Sunday Google news summary: july 30 - aug 6

July 30 -- Eric Schmidt says Google will emphasize partnerships like the one with Dell. Good idea to avoid lawsuits, but content partners ought to get it through their heads that it's a good thing to let Google drive traffic to their site, without forcing Google to pay. Donna Bogatin in a ZDNet blog gives some details.

Aug 2 -- RealNetworks, Firefox and Google in bundling deal. An attempt to team up against Microsoft. Let's hope it's not another distraction like the old, ill-fated consortia from Sun, H-P, IBM and others to try and kill Microsoft Windows.

Aug 3 -- Google agreed to pay AP for using its articles and pictures. This seems like a really dumb idea. News organizations that sue Google for driving traffic to their sites have apparently never heard of blogs. It's like suing somebody for giving the classified section of their paper to a friend. iTWire thinks the deal makes sense because Google does not drive traffic to AP, it drives traffic to sites that buy AP articles. But that inspires pubs to buy more AP articles and increases ad views so they can afford to buy more articles. Good deal for AP, it's like getting paid for readership acquisition. But it will apparently be part of a separate service than Google News, which also strikes me as a dumb idea. Google News drives people to the most popular articles. So now it's going to send people to AP articles that nobody reads? We'll see when the new product is introduced.

Aug 3 -- Google signs deal with XM Satellite Radio to place ads on  non-music XM channels.  OK, a potential expansion of Google's ad market, and an attempt to give small advertisers more access to new markets. But can these new markets work for Google? Where's the relevancy between ads and content? I don't understand Google's print ad efforts either.

Aug 3 -- Taiwan's Alpha Networks is ready to produce a Google Talk-compatible phone. Will Google end up as our phone company someday?

Aug 5 -- Google says it's not interested in entering the music sales business -- right now. Company probably figures Apple has it covered. Google mumbles something about the opportunity lies in moving music to other devices. Can Apple keep up with songs from non-signed artists, though? If not Google will probably help people find them, and will no doubt end up linking to pirated music. More lawsuits!

Aug 6 -- Google signs a deal with Viacom to put video clips on Google site. International Herald Tribune reprints an article by NY Times that says it's a good deal all around, an indication of Google's willingness to do things legally. I linked to IHT instead of NYT because you don't have to register for IHT. Will NYT sue me now?

Aug 6 -- UC is in negotiations to add its library books to Google's Digital Library project. Libraries get it, too bad publishers don't. They don't like the other library deals. Will this one be any different?

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