Google owns a vast stake in mobile domain through Android. If mobile native ads is the way of future then I am sure Google will use it to their advantage and thrive at it. Plus Google has been diversifying it's revenue stream a lot lately. Also, a few people had internet and personal computers at home back then. People are more tech and internet savvy these days.

A bigger problem that a lot of people fail to acknowledge when it comes to demise of Yahoo is the brain drain. Top talent left Yahoo when Mayers joined.

Only 10% of google revenue and almost none of the profits come from other business than ads. Google has tried but has not been successful in creating profits from elsewhere. Motorola Mobility was huge blunder.

Google is successful there is no moat that keeps it safe. It hast to keep running to to stay ahead.

They'll collect data from their free services, they'll run an ad network, they'll run several social and/or communications networks, so they still have access to social graphs and interests. They may even produce or aggregate some content on content portals like Microsoft does with MSN. They'll make some of their money from display ads, but less than they do now. Meanwhile they'll have subscription-based products from which they'll derive the rest of their revenue.

It's tempting to look at where Google's current revenue comes from and accuse them of being a one-trick pony, but they've done what like Microsoft did in the 1990s and have ingrained themselves into the daily lives of people, through Gmail, Android, Chrome, Drive, Docs, and more niche ones like Hangouts, Allo/Duo, Google Photos. They're even guilty of some of the same mistakes as Microsoft: confusing product strategies and messaging, letting some services stagnate for years, sudden shutdown of others and releasing a hip new but slightly inferior alternative soon after.

The transformation of ad consumption and the relevance of search in the app-driven, app-curated world; these are all good points raised in the article. But I think Google's current set of non-money-making products is exactly what will save them from Yahoo's fate -- you may no longer search with Google, you may not even like Google, but all your files and personal data is still going to be with them, their OS running on your phones and laptops, and network effects and platform lock-in (in the sense that it's not worth the effort to switch) will keep people with Google for years to come.

2000 was the height of the dot-com bubble, so comparing it to 2016's Google (with strong revenues and earnings) doesn't seem that apt.

"In Pursuit of Simplicity" https://blog.codinghorror.com/in-pursuit-of-simplicity/

Another reason they are safe is because they are not a social network.

Is such a thing even possible?

Yes it is!

Google was founded based on a set of highly algorithmic methods for Search (part of today's AI), which is something that is extremely difficult to do correctly and even harder to duplicate (just ask Apple). Google never morphed into a 'content' site, like AOL. It was not founded based on easy-to-to duplicate code and content of others.

They've come a long a way in terms of real innovation and real technology in addition to revenue that is 10x greater than twitter, facebook, yahoo and others. Now add to this traffic reach, if you look at the top 10-20 sites on the net in terms of traffic, Google actually owns several of them including YouTube, Gmail etc. http://www.alexa.com/topsites Add to this an entire operating system that runs most of the worlds mobile devices. If you aggregate all their platforms and properties, it's orders of magnitude greater than any other.

There are deep technology companies and then there are not so deep technology companies that have limited lifespans.

Google probably has another 10 years before it begins to crumble within. Meanwhile and in a larger historical context, the new AOLs will come and go, repeating a cycle of duplicating one anothers content and so-called technology.

While Google does make a lot of it's earnings from Ads, Google Cloud is supposed to surpass it's Ads business in the next 4 years.

Its very unlikely, but if 10 years ago if someone said Nokia wouldn't be making cell phones in 10 years ago who would have believed you.

Everyone was on AOL in the late 90s and now its mostly gone. Tech is just so fast moving I could see it happen. It just isn't likely.