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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsHere's Why Google and Facebook Might Completely Disappear in the Next 5 Years
http://www.forbes.com/sites/ericjackson/2012/04/30/heres-why-google-and-facebook-might-completely-disappear-in-the-next-5-years/We think of Google and Facebook as Web gorillas. Theyll be around forever. Yet, with the rate that the tech world is moving these days, there are good reasons to think both might be gone completely in 5 8 years. Not bankrupt gone, but MySpace gone. And theres some academic theory to back up that view, along with casual observations from recent history.
When I was a PhD student 15 years ago, I studied with Don Hambrick who is a scholar known for a career showing the effects of management teams and directors (for good and for ill) on their organizations strategies and performance. One of the central tenents of this school of thought on organizations is that senior teams and directors have an outsized influence on organizational outcomes. Whats more, their backgrounds (including education and career paths) have a big effect on how they see the world, various competitive situations and the choices they make.
Theres another school of thought which takes the opposite view called population ecology or organizational ecology which put forward that managers dont really matter all that much. This view grew out of sociologists whod taken to study organizations in the 1970s. They assert that organizational outcomes have much more to do with industry effects than who the CEO is and the choices he or she makes. They study birth and death rates of populations of organizations, as well as the effects of age, competition and resources in the surrounding environment on an organizations birth and death rate. Most of these organizational ecology scholars come out of the University of California at Berkeley.
As a graduate student, I didnt have much time for this ecology line of thinking. I believed in the power of the individual executive to overcome all challenges in the external environment. We can always point to dynamic CEOs as case studies, even though the sociologists would say those are the equivalent of celebrating the smarts of lottery winners.
mdmc
(29,068 posts)thanks for posting
cali
(114,904 posts)Google and Facebook aren't MySpace. And they are both multibillion dollar corporations. They aren't just going to disappear.
Google makes the operating system that runs a heck of a lot of cell phones. Are cell phones not going to be around in 5 years? Google has been around since before Myspace and has already out lasted it. By no means am I saying any company is immune to failure. Just that Myspace is so massively different than Myspace comparing the two seems odd.
Shankapotomus
(4,840 posts)LOL
Edweird
(8,570 posts)Edweird
(8,570 posts)madinmaryland
(64,931 posts)Tunkamerica
(4,444 posts)Kablooie
(18,632 posts)Edweird
(8,570 posts)Dawson Leery
(19,348 posts)And: http://www.google.com/services/
Facebook? What does facebook do besides sell your personal info to marketers?
Zalatix
(8,994 posts)MySpace was an easy mark - it was a prototype for a real social network. Facebook is far more mature and will be much harder to out-evolve.
It can be replaced, but not in the next 5 years. And eventually what will replace Facebook is a much more advanced version of Facebook from another company. It'll be more pervasive and more intrusive, and certainly NOT as nice a global player as Facebook.
It'll probably be replaced by a company that's hooked up with your Internet service provider (ISP); they already know your IP address, and if they'll have relationships with the ISP, the ISP will cough up info on who you are as a customer, and they'll automatically have all your background check information, your web browsing history from the ISP's own logs, all kinds of stuff. This future social network will tap into (read: sell info to) employers who want to see your Facebook data and will make backroom deals with employers to share your social networking activity.
As I said, Facebook's replacement will be a nightmarish beast.
saras
(6,670 posts)Zalatix
(8,994 posts)These future social networks will have info pages up about you before you even sign in.
CVS Pharmacy is an existing example of that; you sign up for them and they verify your account through records that they automatically receive about where you lived before.
Shankapotomus
(4,840 posts)People will finally learn how to make their own websites and connect them to their friend's sites with things called hyperlinks.
Javaman
(62,521 posts)provis99
(13,062 posts)'nuff said.
Romulox
(25,960 posts)bemildred
(90,061 posts)Even to the extent that one thinks these companies are not just internet fads, which is what I think, most of these high-tech companies pop up and die like mushrooms, or get eaten.
bluestate10
(10,942 posts)Google and Facebook have plenty of money. They can buy up competitors that could one day replace them.
madinmaryland
(64,931 posts)customerserviceguy
(25,183 posts)But both of them make actual products, not just fairy-dust "services".
DiverDave
(4,886 posts)because people really dont care what everyone is doing at this very instant.
Oh, and the naked pics from that party that anyone with a bit of hacker knowledge
can see just might get to be embarrassing.
trumad
(41,692 posts)Try telling that to my kids and their friends.
ain't gonna happen.
customerserviceguy
(25,183 posts)Both of them have as their sole business model the practice of spying on the users, then selling that information to hucksters. While there are millions of stupid people who buy shiny things from clickthru ads, eventually that model is unsustainable.
But the Winklevii twins will make out OK.
Shankapotomus
(4,840 posts)people will eventually realize, duh, why do I let some company control my online information when I can just have my own personal website?
Johonny
(20,841 posts)The best computer/internet related companies seem to be able to branch out past their initial base. I think a user content site like facebook is really vulnerable (I remember all those yahoo befriending features and where are they now) but facebook as a company may not. Depends if they develop other products. Google seems like a safe company to be around because they are more than just a one product search engine site. If you look at the original DOW you would conclude eventually every company run its course
bemildred
(90,061 posts)LanternWaste
(37,748 posts)Those jet packs certainly replaced the 150 year-old internal combustion engine overnight.