revenue-grows-12-percent-page-says-hed-love-to-spend-more-on-moonshots/

 

and this:

http://aswathdamodaran.blogspot.com/2013/09/decline-and-denial-requiem-for.html

 

[Guest valueInv]

Motorla again proving to "great" acquisition:

 

http://venturebeat.com/2013/10/17/not-even-the-moto-x-can-stop-motorola-from-bleeding-cash/

[nsa122]

Just curious how "value" investors who own this stock reconcile their notions of intrinsic value with the company's stated intent not to return cash to shareholders and the founders' complete control of the company.  Seems like an instance to admire the business and pass on the stock. 

[ExpectedValue]

Just curious how "value" investors who own this stock reconcile their notions of intrinsic value with the company's stated intent not to return cash to shareholders and the founders' complete control of the company.  Seems like an instance to admire the business and pass on the stock.

 

Buffett has tremendous control over Berkshire. Buffett only recently started buying back stock.

[siddharth18]

Just curious how "value" investors who own this stock reconcile their notions of intrinsic value with the company's stated intent not to return cash to shareholders and the founders' complete control of the company.  Seems like an instance to admire the business and pass on the stock. 

 

You're making it sound as if "founders' complete control" is necessarily a bad thing. It may not be so. Larry and Sergey still have a majority of their net worth tied to Google and the company's track record on its core business of search has been excellent.

 

It's just that the company's business model is extremely resilient and monopolistic and at a reasonable price (eg in a downturn), it's as good company to own.

[VAL9000]

Just curious how "value" investors who own this stock reconcile their notions of intrinsic value with the company's stated intent not to return cash to shareholders and the founders' complete control of the company.  Seems like an instance to admire the business and pass on the stock.

 

The value is in the future earnings power of the company.  Think of the profits from the US, UK, and other developed nations.  Now think about the current state of the internet across all other countries and where they are in their overall economic development.  Extrapolate.  As was pointed out on this thread..  commerce is increasingly executed on the internet and Google is a toll operator like no other.  Just think about how that gets rolled out internationally and then the earnings power becomes more clear.  Nobody else (outside of China) is doing this in a serious way right now.

 

The most exciting part is when you look at a developed nation like the US, where saturation of Google's products (from an *advertisers perspective*) are at their highest, the revenues have been growing at pace with those internationally.  It shows that there is a lot of runway for growth here still.

 

[VAL9000]

I noticed that the y/y network revenues declined for the first time.  I believe all network revenues come from the AdSense product, which are primarily ads embedded in other content.  e.g. the ads you see on news articles.  I'm going to venture a guess that this is primarily driven by a change in how consumers are interacting with the web.  Lots of shift towards mobile and a migration to Apps and mobile format webpages.

 

I'll be interested to see how Google deals with this shift.  If it's hurting them right now, then it's also definitely hurting the content owners.  I have noticed that some of the mobile app advertising is getting much better (e.g. click to call on my phone in app), but it's still not as excellent as the AdSense solution.

 

It's probably not helping that the market for mobile in-App advertising is relatively small compared to traditional display advertising.  It is also bad for Google that there are more players fighting over a smaller slice of the pie (Facebook, Twitter for example)..  although Google does continue to dominate this category of advertising, too. 

 

Still, there are real risks for a ~ 13 billion/year business.  I'd really like to see revenue segmentation on mobile to know how much of network is moving that direction and how quickly.

 

[ItsAValueTrap]

The network effects are insane and there's no other competitor far as eye can see.

On the search side, Google competes with other search engines.  Bing/Yahoo, Yandex, Baidu, etc.

statcounter.com is a good place to get search engine stats

 

Everybody is playing the game of buying search traffic.  All of the companies tend to have toolbar campaigns, where other software developers try to trick their users into installing a particular search toolbar.  Companies like Facebook are paid to make Bing the default search engine.

 

I wouldn't say that Google's advantage comes from network effects.  Google search doesn't get better with more users (*Google uses data from user behaviour, but the advantage of more users-->more data is very marginal).  It's not like Visa or Mastercard or the dominance of the QWERTY keyboard layout.  It has an advantage from scale as its R&D costs are spread out over a large number of users.

 

Google is definitely a wonderful business.  I hope that business lasts because I am slightly long Google.  It's just that tech can change very quickly.  Bing 10 years from now might be very, very different than the Bing today.  The search engine landscape 10 years from now might be very different than today.

 

2- The ad network business (Adsense) may benefit from network effects due to ad retargeting.  Ad retargeting is where ads follow you around.  The size of a network may help as the retargeted ads will show up more often for a user.  I believe that Google competes with Adroll here (I haven't been following this closely).

 

I don't think that Adwords competes against Bing, Facebook, Twitter, etc.  Nobody does (paid) brand advertising on Google because it is not very effective... except for maybe political campaigns and corporations doing PR campaigns.

[siddharth18]

The network effects are insane and there's no other competitor far as eye can see.

On the search side, Google competes with other search engines.  Bing/Yahoo, Yandex, Baidu, etc.

statcounter.com is a good place to get search engine stats

 

Everybody is playing the game of buying search traffic.  All of the companies tend to have toolbar campaigns, where other software developers try to trick their users into installing a particular search toolbar.  Companies like Facebook are paid to make Bing the default search engine.

 

I wouldn't say that Google's advantage comes from network effects.  Google search doesn't get better with more users (*Google uses data from user behaviour, but the advantage of more users-->more data is very marginal).  It's not like Visa or Mastercard or the dominance of the QWERTY keyboard layout.  It has an advantage from scale as its R&D costs are spread out over a large number of users.

 

Google is definitely a wonderful business.  I hope that business lasts because I am slightly long Google.  It's just that tech can change very quickly.  Bing 10 years from now might be very, very different than the Bing today.  The search engine landscape 10 years from now might be very different than today.

 

2- The ad network business (Adsense) may benefit from network effects due to ad retargeting.  Ad retargeting is where ads follow you around.  The size of a network may help as the retargeted ads will show up more often for a user.  I believe that Google competes with Adroll here (I haven't been following this closely).

 

I don't think that Adwords competes against Bing, Facebook, Twitter, etc.  Nobody does (paid) brand advertising on Google because it is not very effective... except for maybe political campaigns and corporations doing PR campaigns.

 

Google is the clear leader in most countries except ones that have regionally specialized search engines like Naver and Baidu.

 

 

 

http://returnonnow.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/Search-Share-International.jpg

 

 

 

 

Regarding network effects, it applies to Adsense and network websites. Most publishers know that Google has highest number of advertisers and hence will bring most competition for bidding on their inventory, leading to highest eCPM. And advertisers (first) flock to a network that has the most users - Google content network. Excluding niche adnetworks and crappy 2nd tier exchanges (like Yahoo's Right Media Exchange) that serve ads on questionable sites, Google's DoubleClick Ad exchange is the go-to source for buying high quality ad inventory en masse.

 

 

From my own personal experience with Google's platform (Adwords & Adsense) and a bunch of other ad networks, I always found Google to be the clear leader in quality and value. Google had highest rates, but delivered the best bang for the buck. Everything from platform interface, to customer support, to compliance, to tracking.

 

 

 

Brand advertising (which is the earliest part of the sales process) is almost always on display (banners, etc) while text ads in search are always performance based (towards the end of the sales process).

[Guest valueInv]

So their solution is to force people to buy mobile ads:

 

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/19/technology/google-misses-expectations-for-revenue-and-profit.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

 

Short term fix until the ad optimization guys get involved.

 

Regarding the quarter's results - surprise, surprise.  ;)

[Guest valueInv]

 

Amazing. Google's moat just keeps growing and growing as it becomes deeply entrenched into our way of lives.

 

Topeka Capital analyst Victor Anthony called Google’s results “a very good print” that was ahead of his forecasts.

“The bear case on the stock was for pressure on search volumes in the quarter, so the 26% paid clicks growth, a three point acceleration from the second quarter, was particularly robust versus expectations,” he told MarketWatch. However, he noted the “further deceleration” in cost-per-clicks, a key metric for Google, which Anthony said was “a bit disappointing.”

 

 

Analysts are focusing on the wrong metric. CPC doesn't matter, eCPM (Effective cost per 1000 pages served) does. eCPM = CPC x CTR. Design changes that cause CTR (click through rate) to go up may cause the value per click to be less  and cause advertisers to pay less per click. But the overall trend should be upwards as more advertisers are added, there's more competition for clicks and efficiency to monetize traffic increases.

 

What are the eCPM numbers for the last three years?

[Guest valueInv]

Nice comments so far on the earnings today and Google's moat, and great infographic on the most expensive keywords.

 

I just wanted to add two quick comments on the earnings. Google-owned site revenue was up 22% year-over-year. This is a big signal to me that YouTube revenue is ramping up and the monetization plan is working nicely. And, the "Other" segment revenues were up 85% yoy. This is where the Google Play resides and Chrome-based products as well. The ecosystem built on Android and Chrome is starting to earn some money in its own right.

 

1, How do you know that it is not search but Youtube that is generating site revenues?

2, We know other revenues is up 85%, where did you find the earnings for Android and Chrome?

[Guest valueInv]

Interesting:

 

http://e.infogr.am/Google-infrastructure-spending-derrickharris_1366318593

[worldaccordingtoGARP]

Nice comments so far on the earnings today and Google's moat, and great infographic on the most expensive keywords.

 

I just wanted to add two quick comments on the earnings. Google-owned site revenue was up 22% year-over-year. This is a big signal to me that YouTube revenue is ramping up and the monetization plan is working nicely. And, the "Other" segment revenues were up 85% yoy. This is where the Google Play resides and Chrome-based products as well. The ecosystem built on Android and Chrome is starting to earn some money in its own right.

 

1, How do you know that it is not search but Youtube that is generating site revenues?

2, We know other revenues is up 85%, where did you find the earnings for Android and Chrome?

 

1. We can never know for sure whether it's search or YouTube driving the revenue growth, but like I said, it's a "signal." As has been discussed in this thread, Search revenue growth has not been what it used to be, and the 22% yoy number of Owned Sites is nicely ahead of the 15-18% annualized growth it had been demonstrating for most of the past 2 years.  This Q GOOG offered the following info on YouTube which sheds some light on how monetization is progressing:

 

Moving over to brand in YouTube. You’ve seen that our CPG and entertainment clients have moved online at greater speed with our efforts that are on brand. Spend by our CPG clients on displaying YouTube has grown over 75% over the past two years. For example, the Google YouTube campaign for Dove’s Camera Shy brand in more than 20 countries and delivered over 62 million views for Unilever. We’re also partnering very closely with agencies, we really like integrating our technology, insights and media with their creativity and client relationships.

 

For agencies, marketers and Googlers it's a huge win, win, win. All of the top 10 global agencies now use our DoubleClick products. On the other side YouTube continues to do well. Video ads which include CUview now form a significant part of our YouTube in brand advertising and they’re growing north of 75% year-over-year. We found that YouTube is our brand torch bearer. It offers brands valuable engaged audiences, terrific reach and compelling context. Smart brands are really loving their engagement with YouTube.

 

YouTube is no longer a small business. Since Google doesn't segment it out, it's impossible to say exactly how big. Mark Mahaney at Citi projects that YouTube alone should pass $4B in revenues this year (it is estimated to have crossed $1b annual run-rate some time between 2011/12).

 

2. For several quarters now, the company has explained "Other" revenue growth, as it has been huge on an annualized basis, though from a small base. That small base is getting bigger, and growth isn't slowing much. Here is a quote from last quarter about "other" which clues us as to what resides there:

 

Other revenue grew 138% year-over-year to $1 billion and roughly flat quarter-over-quarter.

 

Play store digital sales of apps and content drove the year-on-year and quarter-over-quarter growth and it's worth noting that in Q1, we included some seasonal hardware sales due to overflow from Q4 which skewed the Q2 comps somewhat.

 

I say "Android" because the Play Store is one of the most important paths to monetizing Android, and I say "Chrome" alongside Android because aside from some Nexus phones, this is the other type of hardware Google sells that would be situated in this segment.

[nsa122]

I am not oblivious to the current and future earnings power of Google or their beneficial contributions to humanity; the relevant question is whether these earnings will ever be returned to shareholders.  Warren Buffett has written extensively on this topic and clearly feels a responsibility to do right by shareholders.  He has expressly stated that Berkshire Hathaway will return money to shareholders if it cannot continue to compound at an acceptable rate. 

In contrast, the founders of Google have (to my knowledge, correct me if I am wrong) never expressed any feelings of responsibility to shareholders, and have in fact set up voting rights so that common shareholders will never have any significant say in the company, and have expressly said they do not plan to pay a dividend.  Can anyone name a "pro-shareholder" action Google has done?

With no foreseeable prospect of cash flow from the shares, might you not be as well served buying Google collectible memorabilia, which could just as easily appreciate in price over time? If you are going to look at "long-term earnings power", you'd better also look at long-term return of cash to shareholders, which seems by no means assured to me.

What odds would anyone put on Google paying a dividend in our lifetimes? 

[ItsAValueTrap]

Siddharth18, nice chart.  Where is the data from?  (It seems like Comscore to me.)  It never made sense to me that Google's market share in the US and Canada would be so low.

 

statcounter.com for example shows much higher share for Google.  Comscore's methodology is quirky because they track users via spyware.  This skews their data towards less sophisticated users.  The kind who would install browser toolbars and allow software to change their default search engine.

[txlaw]

The network effects are insane and there's no other competitor far as eye can see.

On the search side, Google competes with other search engines.  Bing/Yahoo, Yandex, Baidu, etc.

statcounter.com is a good place to get search engine stats

 

Everybody is playing the game of buying search traffic.  All of the companies tend to have toolbar campaigns, where other software developers try to trick their users into installing a particular search toolbar.  Companies like Facebook are paid to make Bing the default search engine.

 

I wouldn't say that Google's advantage comes from network effects.  Google search doesn't get better with more users (*Google uses data from user behaviour, but the advantage of more users-->more data is very marginal).  It's not like Visa or Mastercard or the dominance of the QWERTY keyboard layout.  It has an advantage from scale as its R&D costs are spread out over a large number of users.

 

Google is definitely a wonderful business.  I hope that business lasts because I am slightly long Google.  It's just that tech can change very quickly.  Bing 10 years from now might be very, very different than the Bing today.  The search engine landscape 10 years from now might be very different than today.

 

2- The ad network business (Adsense) may benefit from network effects due to ad retargeting.  Ad retargeting is where ads follow you around.  The size of a network may help as the retargeted ads will show up more often for a user.  I believe that Google competes with Adroll here (I haven't been following this closely).

 

I don't think that Adwords competes against Bing, Facebook, Twitter, etc.  Nobody does (paid) brand advertising on Google because it is not very effective... except for maybe political campaigns and corporations doing PR campaigns.

 

Google is the clear leader in most countries except ones that have regionally specialized search engines like Naver and Baidu.

 

 

 

http://returnonnow.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/Search-Share-International.jpg

 

 

 

 

Regarding network effects, it applies to Adsense and network websites. Most publishers know that Google has highest number of advertisers and hence will bring most competition for bidding on their inventory, leading to highest eCPM. And advertisers (first) flock to a network that has the most users - Google content network. Excluding niche adnetworks and crappy 2nd tier exchanges (like Yahoo's Right Media Exchange) that serve ads on questionable sites, Google's DoubleClick Ad exchange is the go-to source for buying high quality ad inventory en masse.

 

 

From my own personal experience with Google's platform (Adwords & Adsense) and a bunch of other ad networks, I always found Google to be the clear leader in quality and value. Google had highest rates, but delivered the best bang for the buck. Everything from platform interface, to customer support, to compliance, to tracking.

 

 

 

Brand advertising (which is the earliest part of the sales process) is almost always on display (banners, etc) while text ads in search are always performance based (towards the end of the sales process).

 

Fantastic chart. 

 

GOOG is the Coke of search.  The question I keep asking myself is whether MSFT can make Bing the Pepsi of search.

[VAL9000]

I am not oblivious to the current and future earnings power of Google or their beneficial contributions to humanity; the relevant question is whether these earnings will ever be returned to shareholders.  Warren Buffett has written extensively on this topic and clearly feels a responsibility to do right by shareholders.  He has expressly stated that Berkshire Hathaway will return money to shareholders if it cannot continue to compound at an acceptable rate. 

In contrast, the founders of Google have (to my knowledge, correct me if I am wrong) never expressed any feelings of responsibility to shareholders, and have in fact set up voting rights so that common shareholders will never have any significant say in the company, and have expressly said they do not plan to pay a dividend.  Can anyone name a "pro-shareholder" action Google has done?

I don't want to get into a debate about the meaning of ownership.  The pro-shareholder thing that Google has done is that they have raised earnings per share from $0.72 per quarter in 2005Q1 to $10.74 per quarter in 2013Q3.  As a shareholder, this is exactly what I want them to do.

 

If they stop compounding at a rate that exceeds my own ability to compound, then I will sell the shares and deploy my capital in other ways.  Or I will collect their dividend and compound on my own.  One of these should work for me.

 

With no foreseeable prospect of cash flow from the shares, might you not be as well served buying Google collectible memorabilia, which could just as easily appreciate in price over time? If you are going to look at "long-term earnings power", you'd better also look at long-term return of cash to shareholders, which seems by no means assured to me.

Well I don't know, does Google memorabilia generate profits that I have share ownership of?  Buffett also talks a lot about how he considers his ownership of earnings both in terms of dividends paid and in terms of those profits that are reinvested in the business.  That's how compounding is effective.

 

What odds would anyone put on Google paying a dividend in our lifetimes?

I put the odds at 95% probable that Google will pay a dividend.  It's what older companies do.  I plan on not dying for at least 50 years.  A 65 year old business is different than a 15 year old business.

[jeffmori7]

I am not oblivious to the current and future earnings power of Google or their beneficial contributions to humanity; the relevant question is whether these earnings will ever be returned to shareholders.  Warren Buffett has written extensively on this topic and clearly feels a responsibility to do right by shareholders.  He has expressly stated that Berkshire Hathaway will return money to shareholders if it cannot continue to compound at an acceptable rate. 

In contrast, the founders of Google have (to my knowledge, correct me if I am wrong) never expressed any feelings of responsibility to shareholders, and have in fact set up voting rights so that common shareholders will never have any significant say in the company, and have expressly said they do not plan to pay a dividend.  Can anyone name a "pro-shareholder" action Google has done?

I don't want to get into a debate about the meaning of ownership.  The pro-shareholder thing that Google has done is that they have raised earnings per share from $0.72 per quarter in 2005Q1 to $10.74 per quarter in 2013Q3.  As a shareholder, this is exactly what I want them to do.

 

If they stop compounding at a rate that exceeds my own ability to compound, then I will sell the shares and deploy my capital in other ways.  Or I will collect their dividend and compound on my own.  One of these should work for me.

 

With no foreseeable prospect of cash flow from the shares, might you not be as well served buying Google collectible memorabilia, which could just as easily appreciate in price over time? If you are going to look at "long-term earnings power", you'd better also look at long-term return of cash to shareholders, which seems by no means assured to me.

Well I don't know, does Google memorabilia generate profits that I have share ownership of?  Buffett also talks a lot about how he considers his ownership of earnings both in terms of dividends paid and in terms of those profits that are reinvested in the business.  That's how compounding is effective.

 

What odds would anyone put on Google paying a dividend in our lifetimes?

I put the odds at 95% probable that Google will pay a dividend.  It's what older companies do.  I plan on not dying for at least 50 years.  A 65 year old business is different than a 15 year old business.

 

+1.

 

I wanted to answer that, but Val you just worded it so that I have nothing to add.

[cayale]

So their solution is to force people to buy mobile ads:

 

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/19/technology/google-misses-expectations-for-revenue-and-profit.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

 

Short term fix until the ad optimization guys get involved.

 

Regarding the quarter's results - surprise, surprise.  ;)

 

And it appears to be working for both advertiser and consumer.  What's the problem?

[Guest valueInv]

So their solution is to force people to buy mobile ads:

 

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/19/technology/google-misses-expectations-for-revenue-and-profit.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

 

Short term fix until the ad optimization guys get involved.

 

Regarding the quarter's results - surprise, surprise.  ;)

 

And it appears to be working for both advertiser and consumer.  What's the problem?

 

When you raise prices, you decrease ROI for advertisers. Then the ROI from competitors start looking better.

[cayale]

So their solution is to force people to buy mobile ads:

 

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/19/technology/google-misses-expectations-for-revenue-and-profit.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

 

Short term fix until the ad optimization guys get involved.

 

Regarding the quarter's results - surprise, surprise.  ;)

 

And it appears to be working for both advertiser and consumer.  What's the problem?

 

When you raise prices, you decrease ROI for advertisers. Then the ROI from competitors start looking better.

 

Clicks are rising.  In some areas, conversion is higher on mobile than desktop.  CPC is coming down.  So are they raising prices?  And will customers be disappointed with the results?  I'm not sure you can make the blanket assumption that ROIs are coming down.  If customers sell more product as a result of more clicks, ROI might go up.  Did they just force a bunch of customers into mobile?  Yes.  I don't think you can assume what happens to ROI, however, particularly in the long term.

[Guest valueInv]

So their solution is to force people to buy mobile ads:

 

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/19/technology/google-misses-expectations-for-revenue-and-profit.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

 

Short term fix until the ad optimization guys get involved.

 

Regarding the quarter's results - surprise, surprise.  ;)

 

And it appears to be working for both advertiser and consumer.  What's the problem?

 

When you raise prices, you decrease ROI for advertisers. Then the ROI from competitors start looking better.

 

Clicks are rising.  In some areas, conversion is higher on mobile than desktop.  CPC is coming down.  So are they raising prices?  And will customers be disappointed with the results?  I'm not sure you can make the blanket assumption that ROIs are coming down.  If customers sell more product as a result of more clicks, ROI might go up.  Did they just force a bunch of customers into mobile?  Yes.  I don't think you can assume what happens to ROI, however, particularly in the long term.

 

When you make a decision to advertise on Google or Facebook, you compare their relative ROIs.

[cayale]

So their solution is to force people to buy mobile ads:

 

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/19/technology/google-misses-expectations-for-revenue-and-profit.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

 

Short term fix until the ad optimization guys get involved.

 

Regarding the quarter's results - surprise, surprise.  ;)

 

And it appears to be working for both advertiser and consumer.  What's the problem?

 

When you raise prices, you decrease ROI for advertisers. Then the ROI from competitors start looking better.

 

Clicks are rising.  In some areas, conversion is higher on mobile than desktop.  CPC is coming down.  So are they raising prices?  And will customers be disappointed with the results?  I'm not sure you can make the blanket assumption that ROIs are coming down.  If customers sell more product as a result of more clicks, ROI might go up.  Did they just force a bunch of customers into mobile?  Yes.  I don't think you can assume what happens to ROI, however, particularly in the long term.

 

When you make a decision to advertise on Google or Facebook, you compare their relative ROIs.

 

Limited inventory, limited functionality, limited purpose. Type "new car" into the search bar on Facebook and you get "New Bern, NC".  You can link us to every article on the internet (cause everything one reads on the internet is true) as proof but if you're trying to tell me that 1) everybody is moving their ad dollars to Facebook and 2) Google is destined to shrivel up and die, I think you are stretching the limits of credulousness. I don't think that this world is quite as binary as that and I'd be a little wary of concluding Facebook has built a better mousetrap in terms of function, universality or utility to user and advertiser.

[Guest valueInv]

So their solution is to force people to buy mobile ads:

 

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/19/technology/google-misses-expectations-for-revenue-and-profit.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

 

Short term fix until the ad optimization guys get involved.

 

Regarding the quarter's results - surprise, surprise.  ;)

 

And it appears to be working for both advertiser and consumer.  What's the problem?

 

When you raise prices, you decrease ROI for advertisers. Then the ROI from competitors start looking better.

 

Clicks are rising.  In some areas, conversion is higher on mobile than desktop.  CPC is coming down.  So are they raising prices?  And will customers be disappointed with the results?  I'm not sure you can make the blanket assumption that ROIs are coming down.  If customers sell more product as a result of more clicks, ROI might go up.  Did they just force a bunch of customers into mobile?  Yes.  I don't think you can assume what happens to ROI, however, particularly in the long term.

 

When you make a decision to advertise on Google or Facebook, you compare their relative ROIs.

 

Limited inventory, limited functionality, limited purpose. Type "new car" into the search bar on Facebook and you get "New Bern, NC".  You can link us to every article on the internet (cause everything one reads on the internet is true) as proof but if you're trying to tell me that 1) everybody is moving their ad dollars to Facebook and 2) Google is destined to shrivel up and die, I think you are stretching the limits of credulousness. I don't think that this world is quite as binary as that and I'd be a little wary of concluding Facebook has built a better mousetrap in terms of function, universality or utility to user and advertiser.

 

;D ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D

 

You're kidding right? You know the difference between a search engine and a social network?