>All of these companies are too big to fail at this point. They all have at least a decade of reserves to power through anything that gets thrown their way.
Yes each of these has enough of a war chest that they could drift along for a decade + several have ownership structures where there wouldn't be market pressure to remove the C-level / board if that happened.
That said... each of these has weaknesses. I think about Microsoft (the one missing from the list that rightfully belongs there...)... they came out of their lost decade a very different company. Their stock price barely moved for that entire time, though has since rebounded. It's not that hard to imagine that Netflix is just one of many streaming studios in another 5-10 years, or that people might be just as willing to turn to another search provider than Google. Facebook seems to be acutely aware that its core big blue app is seen as a baby boomer thing and that it had better do things to stay relevant to another generation. So - too big to fail? Maybe, but then again we could ask GE, GM, and Ma Bell that same question once upon a time.
It is very hard for me to imagine a world in which Google isnt the default search provider for almost the totality of people outside China or Russia. I don't think I even see my tech-aware colleagues using anything else except the rare unicorns with duckduckgo.
I just can't see putting netflix and google search in the same basket.
See the comment lower down in this thread:
>Google Search is beset from all sides right now. Their search results are terrible and people are looking for alternatives. They’re definitely at or past the peak of that product lifecycle.
Note the discussion not just here on HN but across several channels over the past 48 hours about how bad Google Search results have become. Personally, apart from a Google Business page I don't use any other Google products and haven't in years. Their product track record is poor and their search quality has slipped. Given another 5-10 years, I don't find it difficult at all to believe that someone like Apple, if they wanted to replace Google entirely as the default search on their device, couldn't make significant headway in search market share.
Sure, Netflix and Google aren't the same here - that wasn't my point. My point was simply in reference to the previous poster's comment about "too big to fail." The past 100 years of the stock market is littered with companies that were deemed unstoppable leviathans.
Yes each of these has enough of a war chest that they could drift along for a decade + several have ownership structures where there wouldn't be market pressure to remove the C-level / board if that happened.
That said... each of these has weaknesses. I think about Microsoft (the one missing from the list that rightfully belongs there...)... they came out of their lost decade a very different company. Their stock price barely moved for that entire time, though has since rebounded. It's not that hard to imagine that Netflix is just one of many streaming studios in another 5-10 years, or that people might be just as willing to turn to another search provider than Google. Facebook seems to be acutely aware that its core big blue app is seen as a baby boomer thing and that it had better do things to stay relevant to another generation. So - too big to fail? Maybe, but then again we could ask GE, GM, and Ma Bell that same question once upon a time.