Month: July 2009

The FCC No Likey What Apple Did to Google, Either

And they are opening an investigation into it. According to a Dow Jones Newswire report, on Friday afternoon the FCC sent letters to Apple, AT&T, and Google. The federal inquiry asks Apple why the Google Voice application was rejected from its App Store for the iPhone and iPod Touch, and…

And they are opening an investigation into it.

According to a Dow Jones Newswire report, on Friday afternoon the FCC sent letters to Apple, AT&T, and Google. The federal inquiry asks Apple why the Google Voice application was rejected from its App Store for the iPhone and iPod Touch, and why it removed third-party applications built on the Google app that had been previously approved. The federal commission also asks whether AT&T was allowed to weigh in on the application before it was rejected, and seeks a description of the application from its creator, Google, according to the report.

For background, see my piece chastising Apple here.

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Thinking About New Models for Search

Yesterday I spent an illuminating hour with the folks behind Wowd, a still-private-beta search upstart that is taking a new approach to, well, just about everything in search as we traditionally understand it. In a odd coincidence, this morning Venturebeat published a thoughtful piece on how search might shift when…

Yesterday I spent an illuminating hour with the folks behind Wowd, a still-private-beta search upstart that is taking a new approach to, well, just about everything in search as we traditionally understand it.

In a odd coincidence, this morning Venturebeat published a thoughtful piece on how search might shift when more data, in particular social data, is added to the mix.

I point these two links out as a marker of sorts, I’ve got a much longer piece brewing in me about Wowd’s approach to search, and how the Big Guys might respond should an upstart like Wowd get traction. More on that soon. Meanwhile, the Wowd guys posted on Tim and my Websquared paper here.

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Questions On the Yahoo Bing Deal

Unfortunately our schedules didn’t match up yesterday, and I did not get a chance to talk to the folks now responsible for the Yahoo Microsoft deal.   But as I thought through the deal and its implications, a ton of questions came to mind, and it seems worth the time…

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Unfortunately our schedules didn’t match up yesterday, and I did not get a chance to talk to the folks now responsible for the Yahoo Microsoft deal.  

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Yahoo and Microsoft Announce Deal

NYT has a good story: The terms of the 10-year agreement call for Microsoft to license some of Yahoo’s search technologies, and Yahoo will initially receive a lucrative 88 percent of search-generated ad revenue from Yahoo sites. Cnet does as well. Many folks are noting Yahoo's shares slide at the…

NYT has a good story:

The terms of the 10-year agreement call for Microsoft to license some of Yahoo’s search technologies, and Yahoo will initially receive a lucrative 88 percent of search-generated ad revenue from Yahoo sites.

Cnet does as well. Many folks are noting Yahoo’s shares slide at the open this morning. No “Boatload” of cash upfront…

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New Twitter Homepage

What I find most interesting in Twitter's homepage overhaul is the focus on search. I mean, it's all about search. That might confuse some folks who don't understand what Twitter really is. And there's no explanation of that on the home page…So…what do you all think?…

What I find most interesting in Twitter’s homepage overhaul is the focus on search. I mean, it’s all about search. That might confuse some folks who don’t understand what Twitter really is. And there’s no explanation of that on the home page…So…what do you all think?

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The Deal Is Done Between Yahoo and Microsoft, Sources Say

Not my sources, of course, but it's all over the web now, including banking analyst notes, the WSJ, and elsewhere. Here's a Google news link for those who want to dive in….

Not my sources, of course, but it’s all over the web now, including banking analyst notes, the WSJ, and elsewhere. Here’s a Google news link for those who want to dive in.

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Is Being In the Mobile Biz License to Ignore the Internet?

…and by the Internet, I mean the *values* of the Internet, in particular, the values of a platform. When you build a platform that leverages the Internet, it strikes me you should act like a player in that space – IE, not acting like a monopolist, a bully, or in…

sadmac.gif…and by the Internet, I mean the *values* of the Internet, in particular, the values of a platform. When you build a platform that leverages the Internet, it strikes me you should act like a player in that space – IE, not acting like a monopolist, a bully, or in your own self interest at the expense of those who use your platform – like your customers and developers.

Such seems the case with Apple’s refusal to allow two Google apps into the iPhone App Store. Yesterday’s ban – on Google Voice – is easy to understand – at least if you are venal and driven by the same corporate interests as your partner, AT&T. Voice bypasses AT&T’s networks and means less cabbage in AT&T’s pockets.

But Apple also banned Latitude, a mapping application. Why? Might it be because Apple has designs on that category? Or does AT&T?

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Google MAKES Money on AOL Writeoff

Back in 2005, Google bought 5% of AOL for $1 billion. Today, Time Warner disclosed it had bought that 5% back from Google for….$283 million. Ouch. But wait. There's a silver lining. Back when the deal was done, analysts like…me… suggested that AOL was going to go public, and that…

aol-2-tm.jpggooglogo-tm.jpgBack in 2005, Google bought 5% of AOL for $1 billion. Today, Time Warner disclosed it had bought that 5% back from Google for….$283 million.

Ouch. But wait. There’s a silver lining.

Back when the deal was done, analysts like…me… suggested that AOL was going to go public, and that Google was going to profit from that. Well, looks like AOL will go public…but not at the lofty valuation 2005 seemed to promise. Of course, Time Warner dithered for five years about whether to spin the damn thing out (I pleaded in a blog post in 2004 that they do this). Had they done in then, or even in 05 or 06, I’d wager Google would have looked pretty damn smart.   

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Will Yahoo Bing? Pay Attention to the Display Side

We've been talking about a search deal between Yahoo and Microsoft for so long (no, really, read this piece I wrote over two years ago) that it feels, to me anyway, like the deal's already been done. But it hasn't. Today new details are coming out, thanks to a…

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We’ve been talking about a search deal between Yahoo and Microsoft for so long (no, really, read this piece I wrote over two years ago) that it feels, to me anyway, like the deal’s already been done. But it hasn’t.

Today new details are coming out, thanks to a report in Ad Age (Ad Age? Breaking search news? I really must get back to reporting, eh?). While there’s nothing particularly new in the report – Yahoo will sell ads on its own site as well as Bing.com, Microsoft will focus on the technology, and both will split revenues – what is new is the claim that the deal will be announced “as soon as this week.”

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Twistory 101: It’s All About Small Business

The world's abuzz this week with word that Twitter is getting serious about business – the proof point being Twitter's new subdomain "business.twitter.com" and the "Twitter 101" handbook currently living there, a white paper of sorts aimed at helping companies figure out how to leverage the sometimes befuddling service. This…

biztweetbird.pngThe world’s abuzz this week with word that Twitter is getting serious about business – the proof point being Twitter’s new subdomain “business.twitter.com” and the “Twitter 101” handbook currently living there, a white paper of sorts aimed at helping companies figure out how to leverage the sometimes befuddling service.

This all reminds me of Fall 2004. Back then, Google was coming on hard in search. And while the world viewed Google as an upstart stealing query share from the incumbent Yahoo, the real drama was happening on the business side. By the Fall of 2004, Google’s AdWord and AdSense solutions were warranting serious attention from the same ecosystem of SEO/SEM that previously had focused on Overture’s offerings.

In this Fall, 2004 thread on Webmasterworld, where SEO types hang out to talk shop, search marketers debate the relative performance and profitability of Overture compared with Google. Prior to that year, Overture was the undisputed king of paid traffic. But in ’04, Google started pulling ahead, and since that time, it’s never looked back. Why?

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