23 Musings

Google's power and influence in the online world has been demonstrated again today with the news that IncrediMail has had it's Adsense deal with Google stopped abruptly.

IncrediMail received a large amount of its revenue from displaying Adsense adverts to its users. Now this has suddenly stopped and IncrediMail is feeling the ramifications reflected in its share price which dropped 40%.

No real news as to why the deal has ended but the Adsense account that was used has been suspended so it's looking like it could be less than amicable.

This really shows the power Google holds over many websites that are considered to have good revenue streams. Switch off the major source of that revenue and what is left for them to survive on. Perhaps some of these websites find they are making so much off Adsense that they neglect other revenue sources and leave their eggs in the one basket.

So Yahoo have one of the biggest email services out there on the web and yet they've shown no desire to get into the online office productivity realm, that is until now.

Yahoo have announced that they've brought Zimbra into the Yahoo fold to allow them to make Yahoo Mail on steroids! They've paid $350m for the pleasure of being able to join the race to create the first really viable alternative to Microsoft Office. Obviously Google is a long way ahead but if Yahoo is going to flash the cash they could catch up very quickly.

The way Zimbra offer email, calendering, contacts, document authoring all in a collaborative browser based on and offline experience is going to be an amazing add on to Yahoo Mail. I'd imagine we'd see a corporate/paid for version of this suite too.

So what's next for Yahoo I wonder? Possible Zoho acquisition?

New feature announced at Gmail this week. They now have full POP3 access enabled for up to 5 other email accounts. This means you can get your Yahoo, work and other emails all into the one portable interface. You can even spoof the from address when replying so no one need know that you're working from a beach in Anguilla rather than your office in London (a tempting proposition at this time of year)!

It's an invite only feature for the moment so I haven't experienced it first hand but it sounds like this could be the making of Gmail as it's a feature neither Yahoo or Hotmail have fully implemented yet.

The ever timely TechCrunch has much more on this here.

Google has signed an agreement with BSkyB today. This is the latest in the recent round of partnerships they have signed with media companies since the YouTube acquisition.

The latest deal will see BSkyB launch a user-generated video service that will run off Google's video tools, a customised version of Google's Gmail e-mail service will go on offer to BSkyB customers and advertising revenues generated from directing BSkyB customers to websites via paid links will be shared between the BSkyB and Google.

Sounds like another dream deal for Google and one that may stave off any legal threat from them regarding copyright issues on YouTube and Google Video.

Funny how there's been zero news since Microsoft launched their new video service, does make me wonder what they are doing, they can't have thrown in the towel already.... can they.....?

Very shrewd move by Yahoo to announce the opening up of their mail API to developers this week. It's the first mail client to open it's API who have a really sizeable user base. Yahoo are hoping that web programmers will develop useful add-ons and clever ways to receive and deal with email.

Yahoo Mail has been plagued by talk of spam filled inboxes for years so any extra input from outside developers to combat spam will really add value.

Other possible developments could be new looks for the interface, reader software to have Yahoo mail outside the browser, widgets, message previews and other add-ons to add value to email (possibly making use of other Yahoo services such as Answer and search).

It's a great move from Yahoo as they can't possibly create every mail add-on that every user could want so the legions of programmers who hopefully will be attracted to this API may be able to do some of these things for them.