Google to $2,000 a Share?
A reader complained that we've been nothing but negative of late—recession, Microsoft, Yahoo, newspapers, music, dying TV ads, etc.—so we'll brighten your afternoon with some rip-roaring positivity. — Remember a couple years back when some analyst floated …
Context & Ripple Effects
Silicon Alley Insider has spent the fall working the bear side of its own beat — arguing that a downturn would actually consolidate Google's dominance in Why a Recession Will Help Google Rule The World, alongside gloom on Microsoft, Yahoo, newspapers and dying TV ads. When a reader pushed back on the relentless negativity, the editors reached for the most bullish artifact available: the $2,000 share-price target an analyst floated a couple of years back — flagged here as speculation, not a settled call.
TechCrunch's same-day pickup — 'Somebody Muzzle Blodget' — shows the story travelling less as analysis than as a provocation in the blogosphere's bull-versus-bear fight over Google. What keeps the target arguable at all is the competitive picture: Microsoft's confirmed pivot toward free downloadable consumer software and its $6 billion advertising investment two months ago, plus Yahoo embedding Flickr images and playable video directly into search results, are all live assaults on the franchise the bull case depends on.
First-order effects
- The floated $2,000 figure gives Google bulls a concrete number to rally around and repositions Silicon Alley Insider as the optimistic counterweight to its own recent bearish streak.
- TechCrunch's 'muzzle Blodget' framing turns the target into a credibility contest between analysts and bloggers rather than a sober valuation debate.
Second-order effects
- Microsoft's confirmed shift to free downloadable consumer software and its $6 billion ad-business bet force the bull case to defend Google's search-ad pricing power, not just its growth rate.
- Yahoo's move to pull Flickr photos and playable video into results pages pressures the result-quality gap that underpins Google's premium ad rates.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, web-company valuations consolidate around a single question — whether one search franchise can keep compounding through a downturn — squeezing standalone portals and media properties caught in between.
- A provocative price target now spreads as blog fuel faster than the model behind it, a dynamic that shapes how tech valuations get argued in public.
The trend: Tech valuation debates are consolidating around whether Google's search-ad machine can compound through a downturn, with Microsoft's free-software pivot and Yahoo's richer results setting the terms of the argument.