Time to sell your Google stock

[pdstein]

Google has made billions by serving up contextual advertising through its adSense program. In fact, adSense generates half Google's revenue and up to this point it has had very little competition. But it looks as if that's about to change. Word is Yahoo and MSN are both working on programs to compete with adSense. Will that affect Google?

Absolutely. Content providers are looking for only one thing from adSense and that is $$$. When Yahoo and MSN release their ad programs, content providers are not going to stay with Google out of loyalty, they are going to go where they can generate the most revenue. Yahoo and MSN will probably try to gain market share by offering a larger percentage of the PPC revenue, so Google will not only lose market share, but they'll be forced to pay out better rates to content providers which will hurt their margins as well.