Will Google, Facebook and Apple Own the Web?

by: Ashkan Karbasfrooshan June 07, 2008 | about stocks: AAPL / GOOG / MSFT    
Ashkan Karbasfrooshan

Ashkan Karbasfrooshan

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Time looks at Google (GOOG), Facebook and Apple (AAPL) as likely winners of the Web wars.

Google, Facebook and Apple do make me think of the 3 Cs:

  • Google = commerce
  • Facebook = community
  • Apple = content.

Interesting that none of the three create any of the underlying C, they just enable it.  That being said, I don’t buy any of these “the future of this” or “how this will kill that” pieces, nor do I buy many of these “X company is the future of so-and-so”.

Google’s place in business is cemented: It’s catapulted itself to IBM (IBM) and Microsoft (MSFT) status and while it may or may or not change, it won’t go anywhere.

Apple today is kicking ass and won’t be disappearing, but just a decade ago it was going nowhere.

Facebook is a great story but has yet to prove itself.  It can become Friendster, quickly, and last time I checked, MySpace remains much bigger…

But the bigger reason why I take these articles with a grain of salt is two-fold:

  • Didn’t an analyst from Sanford Bernstein argue just last week that - on the strength of their respective 20-30% revenue growth - Amazon and Google would own the future of the Web?
  • Isn’t the future of the Web a video-based one?  Sure, Google has video mojo thanks to its YouTube acquisition.  But Facebook?  Not really.  Apple can’t really claim leadership either.

This makes me wonder: If video is the future of the Web, who will win between the technology players versus the content players?  Hmm… let me think about that, a post is coming soon.

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This article has 5 comments:

  •  
    Jun 07 07:34 PM
    If video is the future of the web, I think Adobe is definitely in prime position to dominate. They own the creation tools (OnLocation, Premiere, After Effects) and the preferred delivery platform (Flash Player, Flash Media Server, Adobe Media Player) to actively steer where the web is going.
    Reply | Link to Comment
  •  
    Jun 07 10:06 PM
    Time's "pick" of AOL a few years ago didn't turn out well.
    Reply | Link to Comment
  •  
    Jun 08 11:08 AM
    What does Apple have to do with the web? How can it possibly own anything if it isn't even a major player? What do you mean by Apple=content? Google = commerce - this is nonsense :) Google is solid only in search and advertisement. Amazon has commerce and Yahoo has commerce, Yahoo and MSFT have email to the scale where Google isn't even close :)
    Reply | Link to Comment
  •  
    Jun 08 02:19 PM
    Noise.
    Reply | Link to Comment
  •  
    Jun 08 08:07 PM
    I agree that the future of the web is video. Take a look at our "commerce and content" vision with Fave (next-generation local search). The problem with YouTube is monetization; we have a model for that! Of the three "C"s, I also agree that community is the least solidified. Google has some pretty great stuff brewing with OpenSocial and FriendConnect. And the relationship of community to the other two is less clear.
    Reply | Link to Comment
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