Yeah, Google Street View is cool, but what's the business model? Perhaps Google's endgame is going to be something like the shot above: dynamically-inserted, click-able ads posted into "real-world" billboard (and other) spaces. Maybe not. But it'd be a very interesting idea and would certainly tick off a heck of a lot of folks in the outdoor advertising world.

Labels: advertising, Google, speculation

Earlier this week, the Wall Street Journal had an interesting article about a mother who picked her unborn child’s name by how poorly the name performed as a Google search.

She wants to give her son that extra edge – she wants people to be able to find him quickly on the internet, after he is accomplished. And because searching for his name doesn’t yield good results, it would be relatively easy for him to get up on the rankings.

People can go around giving their kids obscure names all they want, but they need to know that there are other options. Like search engine optimization and Google AdWords.

Giving your son a bad name is just mean.

No, it’s criminal.

Labels: egosurfing, Google, search engine optimization

Most companies go out of their way to avoid legal battles. Google? Not so much. Back in October, 2006 Google bought YouTube (speculative stuff coming…) and by doing that, they bought the right to fight their legal battles. And for good reason, too. If YouTube is found guilty of copyright infringement, then that would set the stage for all content or media companies to go after every site like YouTube, including Google. Google bought the right to fight that battle as a hedge for its own future viability.

The fight comes down to something simple: money. Google is publishing unlicensed content in order to make money on advertising revenue. Viacom wants Google to stop doing that. But what they really want is a piece of the action.

Google should just stop being so bloody greedy. And start sharing with everyone. Don’t they know that without content they are NOTHING? Silly multibillion-dollar-company-company, what are you thinking?

Labels: copyright laws, Google, Viacom

“Web 2.0 companies” is sooo early 21^st century. Today, idfive announces web 5.0. Read all about it. Move over Google. Eat your heart out Yahoo! Suck it Digg! Facebook... well... never mind, you guys are pretty much web beta.

Have a read.

Labels: facebook, Google, web 2.0, web 5.0, yahoo

Ted, in his Tedly way, came up with one of the most amusing applications of Google I've seen yet:
You Need

It also works well with "thinks". Per Google:
"Claire thinks I need some serious sensitivity training."
"Claire thinks she is a cat."
"Claire thinks that's just plain wrong."

Conversely:
"Ted thinks we've failed to address an equivalent level of complexity in the past."

Or, perhaps more appropriately, "Ted thinks it's ok."

There's a theme in science fiction about what happens when infinite amounts of data are available to individuals--as though with a sheer volume of information, you might be able to achieve some version of transcendence. Any trip to the local library will convince you that (sheer number of Google results notwithstanding) we're not there yet. We've really barely scratched the surface of digitizing content.

But I'm beginning to be fascinated by the way very large amounts of data, queried randomly, can generate seemingly meaningful patterns. We humans are hardwired to look for patterns, so that which seems amusing or even mystical is, really, just random information; but I suspect that as we build larger and more accessible stores of data, we will begin to query it more and more in just these sorts of ways, looking outside ourselves (as we always have) for some sort of answer in the universe.

(Go ahead... ask Google a personal question and see if it doesn't make you think twice. But you have to use first names!)

Labels: culture, Google

Step right up. Come one, come all to experience the amazing psychic abilities of GOOGLE?!? That's right ladies and gentlemen, the search engine we have come to know and love can also tell us about ourselves.

Earlier today I remembered that a friend of mine told me that if you enter a name and the word "needs" afterwards, the first result will ultimately relate to the person that the query is about. We all at the office tried it and it was pretty erie, like a modern day Ouija board or something. Apparently, Sean needs a big cannon, Zoe needs dominion over her pod, Andres needs to lighten up, and I need someone around 100% of the time. If Google says so it must be true, just like the magic 8-ball of yore.

Labels: Google, magic 8-ball, ouija

I just thought I would make a - maybe obvious - comment on what google really does.

Google is a time saver. That is all they do. Everyday in everyway a Google person on some Google farm says to another googler, "hey, how can this save people time?"

Lets look at some examples:

Search engines save people time by connecting them more accurately with what they are looking for. I spent 2 hours finding the right site in 1998, now it takes me ten minutes.

Google Adwords saves EVERYONE time by associating adwords advertisments with people who are interested. I can't tell you how stupid and time-wasteful it is to show a young woman who is watching some soap opera a spot for Viagra. Her time is being wasted. That won't happen on google.

Google's reader - which I really enjoy and will tout as a clear breakthrough in organization - is a mini-web viewer, meant to quickly and efficiently give me what I want to read from the sites I like. Its benefits include tracking, organization, etc., but its main benefit is clearly that it saves me a TON of time.

Google's office products appear to be a challenge to MS office and perhaps someday they will be a serious contender. But right now they look to me to be a short cut to sharing. How? Well it takes time to throw together a spreadsheet and then send it to 5 people and ask their opinions and get 5 spreadsheets back with different changes / suggestions. This is also true with the "track changes" feature in word. At work we write these large documents (for proposals) where everyone contributes, isn't it faster for us all just to write them online?

Google Maps are a clear time saver in terms of interface. You know where you are and where you are going more quickly and with more accuracy. But what is often missed is the little things, like the fact that don't need to format your address when you enter it into the map search field - it formats it for you. And you can share the map as easily as you can see it yourself. Both features save time.

Google Financial is an attempt to collect all the tools you might need to make a decision into one place. The idea is to make the decision as quickly and as painless as possible.

Google news collects very disparate news sources and applies its search engine to sorting it all so you can read what you want - not wasting time reading the things you don't.

Blogger allows me to self publish in a jiffy. I woke up at 4:30, sleepless, and had this idea, fired up the computer, wrote it down and published it in about 15 minutes.

Google desktop is a total time saver in tons of ways. I use it as my task list, as a quick way to look at the weather, the local news and of course it is the ONLY way I can search my damn computer. I am connected to a vast client archive of work on a file server, and if what I want isn't immediately associated with a client, then I use google desktop and find it in a jiffy.

The overall point here may be obvious, but I think it is worth emphasizing. Google perhaps does provide more accurate results with its search engine, but I am not going to go around saying google's differentiation is precision or accuracy. Instead, Googles real claim to a definite holistic goal, or point, is that faster better access through an improved interface will save me time.

Time. That's what google offers.

Labels: Business Differentiation, Google

Google’s revenue model is largely tied to the sales of ads. Newspaper’s revenue model is also mainly tied to selling ads.

It works quite simple: the more people either attract, the more money they might make.

The Wall Street Journal printed a very interesting story today, “Google This: U.K. Papers Vie to Buy Search Terms” by Aaron O. Patrick.

This story reveals the tactics followed by some newspapers to get more readers: Google Adwords.

At first, the idea of advertising to increase “circulation” to generate more income from advertising seemed a little silly. But at the end of the day, if their ventures are net positive, then they should keep at it.

More and more I thought about it, the more sense it made. After all, I have seen ads on one TV network for shows in another TV network. How is the newspapers’ strategy any different?

Anyway, the real issue here is Google. It is becoming so large and powerful, that other companies with similar revenue models have to purchase space in order to stay in business.

Google has about 50% of the search market. And most people start their web experiences with a search. Over 90% of the people searching don’t make it past the first page of search results, so it makes good sense for advertisers to purchase space on that first page.

So, it seems, Google has wedged itself between eyeballs and content. I wonder if there is a way to wedge another revenue source between eyeballs and Google. Start thinking!

Labels: advertising, Google, Online Advertising