Unlike many old media companies, Google is still expanding, but its rate of growth will likely slow. The current downturn will almost certainly result in a slower Internet ad market, especially as major companies cut advertising.

It's impossible to know how much advertising will be lost overall, but analysts peg the decline in Internet ads at $6 billion to $7 billion through 2010. That's probably a bit more than you have in your checking account at the moment, but by Internet standards, it's not a catastrophic drop. The slowdown is likely to cut the growth in Internet advertising below 20% next year for the first time since 2002. You can bet newspapers would rejoice at half that growth rate.

Still, there's long-term growth ahead. This year, Internet advertising will grow to about 9% of the $284 billion US advertising market. The Internet claimed about 7.2% of the market in 2007.

Google generates most of its revenue from search ads, but isn't standing pat. It's working on spots that include images and video. The company will carry full-length programs from CBS (CBS) on its YouTube website and split the revenue with the network.

For now, Google's online search ads are king. In an effort to close the gap, Microsoft bid about $47.5 billion for Yahoo earlier this year. Yahoo rejected the offer in May and agreed to an advertising partnership with -- you guessed it -- Google.

Keep competition alive! Toss Microsoft a bone and use it for a search now and then. Google won't notice, but you can feel good about helping The Little Guy in the sector.