Entrepreneur Watch

Google and AOL?

No way.

There are rumors that Google and Comcast will buy into AOL. John Battelle describes AOL as the "flop," and he's right. Google's stock took a hit after the rumors. indicating few people like the idea.

The only things Google should be interested in are: reaching AOL's customers, which means keeping Google as the search engine of choice on AOL, and merging the companies' IM services.

But the content? Why the hell would Google want that? It already has access to most of the content in the world. Google is not a media company. If it were to somehow "own" AOL's content, what would it do with it? Give its content preference in the search results? Give the site preference for ads? These are anathema to Google and would seriously damage its relationship with web searchers and its customers, the advertisers.

I'll bet the the talks do not include having Google take over AOL's content business. Let Comcast have that if it wants, or keep it with Time Warner.

Google with proprietary content would be the first step in the death of the company. I would sell my Google stock if that happened, and re-buy only when word leaked out that it was selling the content part of the biz.

Business Week on the politicization of Google

Business Week, my old employer, has a nice article on Google's forays into the Beltway. It gives the background on Google's new lobbyist, Alan Davidson, and his specialties -- arguing for less restrictive intellectual property laws and stronger privacy protection. That is exactly what Google should do.

Microsoft made a mistake by not paying attention to Washington soon enough, to its own detriment. Google is not repeating that mistake.

Most of the reaction seems to be along the lines of "It's about time." But somebody named "Detroit Jake" posting a comment on the BW article, says the company is trying to "re-write established copyright laws and weaken established trademark infringement acts." But he doesn't say if he thinks that's a bad thing.

It is the right thing, it is inevitable, and the world will be a better place for it. As a writer whose only product is intellectual property, I think the laws are too restrictive. The internet is a disruptive technology that expands markets and distribution channels for intellectual property. But the Dodo bird companies will do everything they can to prevent the change, are gunning for Google, and could have a strong negative short-term impact on us all without changing the final outcome one iota.

To book publishers: Remember that a book is not just the sum total of the information inside. It is a nicely packaged way to distribute a detailed story on a subject of interest. You can carry a book around, take it to the beach, read in bed, sit back in a rocking chair and enjoy a good story. Electronic information is better for research, for finding specific information, for finding books you might be interested in, and for spreading the word about things you like or dislike. It is good for sparking an electronic conversation. It is not good for a leisurely read.

Information is light shining in a world of shadows. Why do you think all dictatorships heavily censor and control the press? More information available to more people is good for the world. The internet will force publishers to change their business models, because that's what disruptive technologies have done throughout history.

Get over it.

Infoworld thinks Google's too big for its britches

Buzz Bruggerman pointed me to a short blurb from the pseudonymous Robert X. Cringely complaining that Google is trying to promise us the moon. He thinks the company will turn into a technocracy that will fail.

This is the same misunderstanding I hear from people who talk about Google becoming a "portal." A portal is an attempt to try to corral people into using only your services and reading only your content. It is designed top-down.

Google does things bottom-up. Google believes in the Wisdom of Crowds. It listens to what customers want, and what its developers want to design, and tries them out to see if they fly. It does not have some grand ambition for what a "portal" should be or what businesses it should get into over the next five years. It adds things as it sees the need and as it's capable of filling those needs. It leverages its strengths to provide them.

That, my dear Cringe, is exactly the right way to grow a company.

Buzz Bruggeman on Sun and Google

Buzz Bruggeman made a nice comment on my Sun/Google speculation. He recognizes the potential impact from a world with free wi-fi. He likes the potential of never having to go to Starbucks again, although my favorite is the potential death of all the phone companies.

Google is good for Sun Microsystems

My friend Shel Israel agrees with me (at least somebody does!) that the Google/Sun deal announced the other day is significant. He even decided to buy some Sun stock now that he actually sees a potential path for the company's recovery.

Yahoo goes after media, to Google's advantage

Oh, dear, I think Terry Semel has been listening to John Battelle too much.

At the Web 2.0 conference, Semel emphasized Yahoo's future as a "new, new media company," according to CNET, continuing the mistake he started when first taking over Yahoo. Battelle also insists that Google should become a media company, indeed, that it already is.

Wrong path, wrong idea. When I was trying to start an online media company, one VC confessed to me that he was worried they would invest in media companies at internet valuations, and get out at media company valuations. He was right.

It is virtually impossible to be the best media company in the world. The networks, movie studios and recording labels keep swapping the top spot. No one company can produce all the best media.

But why does it need to? There's an internet full of excellent media products out there. If you could just bring all the best media together in one place... Aha!

While Yahoo tries to create a cable-style network featuring its own media and that of partners, Google avoids the create-it-here syndrome, and simply aggregates all the best media on the internet. You have to be an idiot not to realize  which type of network is likely to be more popular.

Microsoft has already showed how difficult it is to make money on your own media content, with MSN. It will probably sell the service or merge it with AOL.

Google, on the other hand, is a media aggregator and distributor. It will be a vastly superior service to a "portal" that tries to tell you what you want and insists its own stuff is the best.

I'll bet Battelle $100 that Google does not become a "media" company within the next year, but does become a powerful media aggregator.

Google vs. Microsoft

OK, let's get serious about this discussion of Google offering applications.

Imagine this scenario. Google offers free Wi-Max to the entire U.S.--and probably more, but let's start here. Google and Sun team up to produce an extremely low-cost PC, $300 retail. It uses open software and automatically links to all Google's apps, which will include regular PC apps. Google will handle the interface and ease-of-use issues. Since most of the heavy lifting the software does runs on Google's servers, the $300 computer does not become obsolete so fast. You've got a device that lasts a decade without replacing it. Google adds internet telephony to its service, as well as video feeds. The telcos go out of business, and the TV networks get constipated trying to figure out how to make money without annoying, obnoxious advertising (Google will help them with it.)

I have no inside info on this, but look what's already been done. Google is offering free wi-fi to the city of San Francisco. It has been buying up dark fiber, creating an incredibly robust network of its own, so it can ensure reliability and a lot of bandwidth. Google is already doing video searches and is offering internet telephony from your computer.

Everything can be defined as search. You want to find phone numbers, TV programs you like, documents you've written or downloaded. Google can, and will, do it.

And where is Microsoft in this scenario? Screwed!

Still, I do not write off Microsoft. It's an extremely smart company with a lot of cash. It can emulate google, but what a huge upheaval that will cause (no more $300 software packages.) It will build its own advertising network that may rival Google's. But Google will always be a step ahead, and will be more popular. My guess is that Microsoft will find a new niche, catering to corporations.

Google's got the average 'consumer' in its pocket, and she is quite happy there.

Google and Sun are a powerful combination

It’s surprising to me that some people who profess to follow and analyze Google’s actions and strategies still don’t realize how secretive this company is.

They seem to think that the newly announced alliance between Sun and Google was disappointing. CNET came up with a number of blogs discussing the deal, and people were left hungry for some supersized meat from the announcement.

You have to understand. Google comes from the Big Bun School of public relations. It hides the beef.

Sun, however, is a company with a bigger mouth. Sun President Jonathan Schwartz described just what people wanted to hear in his blog. All of a sudden, just as the deal with Google is being announced, he decides to write an enthusiastic essay on the promise of software as a service and its potential to unseat Microsoft. Even though that’s an idea that Sun has been working on for years.

Jonathan also titled his blog The Value in Volume, the most boring headline Sun PR could come up with. But they forgot to tell him to change the url for his blog, which seems to give his original title for the column: entry=the_world_changes_this_week

There’s no question about it. Google is going to, within a year at most (and probably less considering the speed at which Google travels) start offering PC applications like word processing and spreadsheets as a service on its site. My bet is that Google is going to do some major modifications in Sun’s programs. Nobody knows more about ease of use or software as service like Google.

They will announce it when they release it in beta on the Google site.

Must be interesting meetings between Eric Schmidt and his old boss, Scott McNealy. Eric’s now going to determine the future of not only Google, but Sun. This could be a savior of that company. As long as they don't merge.

 

 

Google's telecomm plans

It’s too bad Google doesn’t get more respect.

As soon as Google announced it was bidding on a contract to provide city-wide wi-fi to San Francisco—Google’s price: $0—the conspiracy theorists started up again with questions about Google’s insidious plans for all the data it will collect about us.

Don’t get me wrong, I like the conspiracy theorists. Critics help keep anyone honest. And there is huge potential for invasion of privacy.

Google will, one day, take over all our telecom needs, and probably offer them for free, in return for some non-obnoxious ads. A series of articles in Light Reading outline the kinds of telecom and networking purchases Google is making. Add to that the fact that Google recently hired Vint Cerf from MCI, and the hiring it is doing in operating systems, text processing and more, and it’s not a big step to imagine Google taking over the telecom, broadcast and computer industries.

There are three reasons it makes sense for Google to do this. First, because it can. Second, because it will help Google build a gigantic advertising network. And third, because we all want it to.

Whoever offers us the next generation of such services will have an awesome ability to mine data about us. There are only a few contenders: the government, the telco giants, Google, and Microsoft. Which would you choose?

Any day now, the telcos will start lobbying Congress to regulate and hobble Google. Let’s hope the conspiracy theorists don’t inadvertently give them ammunition to use against Google.