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.