The Google We Always Wanted ⇥ stratechery.com

Ben Thompson:

The Google that I saw at I/O was, to use Jobs’ words, focused. They know exactly what their strength is – machine learning – and they know exactly what they want to be – the world’s source of all information, both facts and people.

That’s both impressive and hella scary, given that Google’s revenue structure is predicated on targeting ads. To keep ad revenue growing, they must get better at targeting ads, and to get better at targeting ads, they need more information. If you’re cool with that, that’s your own bag of hurt to deal with.