Ben1: domain-restricted search is an interesting point. Probably a good niche where the standard search engine could remain relevant, but that’s not enough to justify Google Search as a portal to me (and still I don’t know why Google is much ahead of competitors). I think the long tail is overhyped and mostly harmless/irrelevant. But it’s also a place where PageRank hurts as much as it helps the usefulness of results.

BenOther: product search is something I hadn’t considered, and my initial reaction is that it is pretty good at that, but that the space will converge to have a handful of dominant players that give you all the info that’s available and useful (amazon, ebay, nextag…). Similar to Wikipedia, I don’t need a sophisticated Google to find that. Just a simple (replicable) Google.

TK: Browser as OS is fine, but will it be an app (Chrome/FF) or Windows Explorer (with their handy address bar that accepts URLs)? I think Google grossly over-powers bloggers. I believe the internet is a great fact-checker and is (overall) increasing the accuracy of news, but so far it’s also increased the cost (in my time) of finding and verifying that information (vs relying on a couple trusted sources that you don’t feel the need to fact-check).

These one-liners don’t do yall’s comments justice, so I’ll try to post a followup to respond better and clarify my original idea.

If anything, I would say that the role of the operating system is being phased out. We seem to be going in a direction where a computer will boot straight to a web browser and that’s the only role the OS will have.

…And that day can’t come soon enough as far as I’m concerned.

Also, Google (or search engines in general) power several up and coming forms of media such as blogging. As the costs of publishing and distribution drop to almost nothing, the role of massive companies like Time Warner decreases. From what I understand, blogs that actually make money rely heavily on visitors from search engines because people know what they want to read (sports news, personal finance info, fitness advice) but they don’t know where to read it.

If people continue flocking from mainstream sources (provided by the media giants) to independent online content, google will be even more relevant.

Google is so frickin’ good at telling me exactly what I want to know–sometimes without even having to click on a result, since it’s in their little snippet–that I sometimes wonder when they perfected their mind-reading algorithm.

Also, the Internet will always, ALWAYS be a huge marketplace, and will continue to grow as a marketplace without any reasonable upper bound. It’s just too easy to reach a global market with a niche product. And when I go to look for a product to fill my niche need, you can bet I’ll always be looking on the Internet for the answer. If Google continues to be the best tool to find me the product I need, I’ll continue to use them. Sure, you can marginalize that contribution by saying they’re just “organizing others’ advertisements”, but I’d call that “giving me exactly what I want really frickin’ fast”. There will ALWAYS be a market for that.

Other uses: technical answers from professional sites. I have no patience for navigating, say, MSDN pages, but I’ve used Google to find specific answers within them. Actually, I can make this more general: I use Google as a single-domain search engine for sites whose own built-in search is nonexistent or inadequate, which is a lot of sites. I use Google to find old threads on a set of forums I read, because the search there is crap and cuts off beyond a certain date.

Also, long-tail pop culture. Stuff that 99.99% of the population couldn’t care less about, but a few people have spent an inordinate amount of time organizing information on. I can’t see TimeWarner making any effort to find me that sort of thing; it’s just not their model.