1. Leadership: This company is running like a chicken with its head cut off. CEO Eric Schmidt is flying solo without the help of founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin who are actually selling shares themselves. Not exactly a ringing endorsement from the innovators.
2. Profitable Innovation: Schmidt knows they are vulnerable which explains why we hear about yet another Google experiment on a weekly basis. Last week it was Google broadband. This week it’s Google TV. It’s all a big joke. Even Android is a joke. The recent market share gains from Android are misleading because it suggests Google is making money when all they’ve really done is give it away for free. Investors are ready to see profits beyond desktop advertising.
3. Mobile Search Competition
4. Brand Trust
5. China
Schwarz writes, “Google is scrambling to come up with a family of products similar to Apple but it simply is not in their company DNA. They do search, that’s it. Their software is profitless and their hardware is copycat. I’m not saying that Google is going to disappear but I am saying that their days of high growth are over and that means the stock is doomed over the next 24 months. Investors might make more on Google puts than on Apple calls.”
Much more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Note: Currently, Google (GOOG) is trading at $540.29, down $8.71, or -1.59%, with a market value of $171.80 billion. Apple (AAPL) is trading up $1.00. or +0.44%, with a market value of $207.98 billion ($36.18 billion more than Google).
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Readers “GetMeOnTop,” “James G.,” and “iWill” for the heads up.]
Couldn’t have happened to a nicer mole!
I’ve said it before Google is going the way of Microsoft because they are trying to be all things to all people. Apple is much more focused.
I know that he’s saying that Android is irrelevant, but the small group of disappointed developers is also a key to the demise of the Google brand. This prevents marketplace from ever reaching the popularity of the app store.
Eric Schmidt needs to leave Google.
Stick with the core products – what you do best. Google has strayed too far from the core products if you ask me. And perhaps they need a perfectionist control freak design genius marketing magician as a leader too.
Google is the Yellow Pages for the 21st century.
It’s a blue-chip, not a growth stock.
(I should say, they’ll be a blue-chip if they stop throwing their money away on their developers’ pet projects and experiments and buckle-down on their core competency, search).
Just like we tell our four-year-old, your behavior has consequences.
“Google has strayed too far from the core products if you ask me.”
Sounds vaguely similar to Microsoft where the almighty OS and MSOffice get all the attention and the dozens of other projects are just training grounds.
He makes a lot of sense. Google had not done a lot right, besides search. They better hope that Apple doesn’t decide to to a search engine.
Google can still make quite a splash and can be dangerous to Apple and Microsoft. There’s a lot of software talent in that company and it’s extremely well funded. It also has a pretty good brand, but Schmidt is working overtime to tarnish it. It will be a very interesting next several years for Google, and I have to agree with the analyst, yeegads!, that Google has most likely seen it’s high water mark and it has not shown an ability to profitably diversify itself, very much like Micro$haft.
In that respect, Apple stands alone in the manner in which it has been so highly successful in PROFITABLY diversifying it’s brand. What Job’s has done has been masterful, absolute perfection. Quite an accomplishment that has not yet been fully recognized by the industry or the stock price.
I agree Google is in too many things. They have so much money they’ve taken the spaghetti against the wall approach– not focused.
And why battle Apple publicly (thinking of that idiot at Google who hates the iPhone)? Stick with battling MS. Everybody, especially their users, hate their technology.
Goofle
Schmidt could leave Google and start a festival called “Burning Mole”.
Google never completely finishes a project – it’s Office apps, it’s Gmail, Android, Nexus One (no customer support), etc., before it’s off to the “next great thing.” What it does do is rushed out the door in “beta” format and languishes as such for years.
People know Google for searching, and that’s what Google needs to refocus on – better ways to search and get what you want without finding billions of other hits. Now that would be revolutionary, but Google won’t ever get to it because Schmidt wants Google to be another Microsoft or Apple.
The irony is Google is giving away things for free or trying to get one-time sales when it has the best revenue source imaginable: monthly advertising revenues that never go away.
I love how everyone is sitting here bashing Microsoft and Google, when the last time I checked, Google’s stock price has soared over the last few years, and Microsoft has by FAR the biggest market capitalization of any of the companies mentioned.
Microsoft dominates the gaming world with the Xbox 360, and no matter how many inroads Apple makes with the ipod touch, they will continue to dominate (the touch has stolen market share from Nintendo and Sony, but not Xbox). Even if Microsoft focused solely on its software sales and development, it would remain unstoppable (likewise for Google and search – it’s nearest competitor is not even close).
And for all the bashing I hear over Google and China, look how much of a complete DUD the iphone has been in China (where, ironically, it’s manufactured – like everything else). Pathetic that it can’t gain traction in the worlds biggest market.
http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/10/03/24/despite_iphone_launch_china_unicom_struggles_to_grow_3g_subscribers.html
200,00 handsets in 4-5 months is pretty pathetic. Sounds like the Palm Pre of China.
Is it just me, or have Google search results started to get more diluted with junk at the top. Seems like I am having to go to page 2 or even 3 to find what I searched for lately.
As I’ve commented before, it’s not too late for Google to dump Android (give it to Moto or HTC or simply throw it out of the house), kiss and make up with Apple.
@PlayNice, just look at where Microsoft’s market capitalization was 10 years ago.
If you’d invested back then, you’d be screaming at Microsoft too.
Larry Page and Sergey Brin a preping their exit from Google by unloading as many of their shares as they can before they exit the company. This will leave Eric Schmidt holding the bag. Page and Brin will open another internet start-up and hire away all of Google’s best engineering minds. Page and Brin will then challenge Google for Ad revenues.
I would suspect that Page and Brin already have an idea and a plan to make internet search even better then what Google currently does. What for Page and Brin’s exit later this year.
He’s wrong. Even if Google is a one-trick pony, like MSFT, it still has room to grow its earnings and share price. In fact, Google is more likely to double now than Apple, and I’m saying that even though I have 1835 shares of Apple.
I knew I had seen this somewhere:
http://seekingalpha.com/article/193045-apple-s-market-cap-shoots-past-200-billion-closes-in-on-microsoft
@ PlayNice
What the hell are you talking about? I own an Xbox 360 – have from the launch, and for a while it was king of the hill, sales wise. It had a full year head start on PS3 and fanboys dismissed the Wii as a toy. Take a look at current numbers:
http://www.vgchartz.com/
You’ll see the Wii is totally dominating sales and the PS3 has almost (and will shortly) surpassed 360 sales. I like my 360 – I’ve only had to replace it once – thanks RRoD. But the truth is, it is NOT winning the market and when this gen is over – it will have finished in last place. That’s not what most people call “dominating”.
I love how Microsoft is trying to be more like Google while Google is trying to be more like Microsoft!
Ironic, isn’t it?