Comparing Launch-to-Year6 Revenue: Google, Facebook, Yahoo

In Allfacebook, Nick O’Neill presents a chart that compares the first six years’ revenue for Yahoo!, Google and Facebook. Even though some of these exercises are coffee-cooler talk without much substance, this one afforded the opportunity to think about how Facebook and Google add value.

According to BusinessInsider’s interpretation, neither Google nor Facebook emphasized revenue in the early years and hockey-sticked later. Here’s the article, and here are my thoughts on all three players:

Nick, thanks for bringing up a very interesting idea. My instinct, though, tells me that Facebook will bury all of them because:

1. We have been in an attention economy for a while, although most people still don’t get the significance of that. Facebook has many layers of value, including the emergent layer: digital personal relationships are the most sticky to date and are completely consistent with the human animal (see http://bit.ly/socgroom). Bottom line, Facebook is smart because it’s focused on the personal stickiness; it’s a huge draw play. It is playing the long game. We haven’t seen anything yet.
2. Google is at the other end of the spectrum as it synthesizes interactions in a less personal way, and I think it has the potential for several additional S-curves.
3. Yahoo is a Red Giant (star), collapsing on itself because its fuel is gone (vision, ingenuity). It was in the right place at the right time during Web 1.0, but it was never terribly sticky when compared to Web 2/3.0 companies.

What do you think? How does Google’s value proposition compare with Facebooks?