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…But were afraid to ask. This is the title of this very interesting 34-slide presentation on Google prepared by FaberNovel, a french consulting firm. It is hard to realize the real nature of this just 10 years old giant given the number of services it has continuously released, updated (and sometimes shut down) or acquired.
This presentation gives a great overview of the company’s overall strategy and the reasons it has become what it is today.
It addresses some key questions about the company’s future, presented in the slide above: how Google won’t be affected by the crisis (not so sure about that if you consider their own stock), its relation with Microsoft and its advantages on Facebook, its footprint in the infrastructure and mobile world…
All about Google View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: google seo)
There is an interesting slide about how Google buys traffic through key partnership deals with software or hardware companies (slide 14) Many tend to think Google has free traffic or zero marketing costs which is a wrong assumption since it affects directly its P&L
For regular readers, most of this information will not be a surprise. But it is well organized and structured and gives some good prospective. I just wished the presentation was focusing a little more on the Giant’s weaknesses. A TechCrunch France reader funnily commented that, only the absence of electricty could stop them. What we do know on the web is that giants do not stay strong forever. The question is when will the wind change direction for Google?
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MySpace has partnered with RipCode to give mobile users access to MySpace videos. The content will be available at MySpace’s mobile site, m.myspace.com, which currently generates around 3 billion monthly page views from 10 million users.
Video will work on the iPhone, T-Mobile G1, BlackBerry Bold and BlackBerry Storm devices, among others. All user uploaded videos (meaning videos that a user has uploaded, as opposed to all videos uploaded by all users) and most premium content will be available.
The new feature will use RipCode’s on demand video transcoding service. Videos are transcoded only when requested, into whatever combination of codecs, bit rates and resolutions an individual handset requires.
YouTube has offered similar functionality at m.YouTube.com since early this year.
My Videos on MySpace Mobile website
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David Recordon / O'Reilly Radar:
Getting OpenID Into the Browser — Google Chrome did a smart thing: Less. They unified the search box and address bar, since that's what people do anyway. That gives us back precious pixels for the only thing that's as important to an average web user as where they're going: Who they are.
Good news and bad news from BlackBerry maker Research In Motion: Way after hours at 9:35 p.m., the company announced that it blew its third quarter. But RIM (RIMM) says "exceptional" response to its new gadgets led to record subscriber growth at the end of the quarter.
But, on the plus side, RIM says its new Bold and Storm smartphones are seeing an "exceptional" response:
Daily net subscriber account additions reached a record level on the day the BlackBerry Storm launched in the United States and RIM achieved a record number of weekly net subscriber account additions during the last week of the third quarter. The strong demand for new products has continued into Q4 and RIM is working closely with its partners to deliver sufficient product to take advantage of the growth opportunity in Q4 and beyond.
The touchscreen BlackBerry Storm is still backordered at Verizon Wireless. It'll be crucial for RIM to meet demand there in the next few weeks or it could lose potential buyers to Apple's (AAPL) iPhone -- which would be bad news for Verizon (VZ).
RIM's after-hours charts haven't updated on Google or Yahoo, but we wouldn't be surprised to see its stock open lower Wednesday. Investors have been preparing for bad news from RIM, but its Q3 revenue will come in below even the Street's most pessimistic analyst.
Next update will be Dec. 18, when the company posts final Q3 results and gives Q4 guidance.
See Also:
RIM's BlackBerry Storm Is No iPhone, But Should Sell Well
BlackBerry Storm Update On The Way? Responsible For Delay?
BlackBerry Fan Longs For A Better Curve
Seven Reasons Pogue Hates The BlackBerry Storm
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Erick Schonfeld / TechCrunch:
Windows Live Rolls Out Its New Social Network Hub, Boosts SkyDrive/Photo Storage to 25 GB — Today, Microsoft is rolling out some of the sweeping changes to Windows Live it announced two weeks ago. Windows Live seems to be gradually replacing MSN as Microsoft's central hub for everything you do on the Web.
Today’s Wall Street Journal story talking about yet another takeover attempt of Yahoo is incorrect, say our own sources. And unlike The Times’ story over the weekend, which was equally fictitious (and, here’s an interesting fact - both publications are owned by News Corp.), this story had direct consequences in the market.
Today’s story has former AOL CEO Jonathan Miller out pitching private equity funds to raise “$28 billion to $30 billion” to acquire all of Yahoo.
Miller, along with his partner Ross Levinsohn at Velocity Interactive Group, were also center stage in The Times’ story over the weekend.
Our sources say that while Miller and Levinsohn have been talking to Yahoo and Microsoft executives and shareholders for months about Yahoo’s future (and at different times both Miller and Levinsohn have been proposed as Yahoo board members), they have not had any serious discussions with private equity funds about raising capital to take over the company.
The two, along with their other partners at Velocity, have been busy trying to raise a new $300 million fund over the last year anyway. And so far, we understand, they’ve only received commitments for $150 million. So trying to simultaneously raise $30 billion to take over Yahoo seems more than far fetched.
Another reason the story makes no sense - Miller is bound by a non compete agreement with AOL that prohibits him from serving as an employee or board member to certain companies, including Yahoo. In fact, that non compete agreement is the reason Miller couldn’t join Yahoo’s board this last summer. The agreement doesn’t terminate until March, so any near term deal is impossible without AOL’s explicit consent. They wouldn’t give it last summer, and there’s no reason to believe they’d give it now.
Velocity won’t say much about the story, other than to comment that the WSJ made no real effort to contact them for comment before the story was published.
Our sources, combined with basic common sense, tell us the WSJ story is dead wrong. And there were consequences to the story - Yahoo’s stock jumped 11.7% today on the the incorrect news, before settling back down for the day. People lost money, and the SEC should be very interested in whoever was the source for this story.
Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
Mike Nash / The Windows Blog:
Announcing the Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008 Service Pack 2 Customer Preview Program (CPP) — Hi, Mike Nash here. In late October I announced the Beta of Service Pack 2 for Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008 - beginning with a small group of Technology Adoption Program customers.
Arn / MacRumors:
Developers Can Now Issue Free “Promotional” Copies of iPhone Apps — Apple has finally started allowing developers to issue free promotional copies of their iPhone applications. Once an application has been accepted to the App Store by Apple, developers can issue up to 50 promotional codes.
Apple’s App Store has finally given developers the ability to release up to 50 promotional codes for their applications, allowing them distribute their apps to press and friends free of charge directly through the App Store.
While the feature may seem like a minor addition to most people, it will be a boon for developers looking to help spread the word about their new applications. Before now, developers looking to share their application with the press or friends would need to include them as part of Apple’s Ad Hoc program, which lets developers test their applications before they are deployed on the App Store. This was inconvenient, as the Ad Hoc program requires the UUID (a unique number tied to each device) of every phone that was participating, which most people don’t know how to find in the first place.
Image from MacRumors
This is a step in the right direction for the app store (as is the introduction of an all-time listing of the most popular apps), but there are a number of features that are still noticeably missing. For one, there’s still no way to effectively try out an app before buying. Many developers have resorted to producing ‘Lite’ version of their apps that lack some functionality, but this is an unrefined solution that just litters the store with multiple copies of nearly identical apps.
Another one of the store’s flaws is the lack of any way for a developer to determine when their application will actually be available. It’s become an accepted fact that applications will lie in App Store purgatory for a few days (or more) before they get approved. But instead of giving developers a day’s notice before these applications go live, Apple simply posts the app whenever it gets around to it. Without the ability to defer the launch to a specified time, developers are unable to set embargo times and pre-brief press.
For more, check out the original report on MacRumors here.
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Can things at Broadcom (BRCM) get any sleazier? CEO Henry Nicholas is already facing accusations he spiked his clients' drinks with ecstasy. Now Bloomberg is reporting Broadcom's SVP for Global Manufacturing Vahid Manian, who claims on his executive bio to hold both a B.S.E.E. and M.B.A. from UC Irvine, was never even awarded his undergraduate degree.
We know Manian never graduated courtesy of ex-con-turned-PI Barry Minkow, who's made something of a cottage industry out of sniffing into executives' academic backgrounds. Last month MGM Mirage CEO Terry Lanni promised to retire after Minkow ferreted out the exec never received the MBA from USC his company bio said he earned.
See Also:
More Pervy Henry Nicholas Details: Broadcom Billionaire's Hookers, Coke, And Underground Lair
Money Manager To Billionaire Sex Dungeon Enthusiast Pleads Guilty
Ex-Wife Says Disgraced Broadcom CEO Henry Nicholas Unfit To Manage Family Trust
Germany-based myON-ID Media has raised an undisclosed seven-figure sum in a second round of funding from T-Online Venture Fund to expand its online reputation management platform. MyON-ID is actually more of a combination between a people search engine and an alert service for keywords mentioned across the web.
I quicky tried out searching my own name on the English version of the search application, and the results were a bit messy to say the least. From what I understand, all the engine does is perform a meta search on services like Twitter, YouTube, Flickr, LinkedIn etc. along with traditional and blog search engines like Technorati. MyON-ID aims to make money from offering a premium version and advertising on the free service.
I’m not so sure what prompted a reputable investor like T-Online Venture Fund and previous backer Nexum to fund such a simple service, unless I’m missing something here. The Munich-based company claims it’s very strong in Germany, and hopes to repeat this success with other localized versions (in English, French, Italian, Polish, Dutch, Spanish and Turkish).
There are far better tools out there for online reputation tracking and management, in my opinion. One example is Trackur, which offers advanced tools to monitor social media. Other providers off the top of my head include Brandseye, Radian6, Attentio, Buzzcapture and Chatterguard.
The people search engine market on itself is already a crowded one: alternatives include Wink, Spock, Naymz, PeekYou and Pipl.
I have serious doubts if myON-ID has what it takes to compete on an international level.
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We've been calling around about the Yahoo CEO job and here's what we're hearing. Remember, it's all just industry chatter -- scuttlebutt.
See Also:
Jon Miller Trying To Raise Money To Buy Yahoo (YHOO)
Greg Kumparak / MobileCrunch:
Apple announces Top 10 iPhone App downloads of 2008 — With 2008 on the way out and right around 10,000 applications behind them, Apple has released a series of lists outlining which applications scored the most downloads since the App Store's launch back in July.
YouTube Blog:
A YouTube for All of Us — As a community, we have come to count on each other to be entertained, challenged, and moved by what we watch and share on YouTube. We've been thinking a lot lately about how to make the collective YouTube experience even better, particularly on our most visited pages.
Spencer E. Ante / Business Week:
Digg: Not for Sale — The news aggregation site's CEO, Jay Adelson, spelled out Digg's drive for profitability — Over the last few years, Digg has become Silicon Valley's version of the boy who cried wolf. Like the child who warned local villagers that a wolf was about to attack his flock of sheep …
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Leading Apple's (AAPL) best-selling iPhone games list: Apple.
Apple said today that its Texas Hold'em poker game is the most-purchased iPhone/iPod touch game so far, beating games from the likes of Vivendi, Sega, Freeverse, and Pangea Software.
What does this mean? Apple isn't disclosing how many copies of its game it sold for $5. (We know it's more than 500,000, but that's it.) So we don't know how much revenue or profit Apple got from its game -- not enough to matter, anyway. We also don't know if Apple actually built the app or if it contracted another company to build it.
But it suggests that iPhone owners appreciate Apple's gorgeous graphics and attention to detail, and are willing to pay for it. It also suggests that Apple should consider making more iPhone games -- and more iPhone apps in general.
It's probably not a good idea for Apple to try to dominate its apps platform -- no need to tick off partners like Sega or Electronic Arts (ERTS). But in-house game publishing has strengthened other game platform companies, like Nintendo (Mario franchise, Wii games) and Microsoft (Halo franchise). And if Apple makes more great games and apps, it might sell more iPhones and iPods.
See Also:
Want An iPhone App? Got $30,000?
Another Apple iPhone Advantage: Mac Software Companies
Online, Multi-Player Gaming Comes To The iPhone
Jon Oliver and Andy Zaltzman present commentary unlike that you find on this side of the Atlantic.
Their Wikipedia entry cites important features including Hotties from History and Ask an American.
Of particular interest is the following from their Wikipedia discussion page:
two nerd factions, the buglers versus the wikipediansthis is brilliant. i mean, these two groups, so similar in so many ways (probably relating to computer gaming?) have come to blows. it's been an invasion. the buglers have followed their fearless leader into foreign territory (as i'm doing right now).
we geeks must unite. somehow, a truce must be negotiated. did mccain not declare "we are all wikipedians?"
oh ps. anyone who would have the knowledge necessary to add to the bugle page would have to be a devoted fan. a devoted fan would also be obliged to do as andy zaltzman says. so figure that one out.
Check also The reason that this article is awesome....
I fully support our Bugle Overlords.
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Global Equities Research analyst Trip Chowdhry says Google (GOOG) will post revenue declines for the next three years -- $15.71 billion in 2008, $15.23 billion in 2009 and $14.57 billion in 2010.
The 2008 number is consistent with the rest of Wall Street, but Chowdhry's 2009 and 2010 projections are far lower.
'Our research indicates that the challenging macro-economic conditions continue to worsen Google's advertising driven consumer Internet business,' he writes, according to Barron's.
Chowdhry says contacts tell him Google's number of keywords sold is down 2% to 5%. He claims bids on keywords are down by as much as 20%.
Sources from search marketing firms SearchIgnite and iCrossing tell us they haven't seen the same kind of declines.
Chowdhry points out that Google canceled plans to builds a data center Oregon and that's not the company's only cost cut. It's also cut food, travel, contractors and Friday afternoon parties -- all while throwing new types of ads against Google News, Google Maps, Google Image Search and YouTube.
Our theory has been that Google is either scrambling to boost its Q4 revenues in order to just barely make them or in order to shock and awe a street full of doubters like Chowdhry.
See Also:
Google To "Significantly Reduce" Contractors -- Still (GOOG)
Two years ago, when social networking was all the rage, a lot of dedicated community websites for specific (and often very small) groups of people were launched by entrepreneurs trying to cash in on the hype by carving out a certain niche. The strategy proved successful for some, but for others … not so much. And now that the economic crisis is weighing down on the entire industry, with advertisers cutting their overall budgets and the online spend decreasing rapidly, the wheat is getting separated from the chaff faster than expected.
One niche social network shutting down is Sneakerplay, an online community targeted at people who love their sneakers so much they need their own special place on the net to talk about them and share pictures of their favorite shoes with each other. That was the idea. But guess what? People don’t love their sneakers enough to bond with other people over them on an ongoing basis. At least not enough people to build an actual business around it.
To be perfectly fair, the founders never expected all that much from it either, at least not for long. In the blog post announcing the demise of the service, the founders are quite open about the fact that they lost their focus along the way.
Over time, we’ve realized that we weren’t committing the same amount of energy as we did in the beginning. Our focus has been diverted by other projects that we’re currently working on. We think it’s not fair to you guys to not support Sneakerplay the way it’s meant to be supported. Sneakerplay really needs a new home. We believe in the right hands, Sneakerplay can flourish. It needs someone who can nurture it, build new features, and give it the right attention it needs.
Sneakerplay started on a shoestring budget ($1500) and never attracted any outside financing, so it was always more of a hobby project, although the 3 friends who started the social network did get a nice return on the money they put in (and then some) thanks to sponsorship and support from brands like Adidas, Nike, EA Sports and Microsoft. You can ask yourself what this might mean for other niche social networks: if turning Sneakerplay into something that made more money than it cost wasn’t even sufficient to keep these guys motivated, how many other niche social networks will be closing their doors soon?
As you can read on their blog, the founders are still trying to turn the shutdown into a sale, but that’s rather unlikely since the social network never got any real traction. They are, however, pitching the idea of a sale to MTV and Complex (who operates a competing network dubbed KicksOnFire) so maybe they’ll still be able to flip it.
For now, we’re putting Sneakerplay into the deadpool.
Update: per comment below, Sneakerplay says they’re not shutting down, but in fact they are. Keeping the website online and hoping for a buyer while not actively trying to grow and calling it in fact “a bitter sweet end for us” is effectively the same as discontinuing the social network. Looking at the graph below, it’s no surprise either.
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Imagine if **your web browser really knew who you were on the web**. Just as you login to your computer, what if when you fired up your browser, it said "Hello Dave" and asked you to "unlock it" as well ([Chris Messina](http://factoryjoe.com/) was quite influential in my thinking about it this way). In doing so you become securely logged into your OpenID provider (or maybe more than one of them) and as you move around the web your browser takes care of automatically logging you into the sites that you want to be, asking you about others, and helping you register with new ones using your OpenID. Argue as much as you want about the details in making this happen, but I think it's hard to disagree that making it easier for people to manage and use their identity (or identities) online is a bad thing.
There are a lot of proposals around how current OpenID interactions will change - [a great summit on OpenID usability](http://openid.net/2008/10/21/the-first-openid-user-experience-summit/) was held a little over a month ago - and whether it be more one-click buttons, less buttons, bigger logos, or email addresses I think it's also worth **looking at what it will take to really get the browser involved**. This certainly isn't a new idea, every major browser has the ability to remember passwords and FireFox even has those pesky user profiles so that people could theoretically have different cookies, bookmarks and other settings.
In the internet identity space this isn't a new idea either. [Information Cards](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_Card) (more widely known by Microsoft's CardSpace implementation in Windows) have credit card like rich desktop integration built using WS-* and SAML. Dick Hardt's team up in Canada has built [Sxipper](http://www.sxipper.com/) for FireFox which helps with both OpenID and normal web forms as well. When I was working for VeriSign, we developed the [OpenID Seatbelt](https://pip.verisignlabs.com/seatbelt.do) which is also a FireFox extension designed to make OpenID easier and prevent phishing by detecting OpenID enabled sites and your provider.
Today, **MySpace, Flock and Vidoop [released a prototype of their implementation toward this vision with OpenID for Flock](http://news.cnet.com/8301-13577_3-10110901-36.html)**. All three of these browser plugins help you manage your OpenIDs, detect when you're on an OpenID enabled site, and then make it easier to sign in. To me, what Sxipper aspires to enable feels the most useful for a mainstream user.
OpenID for Flock is an add-on that polishes previous attempts of putting OpenID into a browser. While the user experience and graphics are quite a bit better than what I helped build at VeriSign, it's lacking the features that help prevent phishing (making sure you're actually logging into your OpenID provider versus a phishing site that looks like it) which is a bit surprising given Vidoop's involvement. That said, **OpenID for Flock is Open Source** as part of [a project dubbed IDentity in the Browser (IDIB)](http://code.google.com/p/idib/) which the same cannot be said for either Sxipper or VeriSign's OpenID Seatbelt. Given that IDIB is Open Source and already written as a Flock add-on, I'd certainly expect to see it ported to FireFox and there be far more community support of it compared to the other add-ons.
So where do we go from here? I don't know how to write great browser plugins so just doing it is out. It's **great to see Flock's direct involvement in this Open Source effort** as it shows browser vendors innovating and experimenting with how their own products must evolve to support identity. Maybe this will cause the other browser vendors to think seriously about what they too could be doing in future versions to help make identity management easer and more secure on the web.
In my mind, **[Gears](http://code.google.com/apis/gears/) can help us get there**. While it started as a project by Google to evolve web browsers faster and add needed features like offline support, it's grown beyond that with offline support now coming in HTML 5 and a new [Geolocation API](http://code.google.com/apis/gears/api_geolocation.html). Today Gears runs on half a dozen different browser/platform combinations including FireFox, Internet Explorer, Safari, Chrome and Android. If there was ever a developer platform to build an Open Source cross browser implementation of what OpenID support might look like, Gears seems like the place to do it. Not only does this mean that we'll need to write less code to have it work in multiple browsers, but ideally if it became mature enough maybe the Gears team would choose to ship OpenID support as well? All of a sudden, the community could be down from a handful of browser plugins to one leading Open Source example.
What do you think? Do you agree that identity is becoming as essential to a browser as location? Should we content ourselves for issues like security to be relegated to a few dozen-pixel lock icon, or have Big-Red-Phishing-Warnings set a standard that important issues deserve significant real estate? Really though, should the browser become more actively involved in how you use the web on a daily basis?
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There's a lot of fuss this week about a technical note Apple (AAPL) quietly published to its support site last month encouraging its customers to use "multiple antivirus utilities" to keep their Macs secure.
But... aren't Macs supposed to be virus-free? Don't they make fun of Microsoft (MSFT) for all the viruses that affect Windows?
Sure. Apple's been fortunate to avoid the virus, worm, spyware, and trojan problems that have plagued Windows over the years.
Part of that could be that Macs are inherently more secure than PCs. But the biggest reason has always been that there are far fewer Macs out there to infect than Windows PCs.
As Macs take more of the PC market, that balance shifts. Likewise, malicious virus writers have more incentive to target Macs than they did before. And as we increasingly use the Internet, there's more opportunities for people to poke at your system.
So it's in Apple's best interest to advise its customers about antivirus tools -- just as even Volvo would advise you to buckle your seat belt while driving.
See Also:
Apple Black Friday Mac Sales 'Better Than Expected': Analyst
Apple's Black Friday Sale: No 15% Discount
Another Apple iPhone Advantage: Mac Software Companies
Analysts may be saying home PC buyers preferred HP's (HPQ) computers to Dell (DELL) by 5-to-1, but Michael Dell isn't worried. Speaking at an investment conference, Michael insisted sales of Dell computers had been "pretty good" since Friday.
Michael laid out Dell's plan for the next year:
See Also:
Consumers Prefer HP Computers To Dell 5-To-1: Analyst