Google's share value has declined 23% of late, mostly fueled by investor worries that the company has really overreached on its plans for global domination. Google's plan to build its own, parallel Internet just smacks of a "Let's party like it's 1999," when numerous high flying firms burned through billions of investor money chasing the same pipe dream.
But there are other fires burning in Google's house. This CNet article has an edited transcript of a Congressional committee that quizzed Google, Cisco, Yahoo!, and Microsoft about getting buddy-buddy with the Chinese communist government. The congressmen asked some rather pointed questions about how these companies are helping the Chinese government round up protesters that violate rules against free speech, and the circumlocution is sad--these guys have helped the communists arrest people that just want freedom of speech, and dared to say so. We're not talking about child molesters or hackers.
But that's not Google's real problem. Take a look at this press release from the W ketchup company. The company has cancelled all advertising with Google because of Google's aid "to help the Communist regime in China suppress liberty and free expression in that country."
Canceling advertising? That hits Google right in the pocketbook. And it takes just two mouseclicks to cancel a Google ad campaign.
But as always, I think Google is in trouble because their core competency was search (notice I'm using past tense). That's what made them successful. And now their search engine stinks. They have taken their eye off the ball and are busy pursuing dozens of other initiatives, like wireless in San Francisco. How does that make their search engine better? It doesn't. It will take a while for most people to switch to other search engines, but as Google fiddles, other competitors are going to catch up.
Anybody remember Alta Vista? It once owned Internet search.