Want to know everything that could possibly go wrong with Google? Well, you can read the risk section of its latest SEC filing, but that’s a snore. Or you can flip through the slides above, which were put together by French consulting firm FaberNovel. They were the ones who gave us the hugely popular slideshow, “Everything you always wanted to know about Google . . . but were afraid to ask”.
This one is titled more morosely, “Why could Google die . . . maybe not now, but tomorrow.” I wouldn’t be picking out caskets just yet, but the slideshow does provide a convenient cheat sheet for most of the major threats that Google faces. It quickly goes through them, including the threat of antitrust and copyright infringement litigation, a massive privacy disaster, hiring and retention issues, disruption from new startups. There is even a nice slide listing Google’s 12 main weaknesses, along with a visual assessment of the probability, timing, and impact of each scenario. Of course, chances are that it doesn’t include the one threat that will get Google in the end. (I don’t know what it is either, but I am a big believer in black swans).
Below are some of the key slides.
