There it was in black and white - Eric Schmidt calling his company an operating system for advertising (a Wired interview). Wired: How should we think about Google today? Schmidt: Think of it first as an advertising system. Then as an end-user system — Google Apps. A third way to think of Google is as a giant supercomputer. And a fourth way is to think of it as a social phenomenon involving the company, the people, the brand, the mission, th

Henry Blodget offers this interview Josh Wexler, founder of SoftWave Media Exchange, which competes with Google’s nascent efforts in the radio and TV world. From Henry’s summary of the interview: * Despite investing heavily in its radio and TV placement efforts, Google is badly lagging SWMX, especially in radio. * In radio, Google sells remnant inventory, but the real business is in regularly scheduled inventory. SWMX generates more

Earlier this year I had a chance to spend some time with the head of AFP (Pierre Louette). He seemed to want to make it work with Google (background), and it’s clear he finally has. From Yahoo News: Agence France-Presse, a global news agency based in Paris, has settled its lawsuit against Google Inc. and will allow the Internet search leader to post news and photos from AFP journalists. The deal, announced Friday, settles the copyright infrin

See Paid Content on the NYT: DoubleClick, the online ad firm, which is in talks with Microsoft and Google for a possible sale, is in the process of launching an online ad auction exchange, reports NYT. In this online exchange, to be launched in Q3, publishers and ad buyers will participate in auctions for ad space. It has signed up 35 Web publishers, advertising networks, agencies and advertisers to test the system. Two of the testers are Adver

From an email: Google Announces TV Ads Trial At Google, we are constantly looking for ways to improve the user experience and bring value to advertisers, publishers and partners. Users spend a lot of time watching TV so improving the relevance of advertising information on that medium is important. That’s why today we are excited to announce our trial to deliver Google TV ads. Working closely with our partners, EchoStar and Astound Cable, we a

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From a source who is in a position to know, news that Google’s DoubleClick competitor will be … free for all to use. Like Analytics. Think about that for a moment. How did Microsoft kill Netscape? Yup, made the browser free. How will Google try to own the entire ad serving biz? Make it free. Why would they do this? Because the most valuable thing in the world of advertising is not the commodity , it’s the information the commodity will

BeetTV says so: Beet.TV has learned that You Tube will introduce new functionality to its platform tonight which will allow users to organize clips around specific categories. Up to now, clips saved to an account or uploaded to dedicated channel are organized in what often seems a random process — usually arranged chronologically, but not always. The new interface will allow users to organize clips according to designated categories. I can

Google does not take third party ad tags. That means that if you want to advertise on Google, you have to run your creative through Google. But a huge portion of the advertising world that Google is now going after - graphical CPM ads - runs through third party ad servers like DoubleClick. Now, DoubleClick is for sale, the WSJ reports. Actually, I’ve heard it’s been shopped since early last year, but anyway….Microsoft is seen as an intereste

Google, Microsoft, Yahoo… It’s now a war of distribution as much as innovation. Why do I say this? Read on, a release from Google: LG ELECTRONICS AND GOOGLE TEAM UP TO ENHANCE THE MOBILE EXPERIENCE LG Handsets to integrate Google Search, Google Maps for mobile, Blogger Mobile and Gmail for mobile Seoul, Korea, and Orlando, Florida March 28, 2007 - LG Electronics (LG), a leading worldwide provider of advanced wireless handsets and accessori

It’s set to become a web site only soon, Matt tells us. InfoWorld has been around for three decades, but IT ad spending is clearly moving online, and it’s hard to justify a weekly trade covering a space that lives online. When I was running the Standard, InfoWorld was a sister publication, and a good one at that. I really hope the publication thrives online, but its owner, IDG, will have to take painful measures to make it relevant in a worl

Microsoft’s Ray Ozzie gave a speech last month that is worth pondering. In it he said that there is “a sea change going on in the industry” and “one of the things I’ve been working on is driving a services vision throughout the company.” So what’s he working on? LiveSide has some thoughts: While Ray Ozzie has been keeping details of his Software as a Service platform quiet, some small bits of information are emerging from other members on his

This just in from the LA Times: News Corp. and NBC Universal plan to announce as soon as today that they are creating an online video site stocked with TV shows and movies, plus clips that users can modify and share with friends, according to people close to the negotiations. The two companies enlisted help from some of Google’s biggest Internet rivals. The News Corp.-NBC Universal partnership has deals with Yahoo Inc., Microsoft Corp., Time W

Google is endlessly fascinating for us, and Henry Blodget continues the speculation with talking points for a debate about whether Google will become “King of all Media.” He makes the (accurate) observation that Google may conquer distribution, but it does not create content, so it doesn’t threaten traditional media companies. Yes, save this one fact: Traditional media companies either owned distrubtion, or depended on it for the bulk of their r

I’ve read this once, and want to read it again, but I think he gets the main point: Google knew what it was getting into when it bought YouTube - the battle for the future of video on the web. It might be a public, legal suit, it might be the threat of one which gets the parties to a business agreement. But it’s far from over.

Late last week Steve Ballmer gave an speech at Stanford in which he stated that Google is a “one trick pony” - that trick being search, of course. He also noted that Google’s staff growth is “insane” and called Google, in short, “cute.” Lordy, Steve. That’s simply baiting the bear, isn’t it? Now, lemme think. For its first ten years (Google is nearly ten years old now), Microsoft was a “one trick pony” - that trick being DOS. IBM, the incumbent

That’s what anonymous sources are calling YouTube/Google’s approach (Reuters) to cutting deals with big media companies.

YouTube, owned by Google Inc., plans to introduce technology to help media companies identify pirated videos uploaded by users. But the tools are currently being offered as part of broader negotiations on licensing deals, they said.

The move contrasts with YouTube’s biggest rival, News Corp.’s, popular Internet social network, MySpace, which said on Monday it would offer its own version of copyright protection services for free.

YouTube’s “proposition that they will only protect copyrighted content if there’s a business deal in place is unacceptable,” a spokesman for Viacom Inc., owner of MTV Networks and Comedy Central, said this week.

Google counters that its technology requires cooperation with media partners, I can see their point

Of note….see TechCrunch’s coverage.

Last year I was asked to address an annual meeting of senior executives in the yellow pages business (I ended up doing two more after that, in fact). They were a bit concerned about Google, Yahoo, and Web 2 in general. Was their business imperiled?

Ummm….yeah, I told them. But they had the resources to address it

Couldn’t have said it better myself. Consumer created advertising is swell, but the much bigger idea here is conversational marketing. Columnist Jonah Bloom even gives me a hat tip toward the end….thanks Jonah!

When Google bought radio advertising play dMarc, there was more than a billion dollars in earnout to be had, if the company hit its targets. There was also $100 million or so in cash.

It’s hard to say what happened since, but the founders have left, and Google’s radio plans are discussed in the MediaPost as unproductive so far

I got an early peek at this months ago and I loved the concept. Anil has a write up here. From it:

Yahoo’s launched an interesting and innovative new service, Pipes, which lets users with a relatively low degree of technological expertise combine structured sources of web data such as feeds. In this way, it’s possible for non-experts to create new web services for their own use or for public consumption

And we thought it was just about search, right? As TechDirt and others (free link from the WSJ) report, finalization of MySpace’s $900mm deal with Google is hitting a snag due to MySpace’s desire to work with EBay on commerce stuff.

Now, back when Google was just a search company that syndicated ads, this would not have been a problem

IAC, not a banner quarter, but Ask, pretty well, judging from this earnings report. More coverage at SEW and SEL.

He’s the TV guy who’s now running AOL, and he’s been pretty quiet since taking over. Here’s coverage of a keynote he recently gave, from iMedia, and an interview. He sounds like he’s learning pretty quick….

“First, respect the consumer– don’t interrupt his or her experience,” Falco said

On the issue of Viacom’s takedown notice, and GooTube in general:

In this corner, against GooTube: Mark Cuban

Gootube has taken the arrogant position with big media that “You can’t stop us. You can’t stop people from uploading your copyrighted materials and if you want us to, you have to do a deal with us”

That’d be Time Warner (AOL). Seeking Alpha transcript. Running on the road, no time to fully grok. However, recall that many believe the company (AOL) is being prepped for a liquidity event.

Matt has the scoop on Aggregate Knowledge and Wunderloop, both are Database of Intentions-based ad services….

Just landed. Everyone knows Google crushed it again. But the stock seems to be priced already for crushing performance, because it did not pop in after hours. In fact, it dipped.

Seeking Alpha has the transcript of the earnings call. It’s really worth a read if you want to geek out - esp. Larry and Sergey’s comments on search and advertising, and the Q&A from the analysts.

Google reports earnings today.

Bear Sterns sent me an earnings note which declares:

Strong Paid Search Growth and International Market Share Gain Reaffirm Positive Outlook

· Paid Search Data Indicate Strength for Google. comScore released the December domestic paid search data yesterday

I don’t get it.

Now, that doesn’t mean it’s not brilliant. I mean, in 1996, I told my fellow senior managers at Wired that the world didn’t need another search engine (we started Hotbot anyway and I’m pretty sure that’s the main reason Lycos bout HotWired).

From GigaOm’s coverage of Yahoo’s media day:

Throughout presentations from the Yahoo Media Group, a part of the new “Audience” division, the key word, uttered more times than we could count, was “promotions.” And so, in both overt and subtle fashion, Yahoo is a company transitioning itself into what’s essentially a marketing platform…..
The most obvious example of Yahoo’s increasing bent towards marketing is its new “Brand Universe” initiative, announced in November

From ReadWriteWeb:

On Monday Google released a relatively minor, but useful, feature. It’s worth examining a bit more closely, because it’s yet another signal that Google is quietly pecking away at Microsoft’s lunch in office software. Now I know that Microsoft Office has a lot of advanced functionality that the online office apps don’t have, but hear me out…

One of the more news-making moments of last week’s Davos event, at least as it relates to our little corner of the world, was Chad Hurley’s revelation (BBC) that it would soon be rolling out a system to share revenues with the folks who create its videos (Jarvis has the video). For me, this was sort of a “no shit, Sherlock” moment, I mean, did anyone really expect Google was going to buy YouTube and *not* make ads available inside the core product - the videos themselves?

But the way it was spun really struck me as impressive

TellMe has launched the first step in what may well be a very important new era in mobile search - Tellme by Mobile. TechCrunch covers it here. I got to play with this in early beta, and it is really impressive. A caveat - TellMe is an FM advertiser, and I agreed to give them my unvarnished input as part of TellMe’s FM program (they have a feedback forum on the new product, a very good idea, here)

Catching up on stuff I’ve missed last week…The Wired piece, and the response to it, strikes me as perfect for Yahoo - it really can’t get much worse. The bar has been lowered. Now jump over it, folks…. I mean, you have the resources. The brand. The technology. The good will. Go. Do. It.

Friend or foe? The media industry’s struggle with this question is its defining story. Here’s another beat in the ongoing drama, a Hollywood Reporter interview with Google’s VP of content partnerships, David Eun. It seems clear to me that Google is trying hard to position itself as a friend, a non-threatening friend, to the content industry.

From it:

The Hollywood Reporter: A company of Google’s size is going to invite controversy

I’m late to this, (Board meeting, travel, bleagh) but it’s fun to note Google’ patent application for display of ads on digital billboards. More here and here.

From ClickZ:

If patent filings are anything to go by, contextual advertising powered by Google will start appearing on digital billboards in a shopping mall near you.

The Mountain View, Calif

comScore releases the December rankings for search engines; and here are the results.

In December 2006, Google gained .4 share from November, to lead with 47.3% market, and Yahoo! went up .3, continuing with the second largest share of 28.5% . Microsoft share dropped .5 points to 10.5% share, Ask fell .1 points to 5.5% share, and Time Warner share shrunk by .2 points, to close at 4.9% share.

In addition, comScore notes that:

• Americans conducted 6.7 billion searches online in December, up 1 percent versus November

In this SJMN piece. Is it just me, or is the line “don’t underestimate Microsoft” starting to ring a bit hollow these days?

From the piece:

According to comScore Media Metrix, the total unique audience that visited Microsoft’s U.S. Web sites in December 2006 was roughly 117 million, unchanged from the previous year

How will Google scale its massive hiring ramp-up while maintaining its famously intricate screening process for ‘Googley’ employees? With an algorithm of course.

After months of interviewing their employees to decipher trends in personality and interests that mark Googlers, Google has ‘derived’ a complex hiring questionnaire

Google continues to test approaches to video ads, AdWeek reports on the beet.tv test which have been reported in the past. I was talking to someone today about Google and video ads. Besides tests like eepyBird and beet, Google is also buying inventory on some large, well known sites and reserving it for video, similar to the way they primed the pump by buying cheap banners and replacing them with AdSense back when that service launched

Bob Lefsetz at his swearingest best on Google and how it interacts with the entertainment industry. Read the whole thing.

Yesterday, Google announced an innovative program, called the Transferable Stock Option (TSO), to allow employees to auction off their eligible stock options to financial institutions.

Morgan Stanley will coordinate the auctioning in TSO, which will take effect the second quarter of 2007. Only options issued after Google went public are eligible and Google’s Executive Management Group will be excluded from participation

Today Yahoo & IBM unveiled OmniFind Yahoo Edition, an unstructured search for enterprise. The product, which relies on Yahoo’s basic web search, is made free and downloadable to the public. As Yahoo and IMB VPs explained in a preview on Monday, you can download it to your laptop easily and it will begin indexing your files right away–although it’s meant for a server.

OmniFind Yahoo Edition will index 500K file documents gratis, and customers can increase the file capacity with a paid upgrade

What to do?

…That’s new MSN chief Steve Berkowitz, late of Ask.com, in a revealing NYT profile by Saul Hansell. In it Steve acknowledges that Microsoft has lost its way in search and other online services, that the Live brand is confusing, that his job is made more difficult by Ray Ozzie’s famous memo, and much more. It’s worth the time.

Trailing the web search market, Compete has a monthly update showing that Google regained ground from October, up 3.5 points, to a high of 66%. While Yahoo lost share, 3.6 points, to fall under 21%. Meanwhile, Ask maintained recently elevated levels, closing at 4.8%.

Jeremy Crane has the Compete post, with an amusing introduction.

(Image cropped from the NYT) Susan Decker gets called out for praise in this NYT profile:

Throughout that challenging period [after the crash], Ms. Decker played a leading role in helping reset expectations on Wall Street and inside the company. She was also instrumental in helping recruit a management team that put the company on a path to renewed growth.

..“It would be difficult to find a job for which she is not intellectually capable,” said Geoff Ralston, Yahoo’s former chief product officer, who left the company in April

Remember back when Netscape was charging for its browser, and Microsoft came out and made Internet Explorer free?

Well check this out:

To celebrate the holidays, Google is processing your Checkout sales for free

As you may know, for every $1 you spend on AdWords, you can process $10 of Google Checkout sales for free

On the Yahoo blog, Yodel Anecdotal (nice name), Semel posts some thoughts on the changes at Yahoo (I love that comments are open, are you listening, Google?). It seems clear to me, though I have no particular insights here, that Dan Rosensweig left because he did not like the idea of running the Audience group, which seems an equal to the new Advertising group run by Sue Decker

From TechCrunch:

A new and unannouced Amazon Web Service to be called “SDS” is referenced on [a now pulled] Amazon web page discussing customer YouOS ….and is being tested with a select few Amazon partners. After a little digging, we heard that it may stand for “Simple Data Service” and will be launching sometime this year, although another source said that the name is incorrect. A representative from Amazon would not comment on whether the service exists or not.