23 Musings

Some updates on the Microsoft-Yahoo approach:

Kevin Johnson, president of Microsoft Platforms and Services Division sent an internal email yesterday. The email was obviously designed to be leaked (and ended up on Microsoft.com after it got into the blogosphere) judging by the language in it and the mentions of looking after both companies employees in the event of the merger going ahead. Trying to stop people jumping off the ship? Or just a good PR exercise?


Yahoo are facing another lawsuit, this time from some pension funds who claim that by declining the Microsoft offer they are not returning value to shareholders and are actually risking their investments by dragging it out looking for other parties to strike a deal with.

Lastly, Sergey Brin has expressed his nervousness at the deal going ahead, saying that 'when you start to have companies that control the operating system, control the browsers, they really tie up the top Web sites, and can be used to manipulate stuff in various ways. I think that's unnerving'.

So no progress really, rumours still fly about Yahoo trying to find anyone else to deal with and Microsoft seem confident as ever that the deal will go through in the end.

Part of Facebooks game plan seems to have been to create an illusion of openness while at the same time ensuring that their platform is actually closed to anyone who could tread on their toes in the areas that drive their revenue. Now admittedly they don't have much revenue right now but that is going to change very soon with all the new advertising options available to brands who want to be promoted on the social network. So with this increasing revenue should come an increasingly closed approach as they try to prevent others from stepping on their toes. Right?

Well, it seems Google may have a way in to the Facebook platform, and it may be something that Facebook can't do anything about.

Bring forth OpenSocket; a Facebook application that allows you to run any OpenSocial application on your Facebook profile. Now, as OpenSocial gains traction I can very well see developers looking for ways to monetise their efforts on this new platform. Of course, with Google at the helm one of the obvious options would be to carry Adsense adverts on your OpenSocial app. So that is how Google can potentially make advertising revenue out of Facebook without striking any sort of deal.

Will this happen? Well, I'd imagine Facebook will try to block Google ads from appearing, but if a lot of developers start using OpenSocial the demand to allow this may be overwhelming and actually more in Facebooks interest to allow this than to try to block it.

Google has now overtaken ITV1 as the biggest recipient of advertising revenue in the UK according to the Times.

It's been coming for a while as Google have been raking in the pounds as they expand their advertising into other sectors and functions. Google are expected to overtake the whole of ITV plc by the end of 2008.

What would make this interesting is the Doubleclick deal. The deal has just been approved by the Australian competition regulator, a first step for Google to get the deal as a whole approved. Now it just remains for the U.S. and EU regulators to okay it. The addition of Doubleclick revenue to Google's advertising coffers could make it one of the biggest recipients of ad revenue in the world!

Interesting one this... A friend just sent me this url which takes you to a new service from Google called Shared Stuff. At first glance it looks like a Delicious'esque social bookmarking tool, in fact that's exactly what it looks like.

Shared Stuff is really easy to use. Drag an 'email/share' button to your browser toolbar and start clicking when on a page you want to share. Links can include images and text extracts and also comments. You can view the resulting page directly or RSS it or even iGoogle it. You can also cross post from Shared Stuff to services such as Delicious, Furl or Facebook. You can invite people to view your Shared Stuff by email and Gmail contacts can view too.

Now why would Google go to the trouble of creating a 'me too' app (something they're not that known for?

Now, think a bit deeper about this tool and how it could relate to other Google apps and services. Shared docs, spreadsheets, email, web searches, Google gadgets, links, news etc etc. Clearer? Makes sense to me, this could (potentially) become the way users really collaborate and share not just bookmarks (as this looks now) but also all other Google services. It's all very well integrated and could become a real hub for collaboration (if they've thought of that). Of course it could just be Google bookmarks Mk2...

More rumours today about the possibility of Google launching a phone in the near future.

According to sources at Taiwan handset makers, Google will definitely launch its own-brand handset but has yet to finalize the handset's specifications, OS, production contractor and operating partners.

It seems Google can't make their mind up about whether to go EDGE or 3G. Texas Instruments handset chipsets will find their way into the Google phone should the company decide to roll out an EDGE-compliant handset, but Qualcomm could turn out to be the winner if Google decides to bet on a 3G model, the sources noted.

HTC is still earmarked as probable manufacturer of the Gphone. And there are still rumours that Google may try to launch with it's own operating system to compete with Windows Mobile and Symbian.

The Coolbrands UK top 20 has been announced. This is the 20 brands which were voted as most cool in a YouGov survey recently. There's a few tech brands in there (unsurprisingly) and more of a surprise to me was Virgin Atlantic's appearance at 10.

Here's the whole list, seems Google still have a bit of work to do to shake off the geek factor, if they manage that I reckon they'll move up the list next year.

1. Aston Martin
2. iPod
3. YouTube
4. Bang and Olufsen
5. Google
6. Playstation
7. Apple
8. Agent Provocateur
9. Nintendo
10. Virgin Atlantic
11. Ferrari
12. Ducati
13. eBay
14. Rolex
15. Tate Modern
16. Prada
17. Lamborghini
18. Green & Blacks
19. iTunes
20. Amazon

I use Google Reader for keeping track of my feeds. I also use Netvibes as my homepage and have my favourite and most frequently read feeds on there, however Google Reader is great when you have loads of feeds. The only problem up to now is that I couldn't search my feeds which was becoming a pain with so many to manage.

Now, thankfully Google (GOOG) have added search to it's reader tool. If I liked Google's personalised homepage more I may be tempted to ditch Netvibes now!

Since I posted the other day about the rumours of a forthcoming Gphone from Google Inc. (GOOG) the blogosphere has gone wild with more unsubstantiated facts.

Rumours range from an HTC exec confirming the forthcoming phones existence, to the fact that Yahoo are heading on a parallel tack and developing their own, to rumours that Google are just looking at the operating system side and linking up with phone manufacturers.

I reckon the most likely is the third rumour that Google will concentrate on the software and integrating their own services into someone elses phone and leave the hardware to those who know. As for Yahoo; it's quite likely they are working on phone apps as well, but whether that would be a whole OS or just another version of Yahoo Go who can tell...

I'm really not sure of the validity of this but thought I'd post anyway as it's bound to be a hot topic and generate some buzz over the next couple of weeks...

Rediff News, a well respected source of technology news and views from India, has a story stating that Google Inc. (GOOG) will be launching the GPhone in two weeks. Apparently talks are underway with carriers in India to get an exclusive launch on one of their networks and it should be launching simultaneously in the US and Europe.

It's said that any GPhone that does launch will be 3G compatible and have GPS built in for use with Google Maps. I'd also expect to see GMail integration and IM of some sort.

Google refused to comment. Obviously they will be launching a phone in the future either alone or with a partner, but is it this close to launch? I'm not so sure!

Orkut, the three year old social network from Google (GOOG), has announced that they will be releasing a new look to the site soon. I've been an Orkut member for a while but never really used it as all my contacts are on other networks. I hear it does well in other parts of the world but it has certainly never taken off in the UK (yet).

Google really need to pull something out of the bag if they are to get any momentum going on this product. It doesn't offer anything unique, is not the most intuitive network and really doesn't live up to my expectations of Google. The look and feel refresh may help as it is really tired at the moment.

What they really need is a new hook to bring in the users, something ground breaking that we'd all expect from Google. Mashable discusses SocialStream a unified social network that Google sponsored. This aggregator type approach could be exactly what Orkut needs to break free. I discussed this a while ago and in my opinion Google would be the perfect player to take this concept forwards. Perhaps Orkut is the very platform that could do it?