Google's stock has been sinking since it provided its quarterly results. Google is still powerful and will continue to grow dramatically. It just will not grow at the pace it has maintained since going public in 2004.

What is happening? Search is an A-Number One marketing tool. Search marketing is pervasive. And for the last few years every organization has been learning and using Search like crazy. However at a certain point people get up to speed on the learning curve. They also start to become super critical about their ROI (return on investment). On both fronts Search cannot do much better than it has done to date. The love affair is now over. Now it is a long term marriage that is ongoing between those who use Search and those who offer the service. In other words the passion is gone and now the hard reality has set in. There will be many more iterations of Search, but I doubt the passion will return. This translates into a slow down of Search growth.

A sidelight to this is the deal that News Corporation cut with Google to sell keywords on the social networking site MySpace. Google agreed to prepay News Corporation $900 million ($300 million per year for three years)for this right. One gathers from Google comments during its financial call that this deal is not proving a winner for Google. Logically when the deal runs out News Corporation could well see a sharp drop in payments from Google (if in fact Google renews).

I have long predicted that social networking is not a money maker. I think the Google experience with MySpace is starting to prove my thesis.

I say that the Search boom is over and soon this will be true about social networking.