obert Scoble recently wrote an interesting post, about FOG – Fear of Google (an acronym coined by CEO of eMarketer Geoff Ramsey). I observed this phenomenon strongly first hand at the Web 2.0 Expo and shared my thoughts on it in the R/WW post Thoughts from the Web 2.0 Expo. There is little doubt that the combination of Google’s exceptional revenue growth, continuously release of innovative products, and market share dominance, has created a considerable amount of fear, uncertainty and doubt.
While understandable, I believe in one area Google is more vulnerable than analysts appreciate. More than one-third of Google’s revenue is completely out of their control. To be more specific, in their most recent quarterly results 37% or $1.35 Billion of revenue came from advertising delivered on other sites. Specifically, I believe they are vulnerable in much the same way that Microsoft was vulnerable in the mid-nineties.