Google

Google Moves Into The TV Ad Business
With Internet advertising now thoroughly pwned by Google, the company is now looking to break into TV advertising.
The company is set to unveil deals today with satellite TV service EchoStar Communications and Astound Cable in the US to broker commercials in a similar way to how it offers online advertising.
Advertisers will be able to upload adverts to the company’s website and plug in to an automated system to select channel, time and geographical preferences.
Just like the current AdWords system, an auction then determines whether the ads get placed and for what price.
Keval Desai, product management director for Google TV ads, described the new TV scheme as being, “very similar to what we are doing on the Web. TV is becoming like the Web.”
During the television pilot, Google will serve commercials to EchoStar’s Dish Network satellite channels, a US service which enjoys around 13.1 million subscribers. The adverts won’t look any different to regular ones, carrying no Google branding and appearing in the usual time slots.
Google say that advances in set-top-box technologies have made it possible for them to report aggregate statistics on how many times an ad was viewed and whether folks watched it through to the end.
“Advertisers can use this data to understand the effectiveness of their TV ad campaigns and use this information to provide more relevant ads to viewers,” the company added.
Source
3 April, 2007
LG-Google Handsets Coming From Deal
LG have signed a deal with Google to put some of their mobile services pre-loaded onto its handsets.
LG have committed to release at least ten new mobile phone and will jointly market them as LG-Google handsets.
The apps covered by the deal are Google Maps – which lets people view maps and satellite imagery, find local businesses, and get driving directions, Gmail – the Java-driven, mobile focused version of their email service and Blogger Mobile – which, err … lets you blog while on the move, using images taken from the mobile phone.
Mr. Paul Bae, Vice President of the Product Planning Team at LG Electronics Mobile Communications Company really wants us all to know that “LG’s mobile devices, combined with Google, will provide consumers with easy access to their favourite Internet services even without a PC and make it easy for them to stay connected while in motion.” Wooo!
As we know LG don’t just do mobile phones, but a whole panoply of electronic bits, with a major focus on the home, so it’s interesting to hear from LG that they’ll be extending their relationship with Google to “develop digitalized home in the future.”
The financial terms of the deal were not revealed, indeed it’s unclear if LG will be sharing the income Google will derive from its advertising.
LG are being a little tarty about this. It’s not too long ago (end of 2006) that they signed a deal with Yahoo to pre-load Yahoo! services, including Yahoo! Go for Mobile 2.0, Yahoo! Mail and Yahoo Messenger on many of its mobile phones. Clearly that wasn’t an exclusive deal and it will have covered different handsets we imagine.
28 March, 2007
Information Revolution Fails To Attract Popular Support
Readers in London may have noticed in the past couple of weeks, posters on the tube and elsewhere advocating an ‘Information Revolution’, in response to the fact that one company allegedly controls 80% of the information on the Web. No more information is given, but the ad suggests a visit to information-revolution.org to find out more.
Sitting on the tube, opposite such an ad, I figured that there were only two possible companies which could be accused of controlling 80% of information on the Web; it could plausibly refer to either Internet Explorer’s market share (and would therefore be an advert for Firefox) or Google’s market share. Since I knew Mozilla wasn’t planning any advert like this, I assumed that it was a competitor to Google, and concluded it was probably Ask (since neither Yahoo or Microsoft would manage to think outside the box to such an extent). However, I dismissed that idea instantly as it seemed so unlikely that a well respected company would attempt such a pathetic campaign, and that therefore it must be some new search engine with far too much venture capital. By that point I had lost interest, and began examining the ventilation panel.
I didn’t think any more about it until a storm erupted on the blogosphere a few days later. Ask guilty of astroturfing! screamed the headlines. The search engine had launched a deceptive marketing campaign (astroturfing because of the attempt to impersonate grass roots activity – get it) without disclosing that they were behind it. Finally getting round to looking at the campaign Website, I discovered a blog, including a post on why the ‘revolution’ had been forced to ‘go underground’:
The regime supporters are telling us to “advertise” the features we have, rather than wage an underground revolution. If only we had a choice! Everyone knows that: A) you have to try a feature to really understand it, and most people have been brainwashed that they don’t need to try another search engine’s features and B) advertising doesn’t work anymore!! That’s why we had to go underground.
Not to mention the factually inaccurate statement that the Internet is 15 years old – the world wide web is 15 years old. The Internet, as we all know, was born well before that. But we can’t blame them for the mistake, because, apparently ‘The Red Bull ran out at 1am on Saturday, so this post may not make much sense!’
My encounter with this revolution, which will inevitably result in a world changed forever in about a week’s time, was last Saturday evening, when a nice man from Ask offered me a free badge and a T-shirt in Covent Garden, from a peculiar-shaped trailer. I declined the gift, although I was very tempted to make my evening out more exciting by making use of their free Internet access inside the trailer. I was interested to see, however, that they had responded to the blogosphere by plastering an Ask logo on the trailer. Maybe the revolution felt that it was gaining enough momentum to come out into the open.
I didn’t tell the nice man from Ask this, but I have a suggestion to the revolution which I will tentatively put forward here (although those nasty spies from Google might also pick it up); build a better product. The route to market domination is not through silly campaigns where no-one can work out what is being advertised, but through making a product which is such an improvement over the existing market leader that people are prepared to switch. A departing thought; if Ask does manage to build a better product, and become the new monopoly, I wonder whether they will continue to advocate using search engines other than the most popular?
26 March, 2007
GodTube Jumps On YouTube’s Tails
It will be interesting to see if the now-formidable legal department of Google drops a letter to a new site, GodTube that apes their YouTube video service.
GodTube, you won’t be surprised to hear, shows videos that praise god. It’s yet to launched, with the expected out-of-beta date being 1 May.
Looking at the site, loving god doesn’t necessarily mean that you observe the rights of those who have gone before you. The less-than-coincidental name similarity isn’t the only thing that will remind you of YouTube. GodTube also closely-mimics the general look and feel of YouTube.
Similarities don’t end there, they even stretch to the GodTube strapline Broadcast Him, only a small adjustment from YouTube’s Broadcast Yourself.
Listening to GodTube’s CEO, Chris Wyatt, speaking on Fox News, he claims to have “come up with the idea for GodTube” when he was attending a seminary in Dallas. Quite what the idea he came up with he didn’t elucidate, but if it was “I know let’s copy YouTube, but call it GodTube,” we’d hardly call it an idea.
Wyatt is keen to tell everyone about how well it’s doing, claiming that within 60 days it was the most-trafficked Christian stream video site on the Internet. His ambitions don’t appear to stop there, as if they continue at this rate, Wyatt claims they “will become the most trafficked Christian Web site on the Internet.”
By trafficked, we assume he means the amount of bits that they shift. As they’re putting out video (the most bit-laden content format available), his claims start to sound significantly less impressive.
One area GodTube differs significantly from YouTube is in how open they are in showing the videos of those who want to upload content to their site. YouTube doesn’t put a human filter in the way, understanding that given the number of videos that are uploaded, it just isn’t realistic.
GodTube may struggle with their approach, suffering a plague of videos rather than the mythical plague of locusts. They’re going to pass all submitted content through two manual filters – real people. The first will check if it’s presentable to the public, the second to ascertain its Theological implications!
Here’s a little sample. It’s only a minute long, but will give you an indication of what to expect. Get read for an explanation of a banana. We kid you not.
23 March, 2007
Google Homepages Skin Up
For folks a little bored of staring at the vast expanses of white space around their Google homepage comes the news that the page is finally skinnable.
Writing in her company’s blog, Product Manager Jessica Ewing, enthusiastically announced the initial release of half a dozen themes with “many more on the way.”
Themes are selected by clicking on a new interface which shows thumbnails of the six themes: Classic, Beach, Bus Stop, City Scape, Sweet Dreams, Tea House and Seasonal Scape,
All of themes are dynamic and change their appearance according to your own local time of day, current weather conditions or season.
Once you’ve inputted your post /zip code, the graphics will change to reflect your local sunrise and sunset times.
“So if you happen to be stuck in a windowless office, you can at least crack open a cold one and watch the sun set over your desktop,” commented Ewing.
Personally, we couldn’t think of anything worse than being stuck in a windowless office and relying on Google to tell you when the sun has gone down, but we get her point.
The themes are implemented via CSS (style sheets) and take the form of a large graphic across the top of the page (made up of a single repeating image so it’s still quick to download) with the page tabs switching to complementary colours.
It’s all very pretty but we’ll be looking forward to some slightly more interesting designs before we lose our old-school clean’n’simple Google homepage.
Google homepage
21 March, 2007
Google Phone Rumours Build
Rumours that Google is working on a mobile phone were given another boost after Richard Windsor, of Nomura brokers, claimed that Google reps at an industry event in Germany had blabbed about such a device.
Writing in a research note, Windsor said, “Google has come out of the closet at the CeBIT trade fair admitting that it is working on a mobile phone of its own.”
“This is not going to be a high-end device but a mass market device aimed at bringing Google to users who don’t have a PC,” he added.
Pundits reckon that Google would be most likely to shuffle into the mobile world under a deal that would let them partner with an existing handset maker and hop on to the network of an existing mobile operator.
Most likely candidate for the phone manufacturing job is the Taiwan-based big boys HTC who already make phones for a large variety of brands.
Naturally, Google’s spokesman was keeping Mum today about the existence of any plans, but he did comment that, “mobile is an important area for Google,” adding that Google were still keen to create applications for mobile phones and pursue partnerships with industry leaders.
Via
20 March, 2007
BBC and YouTube Partner
Another day, another content deal as the UK National broadcaster, the BBC, sign a deal with YouTube/Google to make a selection of their content available on YouTube on an non-exclusive basis.
Two deals have been done, one with the BBC, the other BBC Worldwide, the commercial arm of the BBC. Financial terms of the deal aren’t being discussed at all.
There will be three YouTube ‘channels’ under the deal. Two of them are live already, BBC and BBCWorldwide, with BBCWorld to follow ‘shortly.’
BBC is very much in the YouTube model, full of rough camcorder diary pieces, and behind the scenes shots giving an ‘insight’ into the workings of the BBC. Currently there are 31 pieces going back one month.
BBCWorldwide is labelled as “The best of British TV” and currently has 78 video pieces on it and contains a ton on Top Gear, Attenborough and a smattering of comedy shows like The Mighty Boosh and Catherine Tate. Will also “include a limited amount of advertising.”
BBCWorld isn’t up and running yet, but when it is, will only be available to YouTube viewers outside the UK. It will be advertising-funded.
Mark Thompson, Director-General of the BBC, likes the project, “The partnership provides both a creative outlet for a range of short-form content from BBC programme makers and the opportunity to learn about new forms of audience behaviour.
What’s it like?
Surprisingly for the BBC the quality of the video isn’t what it could be. Quite a change from the days when quality was everything.
Interestingly, fans of BBC content are barred from showing their fav ditties on any other sites as “Embedding disabled by request.” If the BBC has requested this, or YouTube isn’t clear. It’s more likely given they’ve paid the BBC for their content, and we imagine that they damn well want viewers visiting their site to see the videos.
This is great for the BBC as they get to distribute their content widely (fitting their remit) while not having to spend any money on distribution of the content, in fact receiving payment for the privilege.
2 March, 2007
YouTube Traffic Surges
It may have suffered more law suits than slippery Jeffrey Archer, but new figures reveal continuing growth for the video sharing site, with many visitors seeking out user-generated content.
Research firm Hitwise reported that online traffic to YouTube soared past rival US TV websites, with the site recording more visits than all the television network Web sites combined during the week of Feb. 3rd.
Whipping out their big calculators and pulling out a few pencils from their white coat top pockets, Hitwise calculated that YouTube’s share of internet visits leapt to 0.6031% during the week of February 3.
By comparison, traffic to the whole bloomin’ lot of US TV network websites could only muster a measly 0.4865% share.
Remarkably, YouTube’s US market share actually jumped 13.9% in the two weeks after MTV and Comedy Central parent Viacom had made the company remove 100,000 of its clips.
Hitwise researcher LeAnn Prescott, commented, “This is a landmark event in the changing face of web traffic and entertainment consumption, now that entertainment seekers are now more likely to go to YouTube than any other television network or gaming website.”
The Hitwise research looked at the words and phrases used in Internet search engine queries that led surfers to YouTube videos.
Although amateur videos remain popular, the number one online video search in the four weeks up to February 17 was for television commercials shown during the recent US Superbowl game – something that will, no doubt, warm the cold steely hearts of their marketing dept.
According to Hitwise’s figures, the second most common video search was for “white and nerdy” while “Charlie the unicorn” came in at third.
We didn’t have a clue who the chuffin’ Nora Charlie the unicorn was so we looked it up. And boy, was it rubbish.
26 February, 2007
Beardy Big Cheese At Google Predicts Internet Growth Driven By Mobiles
One of the big cheeses at Google, vice president and chief ‘Internet evangelist’ (say wah’?!) Vinton G. Cerf has been shining up his crystal ball and coming up with his predictions for the future.
Looking deeper, deeper, deeper into his shiny orb (oo-er), the beardy Cerf revealed that it won’t be personal computers fuelling the growth of the internet. Instead he reckons that the expansion of the worldwide web will be powered by mobile phones, with countries like India snapping up zillions of the fellas and getting online en masse.
Talking to Yahoo, Cerf whipped out his Big Book of Internet Facts (BBOIF) and observed that the amount of people accessing the web has expanded quicker than Fatty Arbuckle’s waistband at a pie eating contest, with the numbers soaring from just 50 million in 1997 to nearly 1.1 billion today.
Despite this, the web still only reaches a miserly sixth of the world’s population, prompting Cerf to comment, “You will get those other 5.5 billion people only when affordability increases and the cost of communication goes down.”
“The mobile phone has become an important factor in the Internet revolution,” he added.
Flicking further through his BBOIF, Cerf said that there are 2.5 billion mobile-phone users worldwide with numbers rocketing in developing countries led by China and India.
India is already adding seven million mobile-phone users a month – enough to tempt British telecom giant Vodafone to shell out over $11 billion dollars for a controlling stake in local mobile outfit Hutch-Essar – with new Internet-enabled features and services likely to reel in more online users.
Naturally, Google wants a slab o’the action, and has been expanding its research and service offices in India, hoping to increase the current meagre total of just 40 million people online – just 3.5 percent of India’s enormous population.
Via
20 February, 2007
Google Breaching Belgian Copyright: Judge
Belgian courts have ruled that Google is in breach of copyright.
The case was brought by Copiepresse, a copyright protection organisation that was representing 17 [UPDATE (thanks Michel) French-speaking] Belgian newspapers, complaining that both Google’s search and News service were in breach.
Their complaint is that their news pages are being cached by Google, thus, in their view, offering free access to their valuable content. Google’s argument is that they only display a headline and a short part of the content and also point out that they drive huge amount of readers to the newspapers Web sites.
This action was first launched last August in the Belgian courts. Google lost the case and was directed by the judge to remove the offending articles from the Google.be site and corresponding news service and post messages to their home pages. Google appealed the decision and lost yesterday.
Copiepresse is also pursuing similar action against Yahoo and MSN and it’s reported that they are in touch with copyright groups in Norway, Austria and Italy.
It is understood that Copiepresse is pursuing Google for payment for access to their content. Google has stated that this will not happen – not surprisingly as _every_ other publication, worldwide, would be asking for the same.
Google respect both robots.txt and metatags that enable any Web pages publisher to exclude them from being included in the Google index. As Google’s Rachel Whetstone, European Director of Communications and Public Affairs, points out, if asked, Google will remove content if requested.
Confused
We’re very confused by the ruling. How do these publishers think people are going to find their content without a search engine pointing them? Sure, their regular readers will still visit their home pages, but their potential readership will not be aware of the quality of their writing.
Copiepresse
14 February, 2007