When John H. writes about Microsoft, we should read, he wrote a great book on the company back in the late 90s…….
Way back in 2002, Josh Quittner, who is a pal and also the Editor of Business 2.0, took a risk on a down-and-out dot-com publishing exec and contracted me to write a column for his magazine, the only one left after the Standard and its ilk bit the dust….
Way back in 2002, Josh Quittner, who is a pal and also the Editor of Business 2.0, took a risk on a down-and-out dot-com publishing exec and contracted me to write a column for his magazine, the only one left after the Standard and its ilk bit the dust. But when I got the Time Inc. contract (B2’s owners,) I was bereft. I had an issue with the fact that what I wrote would be behind AOL/TW’s paywall. So I requested, nice as pie, that I be able to post my columns here, on this site. Josh agreed, and the rest is history.
Well, all that’s moot now. CNNMoney is picking up my column, and all of B2 for that matter, and it’s all free.
Here’s everything I ever wrote for Josh!
Enjoy, I sure as heck will!
Gary discovers a Waterloo, Canada based company that Google purchased – mobile software, including browsing and email. I must say, it must not suck to be Google if you're in charge of biz dev….
As I posted earlier, I had the chance to talk with Marissa Mayer about Google Pack, and Jennifer Feiken, who runs Google Video. I'd have posted earlier, but I was under embargo. The news is out now, and the analysis begins (live coverage at Engadget here). My two cents…
The news is out now, and the analysis begins (live coverage at Engadget here). My two cents on both: Google is now officially a Really Big Company, and is acting like one. Diversify your revenue streams, for one thing. Leverage and consolidate your core strengths, for another. And protect your vulnerable flanks, for yet another.
The ability to sell video is great, but not news. We’ve known that was coming. What is really interesting is the pricing leverage: Google is splitting revenues 70/30 – that’s 70 to the content producer. Also very important is that the producers of content are the ones who set the price – again, totally different from traditional models. Thirdly, Google is doing its own DRM. That’s very interesting, and probably best left as the subject of another post. Producers can decide to not use DRM, as Charlie Rose did, Feiken told me.
This is a major step toward entirely new models of content distribution, and if I were Comcast, DirecTV, the telcos, or frankly anyone in the traditional video business, I’d be a bit concerned. It gives content producers far more power to connect directly to audiences, and the leverage will only increase – in five years, it won’t be 70/30, it’ll more likely by 80/20. Gary has a good roundup of some of Google’s competitors in video. (And Tristan has an overview here that is useful too). Clearly they are not the only player here, and the video/content industry has no interest in insuring that one party owns distribution.
Read MoreTerry Semel's big news this morning was Yahoo Go, more on it here from Charlene Li, and Yahoo News. Remember my mobile prediction? There was a lot of news in this space, Google and Yahoo and Motorola, for example. More coming, I am sure…….
Maybe this is true. But I hope not. Would Google want to get into this business so directly? Well, perhaps it would want to mimic Yahoo, which bought HotJobs, but really, honestly, this feels totally out of character. Recall my DNA posts way back, about how the two companies…
The big news today is clearly Google's move into selling video (read: an entirely new revenue stream and a very disruptive market force for cable, on demand, DirecTV, etc) and its more aggressive focus on becoming a desktop software distributor (with Pack). I'll have more to say on this,…
I’ll have more to say on this, but I’ll have to be content with taking a “second day” approach to the story. Why? I’m under embargo. I spoke with Google about this stuff earlier in the week, and agreed to not divulge the contents of our conversation until Google lifted its embargo (in this case, it’s when Page speaks today). This practice of embargo is fine with me, nearly every tech commpany does it. And I always honor them, though I have a policy of writing about things if they break early, as this news did.
But because our conversation had more details than have hit the press, I’m going to wait to post. It’s Friday in any case, and who knows what else might come up?
Xeni at BB notes an offensive – though not clearly intentional – result at Walmart.com. This product listing on Wal*Mart's website for a Planet of The Apes DVD suggests films about black historic figures Dorothy Dandridge and Martin Luther King, Jr. as "similar items." Reader comments continue: I recall…
This product listing on Wal*Mart’s website for a Planet of The Apes DVD suggests films about black historic figures Dorothy Dandridge and Martin Luther King, Jr. as “similar items.”
Reader comments continue:
Read MoreMore noise from the telcos that they want a multi-tiered Internet. Watch this space. Paid Content reports from CES: Verizon CEO is now on the band(width)wagon…in a Q&A at CES, Verizon CEO Ivan Seidenberg said that providers of bandwith-intensive Internet applications, including Google and Microsoft, should "share the cost"…
Verizon CEO is now on the band(width)wagon…in a Q&A at CES, Verizon CEO Ivan Seidenberg said that providers of bandwith-intensive Internet applications, including Google and Microsoft, should “share the cost” of operating broadband networks. He joins AT&T (then SBC) CEO Ed Whitacre, who last year put his foot in the mouth in a rather harsh interview with BW.
According to Seidenberg, Verizon and Google are already talking about how such compensation might be structured. While Seidenberg said Verizon “intuitively” believes that the Internet should be open to all applications, he also said that “we need to make sure there is the right economic model,” especially in regards to so-called “free” or advertising-supported applications, which generally do not offer any direct compensation to the network service provider.
Update: Good comments starting to flow below, and this Journal story focuses on the issue, though it’s paid walled. From it:
Read MoreIn conversation with folks equally besotted with all things search and marketing, the talk often turns to click fraud. After some mandatory clucking of tongues, I go off on my own little riff about the subject – how it's difficult to prove as a percentage of overall PPC revenue…
In conversation with folks equally besotted with all things search and marketing, the talk often turns to click fraud.
After some mandatory clucking of tongues, I go off on my own little riff about the subject – how it’s difficult to prove as a percentage of overall PPC revenue (beyond the anecdotal), and how – for the time being anyway – it really doesn’t seem to matter. Click fraud is something of an ecosystem “tax” – advertisers who are putting $1 into AdSense, for example, are (usually) getting more than $1 back. Whether they get $2.00 or $1.75 is not that important, if, say, 12.5% of the clicks are fraud, who cares? You can always petition Yahoo or Google for a refund (though not all do).
Only when they start getting back 99 cents (or less) for that $1.00 will the “margin pressure” build to “do something about click fraud” in any real sense. In the meantime, advertisers are happy with AdSense, because, well, it works well enough, and there’s no incentive to change it.
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