hmmm... It's always something. Take a look at GOOG chart and how it rallied up to ice. This equity a member of the four horseman has been weak this whole rebound rally from January. If it blows apart tomorrow, this ice area would be the perfect spot. The broad market has pretty much did the same thing rallying in the last year up to ice, or where we originally seriously broke down to make the March lows last year.... hmmm...Let's see what happens. Could this be the....
GOOG just cannot compete with BIDU. GOOG china head resigned last year. So where is the next share growth? When BING takes further GOOG's share in coming months/years, GOOG is done as a DotCom2.0.
I think you underestimate Googles breadth of services. It is not just search. Google Apps: Google Documents, Google Calendar etc. Google AppEngine, Google Android, Google Checkout, Google Reader, Google Books..... A lot of these services are only now starting to gain momentum but it is the synergy that can be realized when using more than one of these services that can make it a compelling choice to adopt Google as a complete business platform - and that has nothing to do with search or Bing.
Do you really want all your business information data mined? There is a reason that all those services are free.
I personally view Google as a potentially very dangerous entity which is why I don't use most of those afore mentioned services. Enough other people though are not so worried about those privacy issues that they continue to sign-up.
It's not just eyeballs. Some of those services are free to start with but if your business and needs grow, you will have to pay to support the extra features and capacity. Once you are hooked on/invested in the service it becomes more likely that you will pay for the service once your business needs dictate rather than switch to another provider for whom you will have to pay also anyway.
which free service respects your privacy? yahoo? ask.com? rediff? I sometimes wonder who uses spammers like bing.