Category Archives: yahoo

Go Google Yourself!

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Ha – Tech bloggers seem to leave a lot of global tragedies unnoticed, but whatever you do don’t get ARROGANT about being the big gorilla of search.   This Google post, to me, does not cross any lines but it sure has caused an outcry from bloggers who think Google’s getting pretty dang arrogant to dictate english usage in this fashion while slapping Yahoo in the face.
Although this is a small thing, one wonders if Google is teetering near that fateful “tipping point” where it crosses from a darling of search to a sort of Darth Vader of search – powerful and effective but constantly under suspicion.

Yikes, even Battelle is swearing about this!

Zune song sharing can be summed up in two words. Brilliant, and Finally!

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Rumor has it that Zune will encourage song sharing with revenue share to the “user song promoter” who sends a song to friends to listen to free and then gets some money if they buy it. MS certainly would be wise to cut the users in on the profits.

As I recently noted it’s surprising how users still don’t demand more of a piece of the action, though not surprising how Google, YouTube, Myspace, Yahoo, MSN, and other user content collection points, the key beneficiaries of this arrangement, have not done much to innovate in that direction.

Good for MS to break that ice. Users, collectively, hold all the *future* revenue streams in their wallets. Therefore they could hold most of the power. It’s about time they used it.

More at CrunchGear

Google launches customized search

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Wow, Matt notes that unlike offerings by Yahoo and LIVE, Google’s going to allow you to include thousands of URLs in a customized search specialized for your own websites.

This is exactly what I was looking for in travel as it allows you toa create a great regionally targeted search engine using “known and trusted” URLs combined with Google’s monster search power. They’ll also be sharing revenues from the searches though historically that’s been too small amount with the generic customized search (which they’ve had for some time).

Good going Google! Yahoo and MSN – copy this approach NOW!

Yahoo really should have come up with this “including many URLs” approach because it’ll encourage the community to pick trusted URLs to include in their searches, and Yahoo, unlike Google, would be comfortable using that human feedback. It’s spammable, sure, but a great spam fighting tool in that the power of the whole community is unleashed in the selection process.

Hey!  I built one for Oregon Travel and will upgrade California Travel with  more good sites soon.    This has a lot of potential if Google uses the community input to help weed out crappy sites and upgrade unknown sites, though they tend to avoid this type of human (and therefore spammable) input.    Yahoo is more comfortable with that approach so I hope they are taking advantage of it via the Rollyo and Yahoo custom search user inputs.

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Google Gorg replacing Microsoft Borg? Don’t be P/E vil?

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Chris “Factory Joe” Messina of Flock has a provocative post about how Google is …. continuing to take over the internet world.

Although I’m more concerned about the virtual monopoly on search rather than Google’s assualt on Microsoft’s virtual monopoly on operating systems and office applications, everybody is well served to start thinking, as Voltaire sort of suggested hundreds of years ago “Is an all-Google world the best of all possible worlds?”

The answer, of course, is NO. Google’s brought great stuff and should keep on bringing great stuff. Google’s been rewarded with almost unimaginable riches and that’s fine. It may even be true that the Google juggernaut has some juggernauting to do before it needs to be brought in check. Sometimes it’s great to let super clever people just run with things until they run out of steam.

But like Chris I think it’s now clear that stock prices and commercial considerations have considerable influence on Google and their decisions and operations. You don’t have to think Google is running around intentionally doing monopolistic things to worry that if the going gets tougher and they no longer have so much of the search market and are fighting to maintain the stock Price Earnings ratios and options values the “don’t be evil” mantra may be interpreted more as “don’t be P/Evil-keep Google on top”! Wait. I think that Mantra change is already under way.

Google is a great company, but as Chris suggests that doesn’t mean we should stop keeping our eyes on them.

Disclaimer: I’m hardly a market mover but should say I do have stock in Google competitor Yahoo and puts on Google because I thought it was overpriced.

Yahoo – maybe they should change the exclamation point from ! to ?

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It’s getting harder to be bullish on Yahoo even though I personally remain bullish on their long term prospects. Yahoo remains the number one website in the world, the number one video streaming site, and has the best and coolest picture posting community (Flickr). Yahoo has the best understanding and support for the new web aka “Web 2.0” and a robust developer network.

SO WHAT’S the PROBLEM YAHOO ?

Unfortunately for Yahoo and for shareholder me, Google and not Yahoo has been the overwhelming beneficiary of the swelling pots of online advertising money. Google’s contextual matching of websites and searches to advertisements has yielded better returns for publishers and advertisers, creating a very profitable win-win scenario that has made Google the hottest advertising agency…whoops I mean technology company, in history.

Yahoo’s Panama was released yesterday and may help reduce the contextual matching advantage Google has enjoyed for years.

Wall Street doesn’t seem impressed so far, but what do they know anyway?

Online Sheep get the revenue shaft. Hey Google, when you gonna show *Average Joe’s* the money rather than Rupert Murdoch?

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Business week is fretting over how Google will monetize the YouTube content and whether they’ll share with Myspace owners News Corp. Myspace users have embedded tons of YouTube video content in their personal pages so this is potentially a big stream of cash for somebody. Poor Rupert Murdoch doesn’t have enough money as it is, so heaven forbid that the content producers or the users would be put first in line for a piece of the action that *they generate*.

Business Week:
Google could soon have the ability to stream ads to MySpace users who are viewing YouTube videos embedded onto their MySpace pages. The question is whether News Corp. will get a slice of that revenue, and if so, how much …

I think a more relevant question is how much of that revenue should go to those generating the content and the billion daily page views.

Sites (like Google) are doing a fine job of making it possible for Average Joe’s to find the web pages of other Average Joe’s over at Myspace who in turn does a fine job helping people build silly pages filled with videos and images from other infrastructure sites like Flickr and Youtube. They should be well compensated for this and I think 25% is a good number, with 75% of the total revenue generated going to the “users” who are generating all that content and all those page views.

“Professional” users like me already get a piece of the action from Google – about 60-70% of the ad revenue I generate at my websites comes back to me via Google Adsense payments, and I think that’s probably a fine relationship. At least until Yahoo or MSN wake up to the fact they can jump start their contextual advertising services with a temporary 100% revenue share with publishers. Then I, and a large chunk of the 43% of Google’s Adsense Revenue, will be jumping ship. Booking services only give me about 50% of the commissions I generate but that’ll trend upwards over time (ha – it used to be only 20% revenue sharing).

However it’s very intriguing how the big players in the mega money deals leave out the key people in the equation – the Average Joe user. Part of that is simply scale. An average myspace user is only generating nickels and dimes (literally) per month in ad revenue. Collectively it’s a truckload of money but individually not much and Myspace does provide a good service to the user. Win Win? Maybe, but I think the trend will be towards people valuing their own content and their eyeball time more selfishly than they do right now.

The problem with all this great people-generated content — clearly the heart and soul of the new internet — is that the people generating it are getting left in the revenue dust. There are exceptions who manage to turn a few bucks here and there from the crumbs dropped by the mega monetizers like Google, but the average Joe who blogs and posts pictures and has a Myspace page with his Youtube videos gets nothing but the use of the online tools. That searchability and infrastructure is worth something. Arguably it’s worth a lot and clearly Average Joe is happy so far getting sh** for all his content effort.

However, I think over time Average Joe will become more demanding, perhaps even having the audacity to suggest that the collective fruits of all that online labor should be shared not just among Google and friends, but shared with those who watch it all and who make it all worth watching.

Time Warner to Google: We spell your merger “SueTube”. Battelle to TW: Lookout!

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John Battelle thinks Time Warner is mistaken to attack Google on copyright, writing over at Searchblog:

a shot across the bow may bring a broadside from the other side

I usually agree with John Battelle but I don’t really follow his logic here. I agree with him and Bob Dylan that “The Times They are a Changin”“, and that we need a new song to show how the old media empires don’t get the internet. I’d call that song “The Time Warner’s .. They Aren’t a Changin’ “.

However, I don’t see how bringing out the big legal beasts will hurt Time Warner. Frankly, I think they just want Google to throw money at them. As the Napster buyout proved all this has little to do with “rights”, it’s a money grab, sung as usual to the tune of that great O’Jay’s tune of years and years ago “The Love of Money” :
Money money money money ….. money!
The HUGE winners in this are the clever YouTube founders who really just created a very clever distribution system at an opportune time. The user community, and then the GoogleBucks, followed. One thing that irks me about all these mega deals – including Google itself – is that they are built on the backs of the swelling supply of (mostly) user generated content and in the case of YouTube a lot of illegally obtained copyrighted stuff. There will be little or no compensation to the *key components* of the YouTube environment other than a distribution vehicle. Now, one might argue that that exposure is enough compensation for an average YouTube uploader but it still seems…”wrong” to me.

I’d agree that those who create and then monetize these efforts should make a lot, but it’s unfortunate that people, like sheep, choose not to aggressively explore all our online alternatives. I think if we did do more exploring and innovative thinking we’d have a stronger ecosystem of companies rather than a few big players and a plethora of “also rans” standing around drooling at the prospect of a Google or Yahoo buyout.

Prediction: Google will buy Facebook for about 1.1 billion

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Irrational exuberance in the dot com shopping aisles?

No, it’s a chess game and Google’s winning….again.

I’m really starting to understand what seems like irrational exuberance on the part of Google and the major players. A Google aquisition of Facebook would be consistent with what Robert Scoble suggested is happening: Google is building a moat around it’s advertising business.

Steve Ballmer also suggested this notion in his recent BusinessWeek interview, ironically fretting that Google could monopolize the media business. Yikes, Steve would really run out of chairs then?

I can almost hear Ballmer to Schmidt:
“Hey Cowboy, there’s only enough room in this here internet for ONE monopoly you, you, you dirty monopolistic sonofabitch BASTARDS!”

Schmidt to Ballmer:
“HEY! DROP that chair and step AWAY from the Vista Browser!”

Google, with tons of cash to burn and a staggering market cap, has far less to lose in the high stakes internet poker game than Yahoo, Ebay, or even Microsoft. Microsoft is bigger than Google and theoretically richer, but unlike Google Microsoft has yet to figure out good ways to monetize their (improving) search services and (not improving) content services.

Ballmer’s juggling how to preserve his big ticket MS Office and Vista projects. Yahoo’s worried about plunging valuations and people leaving and the fact that a billion represents a lot more to them than it does to Google.   This is almost certainly complicating the Yahoo Facebook negotiations right now.  Ebay’s pretty fat and happy where they are. Meanwhile, Google can focus in laser-like fashion on keeping Google in the driver’s seat with it’s superb contextual advertising monetization.

The best defense is a good offense, so they are buying up properties to increase their control over the advertising space and keep those hundreds of millions of eyeballs out of the hands of MS and Yahoo.

Will this work? I say probably not for similar reasons it was stupid for Yahoo to buy Broadcast.com years ago. Video is junky and won’t monetize well. It’ll be more of an encumbrance to Google’s core competencies than an asset. But … things change, and in the meantime it’s fun to watch this high stakes game of chess unfold.

It’s a show you won’t see on YouTube.

Facebook worth more than YouTube? Don says “yes”

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Don Dodge over at Microsoft has a great little thumbnail analysis of the business prospects of YouTube and Facebook, and concludes both are way overpriced at current valuations and Facebook is more valuable at 700 million. He cites Scoble’s latest thinking on the topic as well though it seems to me Robert seems too supportive of buying anything that even smells like Web 2.0 and is still feeling a bit hostile toward his ex employer.   I don’t blame him for that since he was way ahead on the new web and blogging and Microsoft’s failure to “get it” must have been really frustrating.

He’s not doing an extensive analysis but this is the best actual math I’ve seen regarding these deals, which as Don indicates with his little summary, appear to be valued more like Granny’s china than businesses. Given the uncertainties I think he’s generous to go 20x expected earnings. The landscape is changing daily and it’s not clear people will stick to favorite sites the way they stick to favorite brands (I predict we the people will not show much in the way of online brand loyalty, and this will shake it all up a lot in the coming years).

Ballmer on YouTube Google “transferring the wealth out of the hands of rights holders into Google”

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This is a great interview by Business Week of Microsoft’s CEO Steve Ballmer on Web 2.0 valuations and the competitive landscape up at the top of the heap, where Ballmer suggests only companies like MS, Google, Yahoo, and EBAY can even afford to think about doing the billion dollar deals. It’s a key point often lost on those who like to see valuations based more on financials and profits. Ballmer is noting that the competitive landscape can change these values.

But most interesting is this assertion:

The truth is what Google is doing now is transferring the wealth out of the hands of rights holders into Google. So media companies around the world are all threatened by Google. Why? Because basically Google is telling you how much of your ad revenue you get to keep.They better get some competition. Us. Yahoo!. Somebody better break through or you can short all media stocks right now. As long as there are two, you can hold onto media stocks. Google understands that. And that’s one reason why they’re willing to lose money up front.

Fascinating. He’s saying that Google’s trying to *monopolize* the media market. I certainly think there is some truth to this though we are way past the good old days where barriers to entry could let a big, rich, clever company – let’s say Microsoft – really do a good monopoly play on things everybody needed to use with computers. Part of the Google advantage he’s leaving out is that they really do intend to share most of the revenues with the producers and they have become so good at monetizing that, Google could argue reasonably, you’ll make more sharing revenues with Google than building your own advertising networks. My experiences comparing adsense returns to “roll your own ads” are fairly extensive and I can say that it’s very hard to beat adsense returns by creating your own advertising streams *even excluding the potentially huge cost of a sales staff*.

I think the main exception to Adsense as the best choice is what we see at super targeted niche sites like TechCrunch.com where they can charge about 10k monthly for a modest sized graphical advertisment.    Battelle’s Federated Media is hoping to bring this targeting advantage to a broader network of sites but I remain guarded in my optimism that Google’s highly automated and calibrated approaches won’t do a better job than humans do in most advertising spaces.

So, I think Ballmer’s right that competition will help publishers, but Yahoo and MSN sure better strap on the thinking caps and get their contextual advertising networks working much better than they currently work at providing revenue to all of us hard working internet small time publishing people out here.

Also, and this advice to MS and Yahoo is free and will knock Google out of the driver’s seat in a few months:  Launch your contextual ad networks with a 100% revenue share as an incentive for publishers to switch over.    At 43% of Google’s revenue Adsense is a huge factor at Google.