aTypical Joe: a gay New Yorker living in the rural South

Tuesday, December 27, 2005

Consensus prediction: Google’s goin’ down

Thomas Hawk has a roundup of geek predictions for 2006. He’s got them arranged by topic - Apple, Acquistions, Blogs… This is his Google section:

Jason Calacanis:  Google’s stock will take it’s first significant hit (> 15% drop) at some point during the year, but not because of their earnings but rather some outside factor (think advertising slow down, terrorist attack in the US, tech bubble bursting, etc). Google’s stock will end the year basically flat (+/-10%) while their earnings soar.

Dan Tynan: As part of its ongoing agreement with NASA, Google will secure exclusive advertising rights to the moon, where it plans to run text ads on the lunar surface. To increase traffic, the search company will distribute free telescopes to every human on the planet.

David Kirkpatrick, Fortune Senior Editor: Yes, I love Google, but my first prediction is that a year from now we won’t think that the search company is the invincible behemoth that we do now.

Oliver Thylmann: The Google Bubble will Burst.  Google is immensely overvalued and that valuation will need to come down.

HelloCompany: Google will buy Gannett and install its Click-to-call button beside every classified on the Gannett network.

Dave Winer: Google will make a deal with the Time-Warner movie companies, and start movies.google.com for on-demand distribution over the Internet.

Jason Calacanis:  Google Adsense for Podcasts and/or Video will debut in Q2/Q3 of 2006--Yahoo and Microsoft will follow shortly after that.

John Battelle: Google will stumble, some might say badly, but it will be significant.

Jason Calacanis:  After obsessing over Google for years while writing The Search, John Battelle sells his Federated Media network to the them.

John Battelle: Google and Yahoo will both enter the video (nee television) advertising marketplace.

I know, not everyone says Google’s goin’ down. But a good many do. Hawk recommends the prediction collections of Alex Barnett and Fred Wilson as well.