The All-Star Game of the Web

Look at the players - Microsoft, Google, Yahoo, News Corp's MySpace, Time Warner's AOL.
It all started Google's unstoppable growth in Web advertizing at the expense of others. Despite of numerous high quality efforts by Microsoft, Yahoo and others, there is no stopping the Google's march. So MS cannot see itself fighting Google on its own on the web, wants to buy Yahoo in the hope that 2 is better than 1. Yahoo then tried to run away from MS to court News Corp to maintain its independence. News Corp didn't see itself able to compete MS offer and tried to join MicroSoft in the deal. MS see no benefit bringing in News Corp when it can have Yahoo all for its own. Yahoo doesn't want to have anything to do with MS, tries to tag in with AOL and its even prepared to work with the player that is responsible for all its problems, i.e. Google to keep itself independent.

It'll be interesting to see how this game ends. To me, it doesn't look like any of the outcomes would even come close to challenging Google's domination on the web advertizing. You can't beat an innovating market leader at its own game. MS should have known it from its Zune experience. Xbox experience has got more to do with Sony's bigger plan to push BluRay.

MS, instead of buying Yahoo to play Google over the web, should take the game to a different battle field - In-Game advertizing for Xbox, Contextual Advertizing for Television with IPTV, In-car advertizing with Sync or other GPS and what not. If it doesn't make its moves on other fronts faster than it is doing now, it'll be too late.

Yahoo, there is no syngergy to go with MS or AOL or even NewsCorp. It'll be another business deal that would result in different degrees of failure. For Yahoo the game should be to be independent and work with everyone. Be the media company it always supposed to be. Delivering the content and services to its user community whether they are on the web or tivo or mobile or gps or facebook or myspace. Be the no.1 destination and monetize the traffic as best as you can.

Google is at the top of this game with majority of the marketers in its fold. Just sit tight and make no mistakes.

Android, Open Handset Alliance and Google

Last week I was hoping for a mobile OS that is not targeted at smart phone market but one that could serve the consumer market and help the handset makers and carriers move away from the software business.
>>This would probably help the carriers and device makers move out of the software business and concentrate on providing hardware and services instead, which are their core business.

We got that and even more and Google had done that, it announced an open handset alliance and android platform.

The press statements are a bit vague on what it is coming up with, but based on what I have been reading an OS platform for phones (can be a smart phone or a normal consumer phone) that works on all kinds of hardware where developers can build apps that has access to local resources and the device makers and carriers can pick and chose the applications... And how it is different from WM/OS X/Symbian/ Palm/ RIM, the carriers still have the say on what they want to provide. The power is still with the carriers, but Google is making it easier for them to have good stable and capable solution and at their own terms.

Beginning of the End (Part One)

I think Nov 2007 will be marked as the beginning of the end for Yahoo! There are two big developments from Google, one in the social networking and one in the mobile space. These announcements not only demonstrate the brilliance of Google, but also Yahoo!s failure. Yahoo! was first in the game with its Yahoo! 360 and Yahoo! Go more than two years ago, but their lack of vision and lack of implementation is now costing them dearly

Yahoo had its best bet before facebook to make Yahoo! 360 a truly powerful social network. It was a great idea, as a platform it was better than other social networks at that time. Its the implementation that lacked. It couldn't even put up all the Yahoo! services on 360. I was hoping they would slowly but surely get there. The unrivalled user base and the content they generate on the Yahoo! is un imitable and can not be repeated. Facebook was not an open platform then, once the Facebook platform is opened up, it was a closed chapter for Yahoo! 360.  To match the facebook, Yahoo came up with another social networking platform called Yahoo! mash, which doesn't have any significant benefit compared to facebook. Still they have not learned from its 360 failure, and the mash team apparently couldn't convince other Yahoo teams to come up with their app for Yahoo! mash. Sure, it is still in beta, but there is no place for excuses in Tech world. With Open Social from Google, hmm its all over for Yahoo! social network plans unless it goes onboard the train run by its biggest rival. Clearly Yahoo! recognizes the glorious future of Social networks which is evident from its purchases like Flickr, Del.icio.us, jumpcut, mybloglog and many others long before Google paid any real attention (Orkut was stupid), but it failed to deliver it twice.

Now they have all these disparate and wonderful services which would eventually fade away once people start having their content on all these apps that are going to be out there on the Open Social unless they become a part of it.

 

Sorry Yahoo!, you couldn't think big enough.

It's not Google, It is Adobe!

Looks like Adobe has the best chance to be a Microsoft Killer!!!

Sure Google is doing great on the web, but that was never Microsoft's money making machine. It's strength is its operating 
system, its development platform and the office suite where MS makes most of its money which it could funnel into the newer fronts. It could sustain losses for multiple years for its Xbox platform and Mobile OS and of course it would do that with 
Zune which is soon going to be a force in the MP3 player market. Google is putting its billions to take the Office suite with its web based apps. But the fact is that it is no where close to challenge MS on that front and it would be few years before it could come up with a serious challenger. Of course MS is not going to sit sucking its thumbs. Already there is a major push 
with MOSS to improve collaboration using the office tools. Also Google doesn't have much experience with Enterprise Business sales, which is on a different plane when compared to Adwords accounts it has got.

But it is different with Adobe, whose intentions are getting clearer by the day. It has already got a great foot hold in the small business with it Creative Suite and its Macromedia web tools. And it has got a dedicated army of developers who use their tools. It started with the online versions of its creative suite. Then came the killer Adobe Integrated Runtime, which I think is the future of the software with its unique ability to bring the best of the desktop and web worlds together and has very little learning curve for the scores of the web developers to adopt to. With the huge success of Mac OS X in the recent days and lack of cross platform support with .net (they are trying), there is a great potential for Adobe to become the choice for the developer community. And then it has Adobe flash which is on 98% of the browsers and is improving with every version. 
Now it is coming with the Office suite based on AIR. With its amazing presence in the small business world in both PC and Mac worlds and its connections with the web developer community, Adobe has all the armour to take on MS .net  and their office suite. 

I think Google has to stick with its ad selling business and take it to television, radio, news papers, magazines and hoardings and make the most of the 1 trillion dollars of Ad Money out there.
And leave it to Adobe to cut the life line of Microsoft.

Thats a pattern... i can recognize that.

Oh! we are so nice.. we are so great... we want to make the world a better place to live in... we are the greatest company... we love people.. we do no evil... we empower people.. hmmm...

for the 12 questions asked, this guy was able to parrot the same statement 7 times irrespective of what the question is... OK it is good that Google is participating in the auction for the 700MHz spectrum and proposed some constraints that will sure help every one in the US to make it more open.. but to act like they are doing all this for the greater good of the world and not to increase their dominance beyond the PCs. may be they want to do good to people while making money. But not even once he mentioned that they are doing this to reach more people for longer periods and make money off that. He kept repeating the same phrase and want to stress that they this because telecom companies are evil and they are the robinhoods.

"Brand Management"

http://news.com.com/Googles+battle+for+wireless+spectrum/2008-1039_3-6199374.html?tag=st.num
Sacca: "The 700MHz spectrum auction represents the last big chance that the United States has to create an opportunity for meaningful change in access to the Internet for the broadest set of people possible."
"We have fought hard on a number of fronts to make the Internet as available as possible to the largest number of people as possible."
"What is going to make the Internet most available to the broadest number of people at the lowest price possible?"
" Google is willing to do anything necessary to introduce some competition into this space and to really drive the prices of service to where they are most affordable to the broadest number of people. It is reprehensible that there are still so many people left off the Net."
"We are deeply committed to changing this industry for the benefit of end users."
"we are trying to do what we can to remove obstacles that are standing in the way of making the Internet available to the largest number of people possible."
" We are trying to look one by one at those obstacles to see where we can have an impact to make the Internet available to everyone. "

Funny he said this -
" I think we do have to question when Verizon and AT&T jump to accept any proposal. We have to look at what their ulterior motives are."

Yahoo! should think BIG

Yahoo is the largest visited site with more traffic than any other site and is consistently at the top for several years. Still in terms of revenues its lagging way behind Google. It is also lagging in innovation. Yahoo! is coming up with more and more services to keep its leadership intact, but it was not able to deliver that next 'BIG' thing. It adopted web 2.0 stuff like RSS feeds, tags etc.. faster than other portals and even Google. But it has lost on its best opportunity with Yahoo! 360, which could have been a best combination of social networking and taking advantage of the huge content that's generated by users every day on Yahoo properties. Shame, it failed on that and didn't go that full mile. Now facebook has hit with its platform strategy and made it big. Wait till it hits the wall street. It may not be as big as Google, but I think it may topple Yahoo! s position.

So, what should Yahoo! do now. Adding more yahoo properties may not help much. Yahoo should take a leaf from facebook and amazon which are providing the front end and back end of the new innovation on the web with Facebook platform and Amazon web services by building on their core strengths. So Yahoo! which is now creating or licensing and hosting most of the content with portals like Yahoo! news, Yahoo! TV, Yahoo! Sports and like. should build on its strength - Scalability in hosting content.

If you break the content to the elemental types, most of the web sites have text, images, audio, video in various page layouts. There might also be other elemts like maps, lists, comments, ratings etc.. And who is better than Yahoo! to present them to largest user base.

I think Yahoo! should open up its website for content providers. Allow the companies to create their own micro sites. Give them elemental blocks and give them the power to change the look and feel in the way they like. Provide them a hosted web content management system, where they can upload their content and present it in the way they want. Provide them what Amazon and Facebook are providing separately, give them the storage space to store their content and UI blocks to present it in the way they want. Make it really really easy to add content, just like blogger, flickr and youtube. Host it for them, provide them all the web analytics, host the ads and share the ad revenue.

Its taking Yahoo! web hosting to the next level. Make it for the content creator instead of small business. Smaller content creators like news papers, magazines, local radio, local tv channels, smaller television studios, indie film producers, professional photographers, sports teams, celebrities and what not. And you give them access to all your users and all your services where ever it makes sense. With this, they do not need to worry about all the IT infrastructure and web developers and designers and eliminatr a whole lot of overhead and spend their resources on their core competency, ie creating content.

Its a win-win.

Create A Yahoo! Web. (like world wide web)

Do No Evil (Series)

"Viacom is a company built from lawsuits, look at their history," Schmidt said on Friday.
"Look who they hired as CEO, Philippe Dauman, who was the general counsel for Viacom for 20 years," he added.

Google takes swipe at Viacom

Now it is getting personal.
You built an empire by pirating the copyright material, i.e youtube. You are making money off the content you do not own. And when they ask that you should do something about it you didn't care. And when they file a law suit, you come around and abuse them. When you can screen sexual or racist content from appearing on youtube, why can you not screen copyrighted content? Which part of it is not Evil. May be you can get out of the court unscathed but that doesn't make what you are doing any less evil.

It just shows that they all are the same, Evil Corporates.

Google's unwanted child!!

I keep hearing about the failure of google and yahoo in the social networking arena. That myspace and facebook has taken over. But a quick look at the alexa rankings reveal that orkut.com is 8th in the rankings. And it has been that way since last october.

But why is it considered a failure? coz it doesn't make money?
True, but youtube doesn't make money either. Why does it get all the hype and media coverage and most important, a very superior treatment from its parent, The Google. Why is the youtube evolving so rapidly with wonderful new features all the time, while the orkut is more or less the same for over an year.

Simple, orkut is popular in third world countries and would never have enough money to prompt google to increase spending on this neglected child. In US, it stands at a distant 30 in the rankings and probably skewed towards the immigrants rather than americans. So we don't care about them?

If Google has the noble intentions of making the world a better place, why not spend some research dollars on Orkut and make it more stable and add some desperately needed features to it, so that the millions of loyal Orkut user can have better experience?

Answer: Show me the money!!!!

Do no Evil!!!

http://blog.outer-court.com/archive/2007-06-30-n86.html

This is exactly what I was talking about in one of my earlier posts on why trusting Google blindly is foolish.


A huge WTF


Google is not a small start up anymore with just a handful of employees with everything under control.
This time it is a small slip up and thanks to the world watching Google with all eyes is Called pretty quickly. Just don't submit to Google with blind love. Companies change, people change and policies also change.

A huge WTF??

Eric Schmidt with Financial Times -

“We are very early in the total information we have within Google. The algorithms will get better and we will get better at personalisation."
“The goal is to enable Google users to be able to ask the question such as ‘What shall I do tomorrow?’ and ‘What job shall I take?’ ”
“We cannot even answer the most basic questions because we don’t know enough about you. That is the most important aspect of Google’s expansion.”

Hold ON!!!

Okay!! let's assume that Google is a great company and the trio leading the Google now are the greatest philanthropists that the world has ever produced and are on a mission to make the world a better place to live in. But what if?? they are not?? What about those who succeed, what about the hordes of employees we trust our information with?? what about the future laws, patriot act anyone? what about privacy? what about the meaning and purpose of life? getting advice from some bot?? Ridiculously Ridiculous.

Let us for a second, imagine those words coming out of Steve Ballmer's mouth.
Hell's Frozen!!!!
How much should one trust a Corporation?

Approving of everything Google (or anyone who wants to get into your mind) does just based on love and trust is just like giving Bush' the mandate to go to Iraq. Only with worse results.

Google's Future??

Going by the way things are moving, I feel that google would become basically an 'Ad-Selling' company, with all these Orkut, Youtube, Maps, Gmail, Maps and even docs would become less critical and non core.
google would become the destination to buy and sell ad spots in all media, TV, internet, radio, mobile, gps, publshing or where ever the content is. Thats a lot of money.
All these internet web sites would become a small channel to host their ads, would become less profitable as google would go on to host ads on other major portals like aol, myspace, mapquest or any new killer web portal that may come by. And it would not make sens developing and hosting all the data and applications, it can just get money from the others doing the job for them and happily share the revenues.

Youtube vs Viacom

Viacom sued youtube for hosting its copyrighted material on the web and not doing enough to protect the copyrighted material. They are pressing for $1 billion for the 1.5 billion hits that Viacom content had on the youtube. Fair Enough.
I wouldn't have supported Viacom, but for the precedence of napster and the google's self righteous smugness in claiming the 'Don't be Evil' as their motto. How much ever the consumer is benefited and what ever be the outcome of the current debates on the ethics of piracy, companies like youtube need to be accounted for. If napster and kazaa had to go, youtube also must go. I see no difference in the business model.
You cannot say 'don't be evil' and then host all the copyrighted content, scan all the copyrighted books without taking the permission of the owners. Taking down the content.. when the owner requests, is not good enough. You cannot expect the owners to keep a watch on all the distribution channels to see where they are being ripped off. If making it easy for the users to find content is your selfless goal, you can redirect the users to the owner websites. If you can prevent porn to appear on the youtube, you likely can prevent the copyrighted stuff to show up too.
Or build business like 'joost' after making contracts with the content providers first. Not the other way round, use them to build the market and then use the might to force them in to submission.

Or, just say we're 'Evil' and we can rest the case.

Google Master Stroke

A number of Google products are hyped beyond the practical utility that particular product brings in. And there are way too many products to list, which are there just because Google can develop them.
But this one has far reaching effects on the Big Picture, like their search does.

From the advertisers point of view it is plain simple, the tools Google provides are so simple to use , it makes it very easy to run an ad campaign. Even for the smallest of the companies with out spending big bucks. Probably all they need to come up with is a block of text, unlike other advertising platforms, where they have to come up with a strategy, slogan, a banner or potential time slots and potential locations on a web page etc... Its not too complex, but there is work to be done. and we do not even know if some one is looking a you ad in case of ads in other media outlets. Here is where Google ads work, its so easy to place an advertisement, change the text, analyze the results... you don not even need to talk to a soul.

Now that Google has this huge client base who already established relations with them, what can they do with the good will. Well, you have the answers now. It's in print now, Then it would be radio and of course on the television not too far from now. Google has this audio and video capabilities, that the customers can just upload the stuff and probably select the time slots based on the price and the location, pick the one that suits you most and Voila, its ON. It is all automated.

It's same principles that work with customers, that work with the advertisers too. Travel agents are extinct species, because you can search and find the right flights and hotels yourselves instead of relying on what some one else sees on their database. You do it all yourself with out need to worry about explaining some one where you want to go and how flexible you are etc... You have the information then and there..

It probably makes it easier for the small publishers and radio networks and local television channels who are not part of any big chains, even pod casters and video unloaders to generate revenues.

Google, It's the future of advertising. And the money in advertising is unlimited.

Web based apps vs Desktop apps (Take Two)

Wow!!
I was talking about this earlier on which of the two is better.
And i said i think there is a middle ground i believe is the way to go.
And you've got it.

http://labs.adobe.com/wiki/index.php/Apollo

This new run time (??) would do exactly that.

The developers need to develop flash based or html based (and more) applications and they can be run on this Apollo run time. (like java run time).
The good about this platform is the interface is not constrained by the web browser, you have access to desktop resources, its cross platform.

It sounds like it is the future of apps.
Can't wait to see the beta and the products.

What is so right about Google??

What is it that makes people love Google so blindly. Why do people lose objectivity when Google or even Apple is in the picture.

Apple and Google are great companies with a lot of innovation and marketing and most importantly some great products. But that doesn't make them invincible. Are they?

Though Google is churning out a number of unsuccessful products like a factory that are supposed to change the world, no one mentioned the lack of integration of all these features and lack of a common thread that connects these dots, every one gives it to Google and assumes that Google knows something that other mortals doesn't even comprehend and would surprise every one, until the CEO himself came out and said they are going in a wrong direction and mentioned the need to have features, not the products.

Until yesterday, when google bought You Tube, for a crazy 1.65 billion dollars. No one in the world said or though, that a company with 67 employees and no business model to generate revenues is worth even a fraction of that. Now once this unthinkable happened, people assume google knows what it is doing and even comment that news corp got myspace for a paltry 600mil??

What did you Google see in YouTube that is worth 1.65 billion dollars. Definitely not the technology, since they have their own video site, which is pretty good, if not great. Users? I don't know. I don't know what it is.. Nobody does, every one speculates what can be the reason.

Many are trying to guess something that would make sense out of this deal. I don't see anything that is worth 1.65 bil, unless it starts generating revenue 'yesterday' . I don't even want to go into the copyrights issue. Is it just because they have money that is lying there unused, they just fell like spending so much? In good intentions for the share holders, I wish they really have something up their sleeve, that works like magic.

You are being watched

It has to happen, it happened.
AOL accidentally released the searches performed by it's users on the web. And it pulled them out quickly. It was enough time for people to download that info and mirror it everywhere. And if you look into those searches you'd really get scared.
the identity of the user is not revealed. But each user goes by an ID. I guess they track these users based on browser cookies.
You can understand why the Govt. is requesting this kind of information, there are people out there who doesn't have right intentions.
Most of the big companies submitted their saved searches but Google complains that it is unethical and Govt is crossing the line in doing that. And google has become sort of hero in every ones eyes. Good for us.
But why in the first place should these companies store these search queries with out any warning, with out informing the users. Is it ethical for these companies to store such information? How is it different from recording all your phone conversations? How is it different from taking your photographs or video with out telling you? Is it not Un ethical?? It is a blatant abuse on privacy.

But what is ethical and what is not decided by us. It is decided by the big guys :)

Web based apps vs Desktop apps

While google is trying to move apps from desktop to the web. Microsoft is attempting to bring some of them right back on to the desktop. At least one of them, that is online blogging with a desktop publishing - Live Writer

I think there is middle ground for this 'every thing on the web' vs 'everything on the desktop'. That is, to have light weight zero foot print clients on the desktop and have the information on the server. In that way you could use both the power of processing and rich user interface at the desktop and have your preferences and data at the server. You can have nice interfaces with out getting into the limitations of web based technologies like flash and AJAX standards. And you can have access your data every where.

Apple and Google

IPod and Google Search are great products to start with.
They created these markets and are the leaders.
But now we have other players who offers better products.
But the market share of these products keep growing.
the notion is that their simplicity is the key selling point.
But I say it is all marketing. Free publicity. First mover advantage.

Ipod shuffle is a BULL product, but it sells better than other cheaper flash players with a display, FM transmitters and SD slots to upgrade memory.
Yahoo Music and Napster gives you a better music download plans for the real music buffs.

And coming to search, Yahoo gives you better functionality, fewer clicks, social networking in search, great shortcuts,
and wonderful 'also try' feature and many more. But google is growing bigger and eating up yahoo search's mkt share. (firefox and DELL are also major influencers by bundling ;))

That is because these names have become synonyms for what they do.
People plan to buy IPods, they don't plan to buy 'MP3 Players'
People don't search, they google.

Most of them I believe don't even explore further. They just go straight to them!!!

Google buys writely!!

That's a great news. Google bringing more and more stuff to the web. Google seems to have the grandest plans.
It's not just looking to compete with office products.
But they might be work to some extent. If it is doing all this for the online advertising revenue, it would work for sure.
If they are out to kill office, then forget it - it would not happen.

I see a problem in having such grand plans, it takes time. A lot of time. And god only knows what would be the state of the technology in five yrs time. It would work. But it can not become the market leader.