John Battelle's Searchblog

Remember "10,000 by 2000"?

I just did and actually wanted to call TMF Bogey nuts. Knowing him from times on the TMF boards I should have known better.

I ran some numbers (http://blog.thylmann.net/2005/02/google_and_1_tr.html) and am getting confused. Based on the stats I get Google has something like 40% of the online advertising spending under their wings. Also looking at growth rates in online advertising and potential to go into other channels, ... the possibility seems to be there.

Ray Kurzweil thinks:
"An analysis of the history of technology shows that technological change is exponential, contrary to the common-sense "intuitive linear" view. So we won't experience 100 years of progress in the 21st century -- it will be more like 20,000 years of progress (at today's rate). The "returns," such as chip speed and cost-effectiveness, also increase exponentially. There's even exponential growth in the rate of exponential growth."
http://www.kurzweilai.net/meme/frame.html?main=memelist.html?m=1%23610

Accelerating Change Conference 2004
http://accelerating.org/ac2004/

What 2034 will bring
Jakob Nielsen says:
""According to Moore's Law, computer power doubles every 18 months, meaning that computers will be a million times more powerful by 2034. According to Nielsen's Law of Internet bandwidth, connectivity to the home grows by 50 percent per year; by 2034, we'll have 200,000 times more bandwidth. That same year, I'll own a computer that runs at 3PHz CPU speed, has a petabyte (a thousand terabytes) of memory, half an exabyte (a billion gigabytes) of hard disk-equivalent storage and connects to the Internet with a bandwidth of a quarter terabit (a trillion binary digits) per second."
http://news.com.com/2010-1001-5221124.html
http://divedi.blogspot.com/2004/05/what-2034-will-bring.html

It sounds like the tone of article we'd have read during the dotcom boom era. Am I really the only one who thinks that investors are seeing more in Google share-value than it can actually deliver?

Google is the darling of the markets so far - but as every other big internet corp has shown, the moment you disappoint market expectation, they will kneecap the company for it.

My experience with finance markets is limited - but from what I've covered on equity reports, I'd have to look back to dotcom boom and bust to find another company as comparably valued as Google is right now. Sems to be sat on one big bubble, inflated by short-term expectation, rather than real long-term predictions.

Linear projections (or worse, just making a projection of linear achievements whose arrival accelerates) seem silly.

Akin to saying, in 1800, "I can imagine that in 2005 I will have a wagon pulled by *500* horses!," and failing to translate actual horses into a technologically *different* equivalent.

By 2034 I strongly suspect that the phrase "I own a computer" will have ceased to mean anything, for example. Akin to saying, today, "I own some electric motors." Well duh.

I apologize for the double TrackBack. Sorry for the inconvenience.