I’ve given Google a bit of grief for boiling too many oceans, today comes news that another of their many bodies of water will be allowed to cool:
(Bloomberg) Google Inc., owner of the world’s most popular search engine, announced plans to shut its three- year-old radio-advertising business and cut as many as 40 jobs, saying the investment didn’t provide enough of a payoff.
The company, which expanded into the market with the 2006 purchase of DMarc Broadcasting Inc., is seeking a buyer for software that arranges ads on radio programs. Google will stop selling radio ads by May 31 and focus instead on online streaming audio, according to a blog posting today.
Google blog post here. The blog, which I’ve monitored for sometime, is called “Let’s Take It Offline” and covers Google’s efforts in boiling the ad market ocean in Print, Radio, and TV. Google cancelled its Print program already, and now with radio “offline,” the title is starting to read with a bit of irony.
However, I do think what Google was trying to do has merit. I was a big defender of the Print efforts, but the program was not supposed to be a savior, rather it was (potentially) a way to cut operating costs and increase sold pages. Radio, I don’t know the market well enough to have an opinion, but I do know the folks who sold Google its radio play (dMarc), are none too pleased with how Google managed it. Navigating the waters of “old media” is not an algorithmic chess game. That much I do know.
TV, I predict, will stick around, because of all traditional media, TV is poised to more fluidly adapt its model to the web. Plus, Google owns YouTube. I think it’s time for a name change on the blog, GOOG. TV ain’t really offline, and in a few years, it’ll be as online as any other electronic medium.
Update: Wow, as I wrote this, the radio icon literally disappeared from the logo on Google’s blog. That was fast!!!