Google: Too Much of a Good Thing

Alexander Muse is one of the few people I know of who has resisted the Siren call of the Google Apps hosted email solution, and does some interesting macro-level math to show the dangers of everyone jumping on the same bandwagon.

I have not followed in his footsteps, and looking my dependence on Google right now is cause for concern.

Google Apps: I have no less than four domains running email through Google Apps. My personal email is Gmail. When Gmail goes down, I go down, at least as far as email is concerned. Initially, the auto-generated email from Your Neighbor's Place will come via Google. It takes me 5 minutes to set up Google Apps Email and it's free. Hard to beat when you are bootstrapping a business. But I kinda need it to work...

AdSense: This is the initial revenue source for Your Neighbor's Place. And they're way ahead of everyone else (or so I'm told). Losing it would be a significant hit to early cash flow.

Google Search: Google is the only search that matters. The initial figures on this blog are showing that Google is responsible for 100% of my search traffic. Not 99.999999%, but 100%.

Feedburner: I use it to get insight into how this blog is doing. Frankly, this is not a big deal, as it's only marginally useful. Losing it would probably just give me back the 30 seconds a day that I spend checking it.

Blogger: I've tried to make it as inconspicuous as possible, but the favicon will tell the observant reader that this blog is written on Google's platform. Probably not a big deal to lose - only the time getting it all set up again somewhere else would be lost.

AdWords: I haven't used it yet, but it's the front runner if I decide to use paid traffic.

What would happen if Google faltered Enron-style? Who would pick up the pieces? Would they be as effective? Could Yahoo handle the traffic or provide acceptable results? I have no idea, but the idea of competition in the search business is pretty appealing to me right about now.

I think I'm going to go back up this blog right now...