Good Night, Google Bears

Yahoo! recently fell another 2% to $22.70, another new low for the year.

Of course, Google is only going to benefit from its image as the only big Internet company to see unbridled success. Big funds will start to see it as a proxy for the sector, if they don't already. As advertisers continue to shift money from newspapers, magazines and television over to the Internet, they will see Google as the default site, just as most search users do.

There is a new crop of more recent startups that could emerge as a hot growth story, but the most promising of them -- YouTube -- was just bought out by Google. And the others will find it increasingly less tempting to say no to Google should it come knocking.

Google has its challenges, but judging from the earnings call with analysts on Thursday, they are ones that other companies would kill for. One analyst asked CEO Eric Schmidt what it would take for Google to reach a revenue goal of $100 billion. I can't think of another company worried about this.

At another point, founder Sergey Brin sounded a little concerned that the company is too innovative. "If we continue to develop so many new individual products that are all in their assorted silos, you will have to essentially search for our products before you can even use them," he said. "And then you will have to search before you can do a search, in many cases."