Google is more than willing to subsidize its own development costs if its able to produce a pathway to a Google-centric web that others wouldn't or couldn't replicate.
As encompassing as technology and the web already is in everyday life, we've yet to scratch even the earliest of limits, with every piece of new technology becoming web-enabled the inter-connections between people and their technology becomes further encompassing, with the cloud becoming a centralized hub forcing information seperation to consist only of virtual borders. A prospect not completely sold to business just yet, but the power of the crowd, and the cost-effectiveness of the cloud will break down those barriers. How will all this happen, and who will pay for it? As Mark Cuban recently wrote about the prospects of free business, the biggest problem is the continued expectation of free and the inability of the biggest pushers of free-service to keep costs in check and monetization opportunities plentiful. That thesis is very much on the mark, no pun intended, by how it related to business, but what it misses, is the relationship of consumers as the end-goal for the real buyers of free: The advertisers.
The Internet, being the disputive technological platform that it is, essentially drives costs of everything to near zero. This is due to the simple phenomenon that if everyone is connected to everything, there's alway someone who'll do something for cheaper, until the cost of that something is driven close enough to zero to become miniscule. And the ones paying the bills at that point will rely on advertising for profitability, and the advertisers will rely on their ads working to then sell products and services and in turn pay their own bills. Google just happens to be the biggest entity making use of the free economy that is the Internet, using all of its advertisers to pay for its storage, bandwidth and corporate costs.
Advertising is funding an over-indulgence in all things web, but subsidizing life, that seems like a stretch right? Currently yes, but as the computer and the Internet is engulfed by all of the younger generations for communications, commerce, entertainment, social networking, dating & relationships and more, it will start to look startlingly close to the major components of life.
Imagine if the brick & mortar world worked this way? Say there was a Google that would pay for everyone's gasoline, provided they had a billion lane road to a super-shopping center, and drove a car they purchased but had customized by Google to point out interesting things along the road and showcase the occasional billboard tailored to an individual's needs and previous purchases. How many would turn that down? And after sometime of that model working, I'd say the brick & mortar Google would even be willing to take you to the lot and pay for the vehicle, guaranteeing it would always work perfectly on those roads to the mall. All subsidized of course by your friendly neighbourhood Spidermen, umm, I mean Mad Men.
Disclosure: Author owns GOOG, AAPL
