I disagree, the top guys leaving is quite over emphasized from what I heard. For a lot of us geeks, Google is a dream job and atmosphere. Not many people are entrepreneurs.
Microsoft is making money on momentum, not on innovation. They also are not making a lot from online products. Yahoo is doing alright, but again is doing nothing great and is in the dust behind Google. AOL is horrid, their page views are dropping fast, and they are dumping employees faster. They are transitioning to owning a few portals and blogs, and hell they use google ads on their site and google search. They are not a formidable competitor in the least, they are dropping in market share rapidly. They just fired 20% of their workforce for the second year in a row.
Microsoft is making money on momentum, not on innovation. They also are not making a lot from online products. Yahoo is doing alright, but again is doing nothing great and is in the dust behind Google. AOL is horrid, their page views are dropping fast, and they are dumping employees faster. They are transitioning to owning a few portals and blogs, and hell they use google ads on their site and google search. They are not a formidable competitor in the least, they are dropping in market share rapidly. They just fired 20% of their workforce for the second year in a row.