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Google Down Year to Year?

By - December 02, 2008

Disney-Chicken-Little-Sky-Falling-1

Now that’s what I call a bear market.

Analyst Trip Chowdhry claims Google will shrink in annual revenues and profits, slash 10-15% of its workforce, and in the comments on Eric’s post (which I link to above), one guy says Google is cutting its holiday Christmas party in the UK!

None of this sounds reasonable to me. The web will keep growing through this recession. So will Google. Not as fast, of course, but…this feels like the same kind of speculation that inflated the first dot com bubble – only inverted.

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  • http://www.shimonsandler.com Shimon Sandler

    In this bad economy, it makes more sense for advertisers to focus their efforts on SEO, and scale down their Adwords spending.
    PPC = renting the land
    SEO = Owning it.

    Stop Paying Google!
    http://www.shimonsandler.com/stop-paying-google-seo-ppc/

  • http://adviking.wordpress.com simonbaptist

    I’m working hard not to be cynical these days but I would be keen to find out the various positions Trip Chowdhry’s firm/clients/friends have against Google

  • http://nabou2008.blogspot.com Nabil nharfoush@gmail.com

    The expectation of continuous year-over-year growth is NOT sustainable.
    After an initial climb it’s fine to cruise until a new S curve tales over.
    We must change our expectations if we’re serious about sustainability.

  • http://www.seo-theory.com/ Michael Martinez

    Traffic estimates from both Quantcast and Compete show that Google continues to lose visitor share throughout this year.

    The prediction of decreased revenue may seem drastic, but it IS supported by a number of indicators, including an industry-wide reduced spend on search advertising.

  • http://www.rayrosecpa.com Ray Rose

    I agree with Nabil’s comment on Dec 2nd. Year over year growth in profits is not sustainable; it is harmful and ruinous; it is only achievable by monoploistic means or by using layoffs as a means of managing earnings in down times like today. Why does there have to be uber constant growth? Because the public shareholders demand it. What is the goal of the enterprise? “maximize shareholder wealth”. Until this changes it will always be about quantity, not quality– (See also Microsoft and Oracle).

  • http://battellemedia.com John Battelle

    Interesting to see the comments, so far, so negative. I can see a case for profits not growing…IE, Google continues to invest in infrastructure and new opps, but revenue?

  • http://www.oyuncambazi.com Oyun

    Hey John,Woman Chicken picture not Man Chicken http://www.oyuncambazi.com/iki.swf :)

  • http://thebookofw.com Tomi Itkonen

    Eh, Google can not afford a Christmas party with $11B of liquid assests.

    This year’s Christmas seems to be pretty expensive and out of reach for many. Let’s just cancel it and try again next year, shall we?

  • http://keyword.vc nmw

    Google is just another brand-name — just like any other.

  • Akash Mehra

    I don’t think Google will shrink in annual revenue(ofcourse barring this recession period), what we are forgetting here is that the most basic operation that we daily do is ‘Search’, be it anything, we need information and as long as this ‘need’ is there Google’s dominance will remain.

  • http://www.preiserhoehung.de/motoroel-ratgeber-fuer-auto-motorrad Motoröl

    Traffic estimates from both Quantcast and Compete show that Google continues to lose visitor share throughout this year.