Google and Amazon Eat Their Own

Tim O’Reilly compares Web 2.0 and financial markets.

Ever since I heard Bill Janeway point out that over time, Wall Street “firms began to trade against their clients for their own account, such that now, the direct investment activities of a firm like Goldman Sachs dwarf their activities on behalf of outside customers,” I thought, whither Google, Yahoo! and Amazon?

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As Google’s growth slows, as inevitably it will, it will need to consume more and more of the web ecosystem, trading against its former suppliers, rather than distributing attention to them. We already take for granted that common searches, such as for weather or stock prices, are satisfied directly on the search screen.