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Google

Is the web becoming a funnel?

by nick on November 6, 2011

The modern business model from Silicon Valley is build. Don’t just make a computer, make digital products (as Steve Jobs said by launching a music player, then a music store, then a phone). Build and build again is what the dominant players are showing us to be the winning formula.

Google was just a search engine, Apple was just about consumer electronics, Amazon was just a bookstore and Facebook was just a social network. No more.

These four colossal companies all appear to want to channel us down their particular funnels and have you ride their own track as you consume all things digital. To paraphrase the eloquent John Battelle, Google used to equal search, now they equal Chrome, YouTube, Android, Docs, Gmail, Maps, Places, Voices, self-driving cars, energy research, Adwords, Google+ and Motorola. And let’s not forget possibly their biggest opportunity for a true golden goose: Google TV.

This Fab Four will make the scale of Murdoch’s empire look about as impressive as a Lego village. Their dominance of technology, media and data over our lives will be insurmountable. Google is expected to bring in more than $30 billion this year. Analysts expect Amazon to reach $100 billion in revenue by 2015, faster than any other company. You need to stand up when you hear Apple’s annual growth numbers: net profit up 85% to $25.9 billion (£16.5 billion). In just Q3 of this year (obviously not their largest without Christmas sales), Apple turned over $28,571,000,000*. Read that number again – it’s genuinely staggering. They sold over 17 million iPhones in their financial Q4!

Such is the significance of the Fab Four, that we barely even think of Microsoft in the same vein. Arguably the largest of them all and the business choice of the world, Microsoft simply isn’t in the running for our hearts and minds like these guys are. They’re in their own cold war with each other, leveraging the juxtaposition of the web in that the low barrier of entry shouldn’t allow such monopolistic companies to exist. Yet again, what shouldn’t be possible, actually proves true online.

Each of the Fab Four want to build an ecosystem. Think about smartphones, tablets, apps, cloud storage, social networking, gaming, music, TV, or movies and all fit into their strategic map of web’s future – their own corner of the web.

I can’t help but think this is taking the open web and making silos for the user. Amazons new tablet, the Fire, doesn’t like you to browse around the web too easily, but if you want to download a movie from Amazon or buy shoes from their marketplace, then that’ll be a piece of cake.

There’s an element of lock in. I don’t necessarily mind that it’ll be a bit stifling, but the decision you make with your hardware may well dictate how easily you can consume software and content in the future.

It’s a bit like choosing to buy a car having the knowledge of exactly where and how you’ll drive it in the future. Suddenly what you buy becomes far more than we’ve traditionally dealt with when buying a laptop or a PC i.e. size, speed and storage.

It’s like buying a new BMW. Not happy just with selling you the metal, plastic and rubber, BMW build a bunch of roads and would very much prefer it if you drove only on them. And they’d like you to use their fuel stations as they’ll hook up with your car far easier than any other (perhaps auto payments through number plate recognition). And BMW have plans afoot to offer you destinations too that will stop you going to the beach or Center Parcs or the shopping centre – the BMW equivalent will be better, more secure and more ‘holistic’ to your vehicle.

It’s hugely exciting to see these guys slug it out on the global scale and change our lives through innovation. It’s a shame none of them are British. Who are you backing to be the winner or can they coexist?

*The numbers and much of the facts came from an excellent post by Farhad Manjoo.

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Are answers where the dollars live?

by nick on February 6, 2011

Answers.com sold this week for $127m. This coupled with the growing buzz around Quora, highlights the fact that Q&A sites are the poster-boy targets on the web. Added to that firestorm is Mahalo giving up on human powered search and pivoting to answers. Although it looks like they’re going for ‘how to’ queries more than actual answers to live questions.

We’ve seen plenty of mediocrity from Yahoo! Answers but are question sites about to get good answers? Aardvark, Stack Overflow and others argue that quality is possible if you ask the right community. A specialist community. But doesn’t that take us down a narrow forum-type road rather than the broad majority who only use the top search engines?

Monetising Q&A doesn’t look overly simple – banner ads would likely score awful click through rates. And I can’t help but feel it’s a bit like fighting over the crumbs left over from Google’s table. What happens when Google wants to clear house? That’s my question.

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Tech transfer windows

by nick on January 23, 2011

Three isn't a crowd at Google

Two of the world’s top tech companies announced overhauls at the top this week. Sadly, Steve Jobs’ health will see him step aside for an as-yet unannounced successor at Apple (Chief Operating Officer, Tim Cook will stand in at least in the short term). And Eric Schmidt, Google’s CEO, surprised most of us by tweeting, “Day-to-day adult supervision no longer needed! http://goo.gl/zC89p”

Ten years ago Mr Schmidt was brought in to appease Wall Street. The inmates weren’t going to run the asylum; the kids would be looked after by a mature business brain. He’s done an incredible job but of course there are still some who will criticise saying Google is a little slow to react, that their search isn’t as good or as strong as it should be, that they acquire rather than create. But when you’re in this league, they’ll criticise you no matter what. His decade at the helm has been pretty flawless by any standard.

Product trumps business
Just like the footballers that are shuffling around the country this month, tech CEOs need to be product people. It’s easy to say from my chair, but the business side of Yahoo, Facebook, Twitter, Google etc becomes a poor second to the products themselves. Without great products you wont find reach. Without reach you wont have take up. Without take up there is no scale. Without scale there is no money to be had – just look at Delicious’ closure by owners Yahoo!.

I believe product input and knowledge is why Google didn’t look outside for Schmidt’s successor. Just look at the emphasis on product in this excerpt from Schmidt’s blog post on the announcement:

Larry [Page] will now lead product development and technology strategy, his greatest strengths, and starting from April 4 he will take charge of our day-to-day operations as Google’s Chief Executive Officer. In this new role I know he will merge Google’s technology and business vision brilliantly…

Sergey has decided to devote his time and energy to strategic projects, in particular working on new products. His title will be Co-Founder. He’s an innovator and entrepreneur to the core, and this role suits him perfectly.

So we know Larry is definitely a product man. The question is can he change and become more media-friendly under crushing scrutiny, or, is he going to be typically Googlesque and rip up the rules, creating a whole new cult CEO playbook? Plus, what’s the odds on Apple promoting from within for Mr Jobs’ eventual succession?

Your thoughts?

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Bing’s birthday spoiled by Twitter

by nick on July 16, 2010

Bing, Microsoft’s search engine, is now a year old and it’s been a good one.

They’ve clawed 12.7% of the enormous search market, which is no small feat. And they’ve got what political campaigners crave: momentum. Bing will be powering Yahoo search from this autumn and Yahoo’s got 18.9% of the market. Granted, it’s early days and Google is still undoubtedly the goliath, but there’s plenty of reason to break out the cake.

But what about Twitter? According to its co-founder Biz Stone, Twitter isn’t a social network, “We’re much more like an information network or a source of news.” He’s not kidding as they’re clocking 24 billion search queries a month! Test it yourself here. Look for your company name, your brands, your services, your competitors, your customers – it’s illuminating.

Fast Company have the search big hitters lining up like this:

Google 88 billion searches per mth
Twitter 24 billion searches per mth
Yahoo 9.4 billion searches per mth
Bing 4.1 billion searches per mth

Photo credit: Search Engine Land

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Business should buy nation’s broadband

by nick on February 28, 2010

Akamai’s ‘State of the Internet report’ shows the average UK broadband speed is 3.5 Mbps and just one in 12 surfers are achieving 5 Mbps and above. At present, South Koreans can get speeds of up to 100 Mbps and Soth Korea plans on raising the bar further with a tenfold increase in their ultra broadband to 1 Gbps by 2012 (200 times faster than our ‘fast’ 5 Mbps).

Whitehall’s shoot-for-the-stars plan? Well, their Universal Service Commitment wants every postcode in the UK to get a bare minimum of 2Mbps by 2012 (yep, just 2Mbps). In order to install this they’re talking about a 50p per month tax on landlines (cumulatively that’s around £1billion).

£6 a year to get a fibre optic line everywhere probably sounds like a reasonable deal. But the naysayers point out that the poorest – and least likely to take advantage of it – will be funding the speed and convenience for the wealthier.

It could be argued that if broadband is so important for the future of the UK’s infrastructure then our Government should step up and make funding available. But let’s be honest, as our economy’s gone to hell in a hand-basket, the IT slush fund disappeared into RBS long ago. No, those who want to use the infrastructure to become more successful need to take care of things themselves – nobody is coming to help (at least not any help worth having).

That’s where I think they’re looking to the wrong group to fund this. There’d be more traction and less voter pushback for a Business Broadband project (that’s my new label for uber-broadband).

UK business should be canvassed to put its hand in its pocket. Granted, now isn’t the best time to ask businesses for a handout, but when is?

Many large businesses operate on leased lines (such as banks) and don’t suffer the same bottleneck problem of demand we do but they too would benefit from faster coverage and the chance of increasing customer interaction.

This is an investment in their future, not a cost. As such, perhaps we could be allowed some accountancy leeway where we could do some fixed asset right down.

Contributing to it could be thought of like a church collection: the plate goes past everyone but only those who wish to partake do so. That said, we’d need the stern, furrowed brow of a priest-like character to make sure we all give fairly and not shirk out of our cumulative responsibility.

That’s where I see some A-list business folk coming in (think Alan Leighton, Alan Sugar, Deborah Meaden etc). These ‘celebs’ could form a steering committee. Their real value would be in persuading CEOs and proprietors to part with cash; they’d push the hard sell by demonstrating an understanding of their difficulties and a vision of the future.

Branches of request:
Peer levy – perhaps by business category e.g. shop keepers donate £500p.a. Perhaps by staff number (e.g. £75 per employee) or by turnover (e.g. £200 per £100k t/over).

Profits – pressure should be levied at those who stand to gain the most. That’s Internet service providers, search engines, telecoms companies and larger multichannel retailers for a start. Get the telecoms guys to dig as deep for this as they did for their 3G licences. Google donated $2 million towards the upkeep of Wikipedia this month because the strength of one affects the other.

Individual – the pot would also take private contributions. If Robbie Williams wants to throw in £100k to get a better Spotify connection it’s ready and willing to accept.

Google launched the Fibre for Communities program this year in the states. Essentially they want to pair up with providers and show the world that super fast broadband can get to the masses. The difference with a partner like Google is they’ll do so much of the heavy lifting. Personally, I’d take my Universal Service Commitment to the shredder and have Mr Mandelson on a plane to California (with his new pot of business money), persuading the Google team that the UK should be the first outside the USA to benefit from their new insight.

Have I got it all wrong here? If not, what would you and your organisation be willing to give over the next three years (if anything)?

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Content’s digital dichotomy

by nick on November 28, 2009

On the right -
Prevent search engines from indexing news content and have readers pay through a variety of subscriptions to recoup lost earnings from physical news sales. People have no right to free journalism and aggregator sites (especially Google News) are to news, what Pirate Bay is to music.

microsoftbluemonsterOn the left –
If you build it they will come. The internet is an unparalleled open space where the common good is freedom of information without class divides. If providers open their content equally the market will ensure the winners are the cream of crop. Revenue will be made through increased attention and trust.

Further right against ‘Don’t be evil’ -
Stop the Google vampire by embracing its largest competitor instead – Microsoft’s Bing.

If Bing courted enough content providers to bed exclusively with them (by paying, say, the world’s top 50 newspapers and top 1,000 magazines) that would be a huge boon. Would it be enough to grab 10 or 15 percent of market share?

Of course it’s all about money for Murdoch, not attention and that’s where he and the digerati are looking at same issue from different ends.

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4 principles of site design

by nick on August 12, 2009

A while ago, I had the pleasure of listening to Google’s Robert Swerling talk saliently about site design. The brief version of his presentation:

  1. Velocity – give it fast and let them get on with other things
  2. Visibility – don’t surprise consumers
  3. Value – provide real value
  4. Variation – never come out of beta (love that line)

As I find myself saying more often: business is mostly simple; but it’s not easy.

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Yahoo! praying competitors grow?

by nick on August 12, 2008

We all know history shows us nothing lasts. The Roman Empire, the Warsaw Pact, the telegram, the Two Ronnies… whatever. You name it and time will show itself to have moved swiftly on. Google had another record month in June performing 7.1 billion searches, but I predict, with a prize-fighter’s confidence, that Google cannot remain the de facto search engine. There, easily said wasn’t it.

Perhaps it’ll be a hostile take over or a merger. Perhaps implosion (though a lack of funds seems very unlikely today). Perhaps huge customer revolt over privacy issues or ‘evil’ infringements. Whatever, but the inventor of the mass-market car couldn’t create a lasting success of things and history will show Sergey and Larry to be no different. However, the guys at Yahoo! aren’t waiting for me to be proven right in 2090. They know they can’t beat Google at their own game so a month ago they started letting others do it for them. Well, that’s one of their strategies to stop the game, set and match scenario they’re staring at today. They’re opening up their search to allow developers to code the final pieces, thus avoiding all the colossal development costs. The Yahoo! blog says:

“our goal with BOSS is to remove as many of the barriers as possible to creating new search products. By providing deep access to Yahoo! Search’s investment in engineering, sciences and core search infrastructure and removing key usage restrictions, we are encouraging a whole new level of innovation in search experiences.”

The more the merrier, eh? Kind of like getting all your friends to help you stand up to the bully in school, but it appears a viable strategy as long as several really do something different from Yahoo! and gain critical mass. I suspect the promotion techniques to come will be far more interesting than the resulting algorithms.

Then there’s Cuil, surely the first of many serious search contenders to come. Serious because its frontline folks are ex-Google, but also serious because it promises different results, not Google regurgitations. They’ve indexed three times more pages than any other engine but “stay on that page and analyze the rest of its content, its concepts, their inter-relationships and the page’s coherency”. Many Google critics cite their heavy reliance on linking as relatively easy to spam (or ‘game’ as it’s known). In a nutshell, Cuil is promising to favour authority over popularity. What will the others promise and will they nibble away enough at Google to actually hurt that dominance? Could it be a death by a thousand engines…?

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