Category Archives: Google

Self Help or Self Ish?

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I’m sure there is some virtuous stuff amidst the current swirl of motivationally spoken self-helping new ageified banter, but I can’t [self] help but think “hey, this is mostly just a license for people to feel comfortable about doing whatever they darn well please”.

At least with much of the bible thumping old time religion there is an undercurrent of helpfulness and broad social responsibility. Also the new and improved and globilized business models are paying more than lip service to the idea that business responsibility goes far beyond profits for shareholders. This includes the big beneficiaries of big biz. One needs look no farther than the Gates Foundation or Google.org or the Omidyar (Ebay founder) efforts with Microloans to see how powerful this new business ethic has become in solving real world problems.

Many new age folks would suggest that there is some form of collective consciousness and that participating at that level does much good for the world. I’m very skeptical. Tell that to the kid in Africa with AIDs or Malaria or no clean water. They’ll (correctly) choose water purification to soul purification, and we should all get that set of priorities straight.

Godin at Google is Good

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Seth Godin, one of the great online marketeers, recently spoke at Google and here is the Video.

His main point is that success is about marketing more than technology, even for companies like Google.

I’m really struck the more I “dive in” to the Web 2.0 people, experience, and companies how poorly this simple message is understood.   Everybody seems to “get” that they’ll need to monetize traffic at some point, but I think many *wrongly* have taken away from the Google experience that great money comes when you build great technology.   It happens, but not often.

Who will win Web 2.0?

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Google was the CLEAR winner of the Web 1.0 contest.   With a jaw dropping company valuation of over 100 billion in a matter of only a few years since inception, Google continues as a the dominant force in the dominant paradigm of Web 1.0 with is … SEARCH.

But …. look at Yahoo – they are “getting” Web 2.0  and they are BUYING Web 2.0 companies in a big way. When you talk to Yahoo people they are talking 2.0 and they are very excited about it.

But …. it’s not clear there Web 2.0 offers the same opportunities for *business* that Google could take advantage of, namely pay per click advertising concentrated around a huge search portal and thousands of affiliated content sites that run “adsense” ads.

Google may be a great technology company but they are making about 99% of their money from …. advertising.    If Web 2.0 “succeeds”, as it almost inevitably must, in redistributing content and power to the broader and growing online user community, then who’s going to control the advertising which will also be distributed more broadly?

Google 2006 = Yahoo 2001?

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Bambi Francisco at MarketWatch raises many of the key points about Google’s monetization challenges in the coming months and years. I was surprised to see this coming from Bambi who’s articles back in Bubble days were notoriously optimistic about the prospects for companies like Amazon that later saw HUGE stock dives. She also notes that IACI has a darn good search. I note they don’t have a bubblesque stock price either, with PE about … 12.

I covered some of these GOOG Stock items earlier, actually even before the recent stock tumble at Google.

IF Web 2.0 > Web 1.0 THEN Yahoo > Google

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I think the most profound issue in the online world right NOW is “where are we going with web 2.0”?

I hope to answer this question, at least in part, at next week’s mashup camp
in the heart of Silicon Valley. The event is really shaping up to be great, with 300 developers, observers, and API providers coming in from all over the country to share ideas, mashups, and a few beers. In addition to API folks from Google, Yahoo, Amazon, ASK, and others two of my favorite bloggers will be there – Robert Scoble from MSN and Jeremy Zawodny from Yahoo. These guys are among the best known tech evangelists for their companies and what THEY blog about is often what *everybody else* will be talking about in a few weeks or months.

GOOG 2006 = YHOO 1999 ?

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I think Google is a great company but I simply don’t get the stock price. Not sure if I’m in good or bad company pretty much agreeing with Henry Blodget on this. He’s the Wall Street insider who can’t give stock advice anymore, but gives some REALLY interesting comments in his new blog.

Interesting to me is the fact the ultimate Google insiders felt that $85 was about the “right number” for the IPO and the fact nothing really fundamental has changed since that time unless I missed something online. Of course they have great earnings from ads as the online ad market swells, but Google knew this would happen even if Wall Street was slow on the uptake of the implication of massively superior ROI from online advertising.

This sure reminds me of the Yahoo bubble of 1999.

Also interesting is the degree to which Yahoo can affect Google’s revenue by manipulating the revenue YAHOO shares from it’s Publisher Network which is in beta now.

What if Yahoo decided to pay out a 100% rev share for 6 months as an incentive for Adsense people to jump the Google ship? Google would see a HUGE drop in revenues. Simply HUGE – Adsense was 43% of total Google revenues for 3rd Quarter of 2005!

If this happened Google profit would not be nearly as strongly affected as revenues because most of this revenue goes back to publishers. 78.5 pecent of the total to be exact, thought the rev share varies among publishers. However I suspect even the savvy street folks don’t really understand where all this money has been coming from, and would be alarmed to see it dry up as suddenly as it appeared.

Yahoo could keep up this pressure for some time since they don’t get nearly as much from their publisher network.

Would it be legal for Yahoo to short Google and then announce this move? I assume the SEC would say “NOT LEGAL” and this would wind up as a complex case of stock price manipulation, but in any case what’s Yahoo going to do with revenue share?

Indications at the conferences and from my read of the company are …… they’ll keep them about the same as Google so both Yahoo and Google can turn a good buck, but seems to me if so Google’s buck is not going to grow fast enough to justify current pricing.

Gates hasn’t gone soft, he’s gone heroic!

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What a disappointment to read New York Magazine’s John Heilemann on Bill Gates and what he sees as a softening of Gates that has led to a weakening of Microsoft.

Like most tech oriented folks I’ve never been a big MS fan, but ever since hearing Gates on Charlie Rose discuss development with a passion he used to reserve for monopolizing the PC industry I’ve been a huge fan of his and was thrilled to see the media attention, albeit very BRIEF media attention, following the Time award.

Rather than laud him for shifting his generally brilliant focus from software to world health, Heilemann focuses very narrowly on what he sees as the demise of Microsoft.

It’s a dubious premise at best (watch their unique Neural Network search triumph in about 1- 2 years as a fantastic tool), but even if it’s true that Microsoft is dying the challenges are not related to Gates philanthropy or even Gates himself as much as they are the result of the tidal waves of online innovation and change sweeping away old business structures and new and old companies alike.

I expect more from elite magazines, but like most in our sad and superficial corporate media New York Magazine fiddles while the developed world burns, and like mainstream TV media focuses more on a notable’s celebrity while the celebrity, in this case Gates, heroically tackles real and pressing global problems with unprecedented success.

Shame on Heilemann, shame on New York Magazine, and Bravo to Bill Gates.
—————-

UPDATE: John Heilemann very courteously replied to my rant at length in the following email in which he also had to correct my mistake calling NEW YORK MAGAZINE the “NEW YORKER”.

> On 1/10/06, John Heilemann wrote:

joe —

sorry you were disappointed, but at least you can let the New Yorker off the hook — i’m a columnist for New York Magazine, an entirely different publication.

i wrote a book about the microsoft antitrust trial, so i have some views about the company, its past behavior, and future prospects.
maybe we can just agree to disagree on some points there.

but while it’s true that i didn’t devote the bulk of my column to
praising gates for his philanthropic work — a point of view i
considered pretty fully covered by Time’s Person of the Year cover
story — it’s not like i didn’t acknowledge the point:

“By all accounts, Gates has emerged as the most influential philanthropist on the planet; with a $29 billion endowment this foundation is setting new standards for both generosity and rigor in tackling an assortment of the world’s most dire maladies, from malaria to HIV.”

“Gates’s consolation is that his opportunity to be a transformational figure isn’t lost with Microsoft’s abeyance. This is not a trivial thing. Gates has already changed the world once; now, through his foundation—which is not only disgorging a gusher of funds but inventing a new model for philanthropy, driven by statistics, leverage, and an insistence on accountability—he has a chance to do it again. And as Bono told Time, “The second act for Bill Gates may be the one that history regards more.”

sorry if this is insufficient — but please don’t accuse me of
ignoring the good that gates is doing with his charitable endeavors.

jh

Who’s in charge dot com? – sure isn’t the publishers.

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The the balancing act going on between the forces I list below is very interesting, and will grow more important as the internet consolidates it’s position as the key publishing and communications tool of the times – perhaps of all time.

Users of the internet look for info and click on ads. These guys pay everybody’s bills and should be demanding better treatment. Google makes something like 95% of it’s money from … you!

Publishers provide the content and also help make Google and other big company insiders rich in exchange for modest revenue shares to the publisher (probably about 50% for Yahoo Publisher Network and Google Adsense, though neither Google nor Yahoo share this revenue sharing data with the publisher). Over time the rev share should tend to increase as it did with Hotels, which rapidly went from early days at 20% to the current 50% and up on the room commission.

Big companies must maintain profits AND market share, which may compete with each other. e.g. For Adsense and YPN higher payouts mean lower profit but a greater market share of publishers. Loyalty on the internet is a fickle thing – most people are willing to jump from a previous favorite as soon as the strong prospect of greater profit beckons.

Little companies who must promise big profits to investors. Take Squidoo for example – they are trying to minimize the cost of publishing. Will the “experts” cooperate and if YES, how much revenue will they demand? The balance is extremely important to publishers. If Squidoo can get publishing on the cheap from the legions of well qualified yet bored and “ready to write” internet users, most “quality” online publishers may be hard pressed to match that content with even poorly paid writers.

Higher quality, extra interesting publishers may be able to maintain an audience and tap into the type of thing John Battelle is working on with his Federated Media project – a high yield advertising system that matches users/advertisers/publishers in new and better ways.

A Google Nightmare

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Jeremy! Oh no it’s happening ….. to …. me …..

I had a talk a few weeks ago at WebmasterWorld Las Vegas with the most excellent Mr. Jeremy Zawodny. We were concerned about the way people are starting to change their writing styles and subjects to comply with search engine preferences.

Today I noticed this happening to me as I was about to NOT POST this note critical of Google. I almost thought “hey, I’m beeing too hard on Google. They are a suberb company and the most excellent Mr. Matt Cutts, Google’s new uber blogmeister and global search guru, could not be a better spokesperson for the company as well as being a really great fellow.

Matt was also at Webmasterworld Las Vegas where he went out of his way to answer complex questions and treat everybody with great respect. I’ve talked with him at some length and Google should be simply thrilled to have him out and about making friends and keeping Google tops on the “coolest company/coolest people” list for many technology watchers.

BUT, greatness brings great responsibility, and here is where I think Google is falling short right now big time. So with apologies to the most excellent Googlers I’ve met I offer this in the spirit of constructive criticism:

My great fear about Google:

First, massive spam onslaughts cause Google to accept huge amounts of collateral damage for legitimate sites.

THEN, Google’s market share insulates them from the needs of the web community and makes them immune to criticism.

THEN, Google fails in their OBLIGATION as a MARKET LEADER to provide basic and thorough support for sites they have delisted or downranked.

THEN, People accept all this and fail to rant against it because people are sheep, sucking up to Google and thinking stupidly that search rather than content is what the web is all about.

THEN, even otherwise intelligent people often argue, in dumbfounded ignorance of historical precedent, that Google has no obligation to the community to work hard to identify the damage it has caused and to effectively deal with the problems it’s dominance has created.

Wait – this is not a nightmare – it’s happening RIGHT NOW!

Yes, Google has a new program to communicate with damaged sites but it’s weak and small. The support system does not provide access to problem solvers, rather to canned info.