Collaborative Strategy Guild » Google

So Google+ notifies me…

Peter O'Kelly — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 11:42:00 +0000

Just saw this in Chrome (on Windows):

At least I was notified, via the Google+ Notifications Chrome extension, that I will now be notifying Google about more of my Chrome activities (and, in fairness, I could have clicked “Cancel,” in which case I assume I would have seen the warning every few days; I could also uninstall the extension, of course, but I assume Google already has most of the related data anyway…)

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Google Defends New Privacy Policy – WSJ.com

Peter O'Kelly — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 11:18:00 +0000

Read the WSJ article and then revisit FTC settlement gives Facebook leverage over competitors (Washington Post), for an interesting juxtaposition; also see Google Targets Rival Facebook With Tough New Privacy Policies (Daily Beast/Dan Lyons)

Google said the changes could improve people's experience using some of its services. But the company has also indicated to outsiders that the changes may help boost its online-advertising business, which generated nearly $40 billion in revenue last year.

Google said that it isn't collecting new kinds of information about people and that the policy essentially consolidates dozens of policies that were already in effect for individual Google services. But it added that if users are signed into their Google accounts, data about their Web-search history and the videos they watched on YouTube may now be used in combination with other services.

Google Defends New Privacy Policy - WSJ.com

Google Politics & Elections – Google+ – Presidential hangout now on YouTube Missed today’s hangout…

Peter O'Kelly — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 12:04:00 +0000

An impressive use of technology to facilitate constructive political discourse

Missed today's hangout with President +Barack Obama? Watch the full video below and let us know what you think.

Your Interview with the President - 2012

Google Politics & Elections - Google+ - Presidential hangout now on YouTube Missed today's hangout…

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Google Reincarnates Dead Paper Mill as Data Center of Future | Wired Enterprise | Wired.com

Peter O'Kelly — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 11:28:00 +0000

Sign of the times

Google's Finland data center is the ultimate metaphor for the Internet Age (Photos: Google)

Joe Kava found himself on the southern coast of Finland, sending robotic cameras down an underground tunnel that stretched into the Baltic Sea. It’s not quite what he expected when he joined Google to run its data centers.

In February of 2009, Google paid about $52 million for an abandoned paper mill in Hamina, Finland, after deciding that the 56-year-old building was the ideal place to build one of the massive computing facilities that serve up its myriad online services. Part of the appeal was that the Hamina mill included an underground tunnel once used to pull water from the Gulf of Finland. Originally, that frigid Baltic water cooled a steam generation plant at the mill, but Google saw it as a way to cool its servers.

Google Reincarnates Dead Paper Mill as Data Center of Future | Wired Enterprise | Wired.com

Will Google have to start a patent war to get $9bn of value from Motorola? | Technology | guardian.co.uk

Peter O'Kelly — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 11:15:00 +0000

From a GOOG/MMI reality check

The really profitable bit of the business is the "Home" division, which makes set-top boxes, but has been bumping along at around $900m revenues for the past year. It actually makes money - only around $60m per quarter, but at least it's profit, compared to the consistent losses in the mobile business, which has only made a profit in two of the past nine quarters. Even so, it would take 75 years for the Home business's profit to make back the money Google paid for the business.

In other words, in purely financial terms, MMI is a dog.

Faced with all that, it looks increasingly likely that Google will instead use Motorola's patents aggressively - as Müller suggests in the provocatively-titled Will Google break or save the internet?

Will Google have to start a patent war to get $9bn of value from Motorola? | Technology | guardian.co.uk

Motorola Sells Significantly Fewer Tablets Than Apple – John Paczkowski – Mobile – AllThingsD

Peter O'Kelly — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 10:54:00 +0000

It’s the patents Google has decided to spend $12.5B on; the products are expendable

Some disappointing numbers in Motorola Mobility’s latest earnings report: A loss of $80 million on revenue of $3.4 billion, and mobile device shipments of 10.5 million versus 11.3 million a year ago. Still, few were as grim as these: 200,000 tablets shipped in the fourth quarter and just 1 million shipped for all of 2011. In other words, it took MoMo a full year to ship 1/15th the number of iPads Apple sold in its most recent quarter.

And this is the company that Google has decided to spend $12.5 billion on.

Motorola Sells Significantly Fewer Tablets Than Apple - John Paczkowski - Mobile - AllThingsD

Analysis: Wall Street puzzles over Google’s new direction – Yahoo! News

Peter O'Kelly — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 12:29:00 +0000

Searching for a coherent and compelling Google value proposition

Google does not disclose how much money it has spent on Google+. But analysts believe much of Google's aggressive hiring during the past year -- its headcount swelled to more than 8,000 employees in 2011 alone -- was to feed its social efforts as it seeks to challenge Facebook's 800 million user network.

[…]

Google+, which does not currently feature ads, is still in its infancy and the company has yet to outline its monetization plans for the service. But Macquarie Research analyst Ben Schachter said the benefits of some of Google's other non-search initiatives, such as the vast amount of online video it now streams across the Web on YouTube, are coming into focus.

"The goal at the end of the rainbow is TV advertising," he said. "For years Google has been eating the lunch of print and radio, but TV has held up incredibly well."

Analysis: Wall Street puzzles over Google's new direction - Yahoo! News

Apple’s soaraway growth is Google’s pain – and here’s why • The Register

Peter O'Kelly — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 10:41:00 +0000

Steve Jobs would have enjoyed this

Now compare Google's fortunes to Apple's. Apple is today the world's most valuable company, and it hasn't spent one cent on lobbying against intellectual property. Apple makes real money, on real products, which aren't easily replicable. Google, by contrast, is easily substitutable for a Bing or a Baidu. The idea is beginning to circulate that there's no real long-term growth in Google's business.

Apple's soaraway growth is Google's pain - and here's why • The Register

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Business & Technology | Google to merge user data across more services | Seattle Times Newspaper

Peter O'Kelly — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 11:40:00 +0000

Meanwhile, via Danny Sullivan (via Facebook…), “Larry Page to Googlers: If You Don’t Get SPYW, Work Somewhere Else”

Google announced a plan Tuesday to link user data across its email, video, social-networking and other services that it says will create a "beautifully simple and intuitive" user experience. But critics raised privacy concerns like those that helped kill the search giant's Buzz social networking service.

The changes, which take effect March 1, will remove some of the legal hurdles Google Inc. faces in trying to link information across services from Gmail to YouTube to the Google Plus social network that replaced Buzz.

Business & Technology | Google to merge user data across more services | Seattle Times Newspaper

Google pumps up its lobbying effort – The Washington Post

Peter O'Kelly — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 12:27:00 +0000

Perhaps Google should plan on hiring Newt Gingrich for lobbying work; he should have some spare time soon

Google’s U.S. lobbying bill more than tripled to $3.76 million in the fourth quarter as the Internet search leader fought proposed changes to online piracy laws and sought to influence a wide range of other issues that could affect its fortunes.

The amount is the company’s largest lobbying tab for any quarter since its Washington office opened in 2005. The company spent $1.24 million on lobbying during the final three months of 2010 and $2.38 million in the third quarter of 2011.

Google pumps up its lobbying effort - The Washington Post

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