Very interesting thoughts on the future of search from Google. Not how the developments are almost entirely focused on location-based and mobile search.
This has huge implications for advertisers; the more Google focuses on these areas, the more local-based and mobile advertising can be introduced and adopted – we’re thinking coupons.
VentureBeat did a bang-up job at making sense of the Apple/Google/AT&T sniping over Google Voice:
Google Voice lets you use a single phone number to receive calls on multiple phones and reach your voicemail. It also lets you send free text messages and make international calls for two cents — features that would jeopardize AT&T’s traditional revenue streams. So there was a ruckus when Apple inexplicably didn’t list it in the app store and then went further to delete similar applications last month, prompting an FCC inquiry.
VentureBeat also reports that in a letter to the FCC, Apple states that Google Voice would “alter the iPhone’s distinctive user experience by replacing the iPhone’s core mobile telephone functionality.”
This reads like the understatement of the year. Free texting? 2 cent/min International phone calls? One phone number for everything? Ask yourself, is this something you would take for a test-drive? I think most of us would and it’s no surprise that Apple feels, well … threatened.
After Google’s big announcement regarding the launch of its new operating system, Chrome OS, I can’t help but chuckle at the lyrics to the song Hell is Chrome by one of my favorite bands, Wilco:
“When the Devil came / he was not red. / He was Chrome …”
Is this being hummed within the halls of Microsoft this morning? It’s hard to think otherwise. (In fairness, who could fault Microsoft’s employees for such excellent musical taste?)
The mere announcement of Google’s play won’t, and should not, shake the foundation of Microsoft’s business – yet. But, the move does represent Google’s boldest salvo yet to push the migration of personal computing away from the desktop and on to the cloud. Consumers are already growing more and more accustomed to other cloud-based software, particularly through the high adoption of social media applications.
It’s this ideology that has Microsoft concerned, if not panicked – hell may not be chrome, but Chrome, and everything that Chrome brings with it, could certainly be hell for Microsoft.
Marketing Pilgrim has a good post on Google’s recent foray into the real estate listings market.
You have to hand it to GOOG for its opportunism. Marketing Pilgrim points out a recent Hitwise report stating the high volume of traffic Google Maps receives from real estate focused websites.
A coup for Google if they are somehow able to carve out a large portion of traffic from the Realtor.com and Zillows of the world.
Bloomberg was all over the rumor that Time Warner would announced during today’s earnings call that it has a spin-off plan in place for AOL. That didn’t exactly happen, but it looks like Time Warner is indeed moving closer to an AOL spin-off. In fact, they’re buying back Google’s 5% stake in AOL.
But, could a spin-off mean a real challenge to Google, in the form of AOL? Well, AOL now as Tim Armstrong, Google’s former head of North American advertising sales and now CEO at AOL. Clearly, with the timing of his arrival to AOL as CEO, Armstrong is motivated. A spun-off AOL will give Armstrong that much more latitude to clean house and do things his way; presumably, the Google way.
For its part, AOL earnings dropped 23%. Armstrong had better get his broom ready, because he’ll likely need it if AOL is become the world-class advertising and content company that it once was.
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