
Eggs and baskets
Google are going to be seriously stuck if the market for web adverts dries up. ITV's business model was also based on selling adverts in a particular way, and look at the state they're in now. What will happen if there's a web advertising recession? I'm not sure it's really a good idea to follow some of MS's practices either. The Windows API is a mess of functions, some not very different from the days when they were used in OS/2, some poorly documented, and some that were supposed to become obsolescent but couldn't be removed because they were used too much. That's even without tricks like the DR-DOS/AARD incompatibility in Windows 3.1 beta: http://www.theregister.co.uk/1999/11/05/how_ms_played_the_incompatibility/ or the Stac Electronics/DoubleSpace affair