A few weeks ago we posted a powerful graphic about the rise and fall of online empires. It seems that just as AOL, Myspace and Yahoo saw unprecedented growth for a period of time, so did they see a steep decline as other online empires such as Google and Facebook rose to the top. As we mentioned, the average lifespan of a major online company before hitting rock bottom is about 11 years, which makes you wonder where the online giants of today will be when they hit that milestone. To take this idea further is a recent Forbes article titled “Here’s Why Google and Facebook Might Completely Disappear in the Next 5 Years”. It seems crazy, right? However, with the extraordinary growth that mobile devices have seen in the last five years, it has been predicted that they will actually take over desktop computer usage in the next few years. Which brings us back to Google and Facebook. The author notes that both online giants have been surprisingly slow to adapt to the new mobile environment. Sure, Facebook has an app for every mobile device, but to say these apps are limited when compared to the desktop computer version is an understatement. In Google’s case, the iPhone4s complete with Siri is just the beginning of the new web search. As the author notes, “it’s a lot easier to start asking Siri for information instead of typing search terms into a box compared to thousands of enterprises ceasing to upgrade to the next version of Windows.” All this is to say that it will definitely be interesting who will adapt and how. Facebook has already attempted to flex its mobile muscles with the acquisition of mobile photo-sharing service, Instagram. But is it enough, and is it too late? Time will tell. According to the author, though, “we will never have Web 3.0, because the Web’s dead.”
