The beginning of the end of Google

There is a rather interesting thing emerging - an increasing number of content owners are starting to tilt at the Google windmill where it hurts - in the copyright dept. As well as the very real lunges at YouTube and Streetview, 3 print organisations have taken aim in as many days:

Today, the Associated Press and the Wall Street Journal took pot shots, yesterday it was the Guardian. Some say they are acting in cahoots, some say not - but its interesting why they are acting now.

We hypothesize that there are 3 main reasons for this:

- Backs to the Wall - the print media (and others) are not going to lose by coming out swinging, and they most certainly will lose if they don't

- Back to Basics - the speculative capital funding some of their opponents is draining away, time to re-assert themselves as real world economics re-asserts itelf

- Back to Barack - a regime change to a less laissez faire and more liberal, literary chief - will this US administration really let the great titles collapse right now, with all the other woes on?

The new line is quite sharp, too - essentially arguing that if all the surplus is hoovered up by the aggregators, who is going to create the content required now that UGC is palpably failing, if not via rampant piracy.

We imagine the Google decline possibly working in 3 major phases:

1. Concerted attack on the (ab)use of other people's content and an attempt to force Google et al to pay recompense in an ongoing way.

2. Google's reduced margins means it cannot subsidise many of its other businesses, leaving them to be abandoned and thus freeing what has been an artificially free market for new players, at the same time as New Search attacks core Google markets.

3. Increasing resistance and desire for privacy safeguards, probably increasingly enshrined in law, limits ability to hit users with heavy duty behavioural targeting.

And so, What Will Google Do (to paraphrase the book that came out just before the End of The Dream)?

Firstly, clearly lobby like mad, but you just sense the tide has started to turn as reality bites - both in terms of digital economics and recessionary priorities. To anybody outside the digital Happy Valley, a system that allows the aggregators and downstream players to make out like bandits while content creators make a pittance is not sustainable - and right now governments are looking for sustainable industries

Secondly, PR like mad to paint a cuddly picture - but is any government really going to let the bulk of the national news media be run via a US megacorporation that has a history to date of playing fast and loose with privacy?

Thirdly, entrap - try to roll out as many services so users are woven into a web of usage so they can' easily disentangle themselves, an hope to increase the user synergies while reducing the costs. But one can hear the soft drums of anti-trust, of Netscape vs IE, calling.

By "the end of" I don't mean Google dies, just the hegemonic super-surplus erodes and that forces rational economics into the rest of the company.

You read it here first - you'll scoff now, but I'll point to it in 2 years time......