• by Jonathan Blum , January 9, 2006

Las Vegas--It was a high time for content here in the high desert last week. Two of new media's heavyweights, Yahoo! and Google, came to this year's International Consumer Electronics Show to lay the content smack down on the future of gadgets.

Those who saw both company presentations got not only the news, but also a peek behind the curtain of two of the most prominent companies building the future of the Web.

Yahoo! Chief Executive Officer Terry Semel played to type as the last Hollywood action hero. Awash on a stage of corporate logos and "American Idol" lighting, he had "good friends" Ellen DeGeneres and Tom Cruise, as well as Intel President Paul Otellini, just "drop by."

Although specifics--including valuation and revenue splits--were vague, the presentation reiterated the by-now traditional new Internet world order: All access to all content all the time.

The Sunnyvale, Calif. company flashed its Yahoo! Go brand, a blizzard of sound-alike products including Yahoo! Go Mobile, Yahoo! Go TV, and Yahoo! Go Desktop. (See related OnlineMediaDaily story, "Yahoo! Ventures Beyond Computer Screens.")

The products are real. They integrate the array of Yahoo! Web services including mail, games, music, videos, and others for use on multiple devices such as cell phones, personal digital assistants, and media players and the like.

There were also solid partnerships to cement the deal. Yahoo! announced partnerships with Cingular Wireless, AT&T, and Intel Corp. The deal is part of Intel's new Viiv media computer initiative, which was a larger theme at this year's CES.

For marketers looking to tap Yahoo!'s 400 million monthly users, there is an upside to the plan. The platform seemed to address the nagging problems that have sunk previous Web integration efforts, including lack of connectivity, standards, and cash.

There appears to be fresh functionality for Yahoo! that advertisers will like. The service seeks to place all content in all places in real time. If, for example, a user changed personal contact information on his portable device, that change would sync automatically with his master schedule held online at Yahoo!

This concept not only creates fresh inventory, it opens new terrain for advertising. Marketing messages could be placed both on the portable device and on the master schedule for later viewing.

But, as impressive as the products seemed, there were ominous real world overtones. The Yahoo! Go demo crashed midway through the presentation, leaving Semel to improvise. Luckily for him, Tom Cruise was waiting in the wings to create a distraction.

Stark Stage

When Google co-founder Larry Page took center stage in the packed auditorium at the Las Vegas Hilton, the stage was spare and dark, closer to the setting for an evangelical meeting than a corporate presentation.

Page rolled out on stage on the back of Stanford University's robotic Volkswagen Touareg, channeling Thomas Edison in a white Google Labs coat. There were plenty of San Francisco partisans, such as comedian Robin Williams, on hand to warm the crowd.

Despite presentation flukes, like reading head down from a hand-held paper script, Page had significant new products to pitch. (See related OMD story, "Google To Sell 'Survivor,' 'Brady Bunch,' Ad-Free.")

He announced the Google Pack beta (a bundle of software programs) and demonstrated an upgraded version of Google Earth. Then, after hiking across the stage to get a bottle of water, Page presented the Google Video store, a new online video service that will sell CBS programs, in addition to other programs.

Page ducked several questions about actors' rights, revenue splits, and international syndication during the post-presentation question-and-answer period. It was almost as if how video would get paid for was last on the company's to-do list.

The style of the question-and-answer period may also give marketers pause. Page made a point of bringing Robin Williams back out on stage for the period, where the comedian intercepted questions and cracked jokes. As charming and hilarious as Williams is, this venue may not have been the place for clowning around.

Page is the director of a Very Important Company, with a market capitalization larger than that of General Motors. Google's stock has been the success story for many fund managers' portfolios in 2005--as it not only grew by 400 percent, but is not part of the thickly traded indexes such the Dow Jones industrial average. So it let investors easily beat the market benchmark during an otherwise lackluster period--but if Google's share price unwound based on off-the-cuff remarks, nobody would be laughing.