What kind of industry is google in?

Will new Internet giants emerge after Facebook and Google? What will those new giants potentially be?

• In my question, I really means "Giants". Quora, foursquare, or snapchat are quiet successful, but they are not giant as Facebook. In the last decade, Facebook and Google take control of Internet market and are expelling the old giants like Yahoo. Although I believe that innovation will never stop, it seems that those giants like Google and Facebook have more resources to continue to survive by innovating themselves or acquiring other innovative companies. For example, Facebook kill one competitor by purchasing Whatsapp in this year. It seems that in Internet Industry, the classes have been already built to be stable and any disruption may be impossible, which is similar to the situation in Oil, Gold or Diamonds market where the tycoon's control is ensured and other innovative competitor may be impossible to entry. What are your opinions in the question? What kind of new innovation may possibly shake the base of Facebook and google?

• Answer:

  To disrupt a Facebook or Google one needs to understand what their core business model is and then disrupt the model. At its core  Google is media company. It matches content to the consumer, and get their reward by showing advertisements. Moreover they don't even have to pay content creators. They simply crowd source their content for free. Every website that Google indexes is content available for free. For every web site that appears on first page of search there are thousands of other which don't. Those thousands of website make it possible for Google to separate chaff from wheat. Facebook and such social platform on other hand depends on their content creators to give away valuable information for free albeit inadvertantly. This information is used to match advertisers to their audience. Question is how do you disrupt this model? People have tried to move content creators to their own platforms. Whatsap, Pinterest, Instagram follow these models. These disruptions can be quelled by takeover. Other disruption no one has ever tried is changing the behaviour of content creator in such a way that it deprives incumbent of free content. Say for example if you create a model where content creator get share of revenue based on their contribution to revenue only if they don't share their content with your competitor. All good content providers will shift to you quickly and your competitor will be deprived of their most valuable resource viz. Free content. This model cannot be quelled by takeover. Because if you take over one competitor other can quickly take its place. The incumbents will try and match this model. But if you have backing of a VC with deep enough pocket, it can be pulled off. It is not easy to do but certainly possible. Once this model becomes the norm, then it will be same as any media business. Then only companies with best content would win. Then you don't have to worry about a single company being dominant.