We all know that Google is the dominant
search engine, and controls a large percentage of online advertising. But many of us --
even regular Google users -- are not aware of some of Google's other services. Most of
them are presented as new ways of listing and categorizing the universe.
However, consistent with Google's new status as a
profit-first public corporation, what lies at the root of most of Google's expanding
ventures is the need to become less dependent on context-based advertising revenue. In
other words, the people at Google are desperately looking for new ways of making money.
Froogle still looking for a mission in life
Google's product search and comparison tool called Froogle,
was launched in December 2002. It was developed in an attempt to cash in on the obvious
market for online shopping that major sites like eBay and Amazon had so successfully
exploited.
Unlike alternatives like eBay, Froogle lists products for
free, and it has no integrated purchase capability. You just look for products by product
name or description and are presented with a list of products with links to sites where
they are available.
Product information gets into Froogle in one of two ways,
according to the Froogle instructions. It can be submitted electronically by merchants,
and will then be included in the database. Second, in the course of spidering the web
Google's spidering software "automatically identifies webpages that offer products
for sale". These are then included in the Froogle database as well.
What Google wants is to make Froogle a product search tool
of choice, and open up various "monetization" opportunities. The obvious ones
are embedded advertising and paid listings, but others include direct sales possibilities
on the eBay model.
After more than three years Froogle is still called a
"beta" suggesting that Google still has no definite plans for it. The latest
development was to add "local shopping" information to the listings giving
Froogle potential to become an online yellow pages.
Google Local integrates maps, local product search
Everybody agrees that local search is going to be very big
in the next couple of years. Say you're looking for a place to buy an digital camera in a
particular city. Just do a search for "digital camera in MyTown", and Google
Local will give you a detailed street map of the area along with stores that carry the
product, and locations indicated on the map.
Since products are indexed by keyword, you can search for
virtually anything, rather than being restricted to the categories pre-defined by a
service like the yellow pages.
Also unlike the yellow pages, Google Local includes all
stores they have a listing for, not just paying advertisers. Local gives you a map with
locations, plus listings with links direct to the stores. The potential for this resource
seems awesome.
Plus Google Local has integrated a very slick map utility
that arguably looks better (simpler) and in some ways, works faster than other services
such as MapQuest. For instance, you can search for a relatively obscure place like
Carlyle, Saskatchewan or Brora, Scotland and you are taken to a detailed street map for
the entire region. If you are looking for a broader overview of the area, you can just
grab the map and scroll along a highway or the coast without having to click on navigation
arrows as you do with MapQuest.
Google has also integrated its satellite imaging service
into Local. If you are looking at a specific map and would rather see a satellite image of
the area, just click on "satellite". Or if you would like to see the satellite
image with a map overlay, you can see that too, by clicking on "hybrid".
Google Video lets you put your videos online
Google Video was introduced in beta back in the spring of
2005, ostensibly to give video producers an outlet for their work. As Google says,
"Whether you produce hundreds of titles a year or just a few, you can give your
videos the recognition and visibility they deserve by promoting them on Google - for free.
Signing up for the Google Video Upload Program will connect your work with users who are
most likely to want to view them."
No doubt Google has something else in mind here too --
providing video-related services to generate revenue. The logical move is for Google to
eventually build a large library of amateur and then commercially produced videos and
moves that it can "rent" on a pay-per-view basis. The company has already taken
a step in this direction with its recent AOL alliance in which it committed to promoting
AOL's video library.
As John Battelle said in a
(http://battellemedia.com/archives/001658.php) June 2004 blog post, "this will help
the spread of an alternative universe for video distribution and playback, one independent
of the walled garden business model in which video is currently locked... the sooner
independent voices have an outlet for their work, and a business model to pay for it, the
sooner we'll see content creators revolt from the hegemony of cable and studio
models."
But there are other possibilities as well. As Jon Udell
says in a (http://weblog.infoworld.com/udell/2005/12/06.html) blog post, "the larger
goal is to bring the social effects we see at work in the textual blogosophere into the
realm of audio. Linking and quotation drive discovery and shared discourse, but media
formats, players, and hosting environments are notoriously hostile to linking and
quotation, and I'd really like to see that change."
Google made a move in this direction by switching its
player technology to Flash in the fall of 2005. While encoding options for flash (FLV) are
still relatively limited, the capabilities to make flash movies more
"link-friendly" are much better than the other mainstream alternatives
(Quicktime, Windows Media, and Real).
In other words, it is much easier to build hot links and
other types of scripting into video and audio using Flash, making it a much better fit
with the traditional "interactive" features we expect from the web.
This also gives it more potential for the integration of
advertising into pre-existing videos. |
