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Posts: Google

Two Companies That Could Beat Google

YouTube. If they setup a video ad network and roll out video adsense, they could be in a nice position. Imagine it: their primary competitor would be non-consumption (most people are not using video too much on the Internet), but they could attract loyalty from the underserved Internet...

Freemium 2.0

Fred Wilson has coined the Freemium Business Model . Give your service away for free, possibly ad supported but maybe not, acquire a lot of customers very efficiently through word of mouth, referral networks, organic search marketing, etc, then offer premium priced value added services or...

Google Base = Google Banking?

Barry Schwartz at SEW Blog informs us that you can now accept payments without a merchant account through Google Base. So I guess this means Google CEO Eric Schmidt was lying when he said Google Wallet wouldn't compete with Paypal. Google Base is looking more like a Paypal threat by the...

AdSense Click Fraud is Only Yahoo's and MSN's Problem

Lots of people in the Internet business world talking about Google's $90 million settlement regarding a click fraud class action lawsuit. While click fraud is a real problem for Google, it is, in a way, a blessing as well: any attempts at highlighting the problem of click fraud will be more...

Google's Acquisition of Writely is Disruptive

As you've probably heard by now Google has bought Writely. The obvious question is is this an MS Word killer? Lots of people are saying no ( DeWitt Clinton , ThingsThatMakeYouGoHmm ). But they're wrong. This is a textbook disruptive innovation. Consider: MS Word is the dominant word...

Strategy: Turn Your Users Into Your Platform

MIT Advertising Labs notes that Current.tv is now incentivizing its users to create advertisements for companies looking for online video ads. This is the kind of thing that is a natural manifestation of declining costs of production and declining costs of coordination. It's also an example...

Has Google Escaped the Innovator's Dilemma?

The Innovator's Dilemma , a concept and book popularized by Clayton Christensen , is essentially the idea that companies often have trouble innovating in the ways they need to because they lack the resources, internal business processes, and value system to succeed at innovating. For instance,...

Yo, Listen Up: The New Media Route to Beating Google

Hot damn! Scott Karp has a killer post on new media . You should read the whole thing, but below are some key quotes. Here's a great summary of how value works in Internet media: Media is about conversation and participation. Consumers can create their own media. Value is being created...

Checkmate: Google Wins

Google is about to become the intermediary for P2P ecommerce. Think Ebay, minus the auctions. I still think very highly of Google, both in terms of their strategic brilliance and the overwhelmingly positive contribution the company has made to the world (yes, they have their shady stuff, but...

Will Amazon Make the Ultimate Innovation Mistake?

Threadwatch points to this Sitepoint article that suggests that Amazon will attempt to roll out its own contextual advertising network that will compete directly with Google. Chris Beasley notes in the article : On the phone last night it was explained to me that this is more or less an...

Can Video Ads Disrupt the Contextual Ad Market?

MIT Advertising Lab points to Vivenetwork , a new company aiming to make a market between video advertisers and web publishers. From their About page: Vive Network connects advertisers, agencies and content publishers together for an integrated online advertising across Video,...

Google, China, the Wu Tang Clan, and Necessary Evils

Getting lots of attention right now is the recent decision on the part of Google to censor their search engine results for Google.cn, their Chinese site, to be in compliance with mandates from the Chinese government. In my opinion, this issue cannot be looked at from a moral perspective....

Google Changes Strategy from Search to Annoying You

JenSense reports on the day I hoped would never come, but, alas, it appears to have reared its ugly head. Google AdSense is moving beyond the traditional text and graphical advertising to rich media, including interstitials, expanding ads and floating ads. AdSense began contacting...

Why All the Hatin' on Google Video?

Lots of people talking trash on Google's bold new foray into the world of ecommerce through their video store . ArsTechnica's commentary is emblematic to what many around the web are voicing. The fact that they are introducing their own standards and DRM could be interesting, especially if...

Why Google Should Go Open Source

Unfortunately, market leaders are resistant to change -- even when such change is obvious and inevitable ( RIAA being the quintessential example ). And I'd argue that with respect to the Internet search industry, Google, the market leader, is experiencing the same problem: as the web...

Google Casino, Google Insurance, Google Money

Previously in my posts on Google Casino and Google Insurance , I discussed that options on traffic from search engines may be the basis for a successful business model for both SEO firms and search engines. Along the same lines is this post at SearchEngineWatch forums , which discusses...

The Need for Google Casino

In his list of 40 predictions for 2006 , Stuntdubl suggests the advent of "algorithm variable hedge betting" (#18 on the list) is near. This is similar to what I previously blogged about in the post entitled, " Do We Need Google Insurance? ". The more I think about it, the...

Google Fights the Inevitable

Presently, search engines try to disregard paid links in their algorithms. This concept was recently discussed again when famed blogger, trusted source (both in terms of search engines and readership), and Yahoo! employee Jeremy Zawodny started selling paid links on his blog without taking...

Search as a Commons (or Not)

Here's a great post from a while back from Vrypan.net that asks how long it can be until Internet search becomes decentralized: As search engines become more dominant and are able to influence economy, politics and culture in a straight-forward way depending on their ability or interests,...

Why Hasn't Google Spun Off Yet?

They're doing a lot of stuff right now, and I wonder if putting it all under the same roof is really the best idea. This means these new business lines will conform to the parent company's business model, and will probably focus on selling more ads to existing clients as opposed to selling ads to...

Googlenomics

The Google ecosystem is changing significantly, and this has some very real economic consequences that Internet firms and business strategists need to consider. Here's how it starts: 1. Their search algorithm is at a point where if you do not know SEO, it will be hard to get listed for your...

Google Buys AOL -- What It Means for Beating Google

This Washington Post article reports that Google has acquired a 5% stake in AOL for 1 billion USD, beating out MSFT in the war for AOL. Plenty of people talking about this, obviously, and probably more to come, but here are some good discussions on the topic: Threadwatch ; Michael Parekh...

Do We Need Google Insurance?

If changes in Google's algorithm are becoming more unpredictable, its potential for high damage to your profitability down the road is also growing. In other words, if your profit is dependent on Google's algorithm, is your business model becoming increasing in risk? If so, how would you...

Is Google Over-invested in Technology?

I'm starting to think so. Here's why: 1. The algorithm is, as always, exchanging old problems for new problems. This time, though, the problem is that the new problems are accidental ; the publisher is intending to behave in way that Google deems acceptable, but Google's algorithm does not...

Will Tivo Be the Next Internet Giant?

Right now there are three primary Internet giants: Google -- the starting point for more regular Internet users, as well as those who value fast and simple search. Yahoo -- Like communication tools, community, interactivity, and social media? Yahoo's your answer. Microsoft -- Your...

Wikipedia is Not the Next Google

Stephen Baker and Steve Rubel have been speculating on who is going to take down Google (see Baker here, and Rubel here ). Rubel's take is particularly interesting, since he notes that Wikipedia is next in line to take down Google. My opinion: no way. Not a chance in hell. My rationale:...

Successful Entrepreneurs Are Now Parasites

Web Guerrilla has an insightful post on the future of search engine optimization . He essentially argues that becoming a parasite and leeching off other networks is a great search engine optimization strategy. He is, of course, 100% right. As Ken Thompson pointed out , one of the best...

Jeremy Zawodny Knows How to Beat Google

Yahoo! employee and famed blogger Jeremy Zawodny understands that whoever is going to beat Google is going to do so not by beating them at their own game -- search and information retrieval -- but rather by changing the game to make something else important. He quotes this insightful post...

Seth Godin on Jeff Bezos on Pricing

A lot of people have been talking about the iTunes rumor, in which the company will allegedly increase the prices of popular new releases. Some say this is good, as it signals to the audience what is good. Personally, I think it's not a good move, as I believe the market for digital music...

Google is Coming to Get You

And they're coming in two ways: Horizonally: Google is expanding horizontally so that it can capture every interface. Over the past year, they rolled out desktop search, a chat application, a blog application, established a stronger alliance with Firefox the web browser, and are partnering...

Will Microsoft's Personalization Strategy Work?

As noted previously , Microsoft's Internet strategy appears to be centered around building an advertising-based revenue streams. I personally find this to be a highly suspect strategy, as Internet advertising-based revenue models is clearly where Google reigns supreme, and for Microsoft to be a...

Has Google Taken the Whole Contextual Ad Market?

Andy Hagans over at Performancing.com writes : Many--if not most--bloggers receive most of their advertising revenue from Google Adsense. The reason is simple: despite the program's annoying tendencies towards secrecy (Smart Pricing), Adsense pays out far better than alternatives...

MSFT vs. Google: Who Will Win the Online Software Battle?

My previous post on Gates's leaked plans for MSFT highlighted the fact that MSFT sees advertising as a primary revenue model for web-based service applications that will disrupt desktop software. If this is the case, can they defeat Google, who has partnered with Sun and hinted at releasing an...

Keeping Your Ecosystem Profitable

Erick Schonfeld of Business 2.0 writes on profits in the current culture of participation . Web 2.0 businesses are largely about the culture of participation, as they rely on user-generated content and user participation to allow firms to develop into relationship hubs and information...

Search Matters, Tagging Doesn't

Nick Carr writes that search and tagging don't matter. He's right and he's wrong. He's right: tagging doesn't matter. He's wrong: search does matter. Tagging doesn't matter because it banks on a critical number of users becoming taggers. This makes the assumption that the majority of web...

Sphere

I've been beta testing Sphere lately -- a new blog search engine that claims to have the answer to the blog search problem in which the current blog search engines do a rather poor job of not only delivering relevant results but of also filtering out spam. From what I've seen thus far,...

Is Google Vulnerable to a Vertical Search?

In the fantastic book Seeing What's Next by Scott Anthony, Erik Roth, and Clayton Christensen, the authors note that market incumbents often utilize an aggregator business model -- they aggregate a number of different services. They are often then disrupted by a specialist company that...

Are Long-Term Strategies Still Possible?

Internet marketer Jim Boykin has an interesting blog entry about search engine optimization (manipulating the search engine to show your site in the listings for your keyword). He notes that the process of optimizing for a site can take a few years, and hence patience is required. It's a good...

Can Google Deal With Blog Search?

Patrick Gavin over at Link Building Blog notes that Google's search engine favors older web domains . In light of this, is it possible that Google is quite vulnerable to being disrupted by a blog search engine? Blogs are a very time-sensitive publishing tool; many blogs are created on a...

Google: Only One Revenue Stream Can Bring About Disruption

Google continues to release new products, and while this last one is quite compelling, it does beg the question: when will the firm develop a stable revenue source that does not depend on pay per click? Or will it ever? (More)

Del.icio.us Offers Search -- Potentially Disruptive to Google?

Niall Kennedy and Threadwatch both note that the social bookmarking tool Del.icio.us now allows their tagged sites to be searched by the public. Could this be disruptive to Google? I previously mentioned that Google would get displayed by a company that had a different "power" --...

Revenue Model of Whoever Will Disrupt Google

Can we say that whoever will dethrone Google will do so using a revenue model that is not based on pay per click from advertisers? As I previously argued , a firm will have trouble beating Google if it attempts to outperform Google along Google's lines. In doing so, they'll be competing head on...

Posts: Google

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