thinking about Internet analysts

So I attended a talk by Safa Rashtchy, a well known Internet analyst, a couple of weeks ago in NYC. Safa became famous by tracking Google and predicting a 600 price (GOOG) 1-2 years ago.

Some points:
- People use search as an exploration tool, thus making themselves attractive adevertising targets. - Google is obsessed about customer experience, and they are willing to sacrifice revenues if it is to improve that metric. Does this set them appart from competitors such as Yahoo, Microsoft etc?
- Search lowers ecommerce profit margins (bad for Amazon etc?), and this effect will intensify with the growth of "local search"
- Google's video business (youtube) may take off in 2007, although optimal way to do video advertising has not been figured out yet...
- Panama will help Yahoo improve monetization per search and increase search volume. But is will not shift customers from Google to Yahoo... [Why???? What is the rational here????] [By the way is there a systematic difference between advertiser's profile on Yahoo vs. Google?] [Marketshare only is not the whole story...]
- Google has distinct technology, culture, and brand advantages over their competitors [explanation? which of these are sustainable and why?]
- Mobile search is a significant trend (2007-08). Google did not pay much attention to that!
- Difficulties in China. Any recovery?

Safa is certainly a smart analyst, but here is an afterhought. There is a crucial distinction between the mantra of an analyst and a scholar. Here it is:
Analyst mantra: "If you can predict it, you dont have to explain it" (it = future, etc)
Scholar mantra: "If you can explain it, you dont need to predict it"

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