Google shares plunged some 7 per cent last week when the online measurement firm comScore released a report indicating that fewer people where clicking on Google ads. The decline was interpreted as a signal that cash-strapped consumers were doing less buying, which in turn would have to put a dent in Google's pay-per-click cash machine.

But what the report and its aftermath really show is the amazing amount of uncertainty that currently reigns in the Web 2.0 world in general.

The comScore report, in addition to precipitating the drop in Google share price, immediately prompted a now-predictable chorus of complaints about comScore and internet traffic measurement in general. ComScore's figures are based on the actions of more than two million web surfers who allow the company to track their online behaviour.

Many web publishers have complained for years that the comScore numbers – and those of its main competitor, Nielsen Net Ratings - are flawed, in part because they undercount at-work internet usage. Of course, web publishers have a lot vested in visitor numbers, so if their numbers aren't so great, one obvious response is to question the credibility of the numbers.

This argument goes on in old media too, and especially in the television business, where the ratings methodology is almost comically crude and widely agreed to yield, at best, a very rough approximation of real viewership. But the industry has for the most part agreed to agree on the numbers, and while there is plenty of argument about it, it's not really considered a fundamental issue in the business.

In the online world, though, advertisers are still being convinced that the medium works, and one of the selling points of online advertising is supposed to be solid data. That there is so little agreement on which numbers mean what thus tends to undermine the credibility of the online advertising proposition in general, and create uncertainty about its long-term potential.

Indeed, in the wake of its controversial report, comScore issued a memo saying the data had been misinterpreted, and didn't really show anything ominous for Google. I think it's safe to say that if the massive sell-off in Google shares was based on a misunderstanding, than either the data was exceptionally ambiguous, or people were looking for an excuse to sell, or both.

Google shares have actually been in decline for some months – partly because the shares had climbed to absurd heights, but also because of the overall decline in the market and a great deal of nervousness about the possible impact of an economic slowdown.

There are actually very few signs that Google's dominance of the internet economy is diminishing. Facebook, the one company that threatens the kind of fundamental change in internet habits that could undermine Google's position, has struggled to find an advertising model, and is seeing its extraordinary growth begin to level off.

Microsoft and Yahoo! have so little faith in their ability to compete with Google on their own that they are about to join forces. While Google has made a lot of noise about the threat this combination could allegedly pose to the internet economy, its objections are almost surely aimed mainly at delaying the deal and thus encumbering its main competitors.

Yet from a financial standpoint, Google remains a one-trick pony, dependent almost entirely on pay-per-click revenues from its AdWords and AdSense programs. Furthermore, Google and the search-driven Web 2.0 economy that it rules have never experienced a recession, so nobody knows quite what to expect.

For all its success, Google remains a very young company. Web 2.0, and the dramatic transformation of the media world that it represents, remains a very young phenomenon. The internet business, in short, is still very immature.

I remember back in 2000, when the dot-com bubble burst, we came up with one of my favourite covers ever at the Industry Standard – an image of a steep drop on a roller-coaster with the cover line "The End of the Beginning." Almost eight years later, it still feels like early days.

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Jonathan Weber is the founder and editor in chief of NewWest.Net, a regional news service focused on the Rocky Mountain West in the United States. He was previously the co-founder and editor in chief of the Industry Standard

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