• Ross Fadner, Mar 23, 2009, 11:45 AM
  • Google Should Beware EBay Curse BusinessWeek "Google is holding up quite well" despite the downturn, says BusinessWeek writer Sarah Lacy, but current resilience doesn't necessarily mean that still growing company will be in the same position after the recession is over and its business matures further. For example, eBay found itself in a similar position during the last recession, but after its core business matured, it struggled mightily, event before this latest recession.

    If Google doesn't want to look like eBay in four years, Lacy says there are a few things it could do to retain its edge. For starters, the search giant should buy Twitter, she says, because "Twitter may end up becoming the first company to crack the so-called natural-language search, where the user types in a question using common language." IAC/InterActive Corp. tried this and failed with Ask.com, but Twitter uses results from real pople to generate answers. Lacy adds that "the marketing capabilities are clear as well."

    Generally speaking, Google needs to get better at acquisitions, Lacy says, because like eBay, the search giant is "great at spotting promising companies," but "bad at getting the most out of them." Blogger, Dodgeball, Jaiku and thus far, YouTube, are all examples of that. Google also needs to step up its game in mobile, she says. Android partner T-Mobile is nowhere near getting the sales bump that AT&T got with Apple's iPhone. Meanwhile, Google execs continue to talk about mobile as the company's future. Lacy's other suggestions: Google shouldn't turn its back on good in-house products, and it needs to continue to innovate in search. Read the whole story...
  • Just Plain Wrong: TC Article About Online Advertising Search Engine Land In a lengthy post, Search Engine Land's Danny Sullivan tears apart a guest article called "Why Advertising is Failing on the Internet" that appeared in TechCrunch over the weekend. The article was written by Eric Clemons, "professor of operations and information management at The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania," whose title is accompanied by a fancy description at the university's Web site. Says Sullivan: "Unfortunately, I won't get a refund for the time I wasted reading through his article," which he says is full of numerous errors, particularly about search advertising.

    In it, Clemons argues that Google's business model is all about "misdirection, or sending customers to Web locations other than the ones for which they are searching...Monetization of misdirection frequently takes the form of charging companies for keywords and threatening to divert their customers to a competitor if they fail to pay adequately for keywords that the customer is likely to use in searches for the companies' products." Makes Google sound like the traffic mafia, doesn't it? "Unbelievable," says Sullivan. "Search advertising -- the biggest form of online advertising -- is all about misdirection? Really?" So, according to Clemons, Google has been misdirecting searchers with search ads for over 10 years, while at the same time forcing companies to buy advertising in order to guarantee organic traffic to their sites.

    Absolutely ridiculous: "I have never, ever heard of a serious, evidenced-back case where Google has threatened to drop some company ranking for a generic term if they don't buy ads," says Sullivan. "Never." There have been algorithm changes, he notes, but "I doubt Clemons is even aware of these algorithm shifts...And if he is aware, then he's also aware that Google still sends huge, colossal amounts of traffic to commercial web sites for free -- even those that do not buy search ads." Read the whole story...
  • Facebook Redesign Sparks (Mostly Negative) Reactions CNet Facebook users are once again up-in-arms over the most recent design changes Mark Zuckerberg and company have made to the popular social networking site. The changes, which seem to have been inspired by the looming threat of microblogging upstart Twitter, have been met with 624,665 comments from Facebook users, and almost all of them are negative. CNet does a good round up of the varying reactions by bloggers and critics to the Facebook redesign. Over at Gawker's Valleywag, a source claims that Zuckerberg said in an email that it isn't necessarily useful for the company to listen to its users this time. "He said something like 'the most disruptive companies don't listen to their customers,'" the source said. After all, resistance to change is human nature, right?

    Elsewhere on the Web, others are trying to find a silver lining. Eric Eldon and MG Siegler at VentureBeat said the company "needs to do a better job easing users into this redesign. If it wants people to do their own filtering using lists, it needs to make sure they know how. That's why above the feed filters, there should be two options: One to show you the news feed after the redesign, and one 'legacy feed' below to show you just the core Facebook elements that were previously in the news feed prior to the redesign.

    Meanwhile, blogger Robert Scoble is firmly against Facebook listening to its users this time. "Anyway, all those who are saying the new design sucks should NOT be listened to. Yeah, I know a lot of people are going to get mad at me for saying that. After all, how can a blogger say to not listen to the masses? Easy: I've seen the advice the masses are giving and most of it isn't very good for Facebook's business interests..." Read the whole story...
  • AOL's Biggest Problem: Revamping Its Sales Force Silicon Alley Insider Between 2007 and 2008, page views at AOL soared, but ad revenues fell a whopping 24%. This, Silicon Alley Insider's Nicholas Carlson notes, cost CEO Randy Falco, COO Ron Grant and Platform A sales chief Lydia Clarizio their jobs.

    So, if Tim Armstong, AOL's newly anointed chairman and CEO, wants to keep his job (which he hasn't even started yet), Carlson says "fixing AOL's sales force will be his principle challenge."

    Carlson asks Alan Citron, the founding editor of AOL's most popular blog, TMZ, to expound upon the problems facing said sales force. He says there are three problems in particular: AOL has too much inventory to sell, Advertising.com is too much of a crutch (i.e. its biz model creates the feeling that whatever you don't sell will be sold off anyway), and sales people don't do an adequate job selling the company's individual brands. Read the whole story...
  • With TV Everywhere: Everybody Wins Blog Maverick Mark Cuban wants to know: why do people think content producers are stupid? Ad revenues are falling and DVD sales are slowing. But the per subscriber fees they are getting paid are consistently going up. This, he says, is the main reason why the concept of "TV Everywhere," outlined by Time Warner CEO Jeff Bewkes earlier this month, "is the EXACT RIGHT MODEL" for content producers, cable nets and distributors.

    The idea of TV Everywhere is that a cable or satellite subscription would give users access to their cable TV from any device. It would be kind of like paying for cable TV service and getting a Sling Box (which allows users to watch their TV programming over the Internet) thrown in for free.

    As Cuban notes, most people would not even notice a change. But "it would make absolutely zero sense for legit content providers to compete with the most consistent and largest source of revenue they have." Meanwhile, the TV Everywhere concept would increase the value of cable and satellite subscriptions while also increasing the value of broadband and mobile subscriptions. Everybody wins. Read the whole story...
  • Former Yahoo COO Named Guitar Hero Frontman D: All Things Digital Read the whole story...
  • Ballmer Maps Microsoft's Future The New York Times Read the whole story...
  • Saying Goodbye To Google Stop Design Read the whole story...