As I installed my Logitech Google TV box I checked my email, I mean GMail,  on my G2 Slide. Someone needed some info, so I pulled up the information from a file stored on Google Docs using my browser of choice, Chrome.

Then it occurred to me. I’m surrounded by Google and for the most part, I like it.

It took the G2 Slide, with Android and a decent keyboard to finally dump my Sidekick. I can’t type quite as fast on it as I did on my Sidekick but the features and apps make me just as, if not more productive than I was with the sidekick. The phone works. Its fast. It rarely freezes.. It has great integration with T-Mobile. I like the apps and the Google Market for Android has more than enough apps for what I want to do and more importantly continues to add more apps for the things I didnt know I wanted to do until I played around in the Market Place.

Just as importantly, it does a great job of running the Sling Player. I love me some Sling Box. Can’t live without it. Not running it is a deal killer. It runs it well.

On the PC front, I have an HP desktop at home and use the new Mac Air, which truth be told I love as well.  Perfect Size.  Battery and sleep mode made it a keeper. I’m not a fan of Safari. No particular reason not to like it. No particular reason to like it. So I don’t use it.  I had been a fan of Firefox since it came out.  Live Bookmarks to read RSS headlines works the way i work. I can get through more data quicker than using a Reader. Unfortunately, firefox freezes too much. It just goes out to lunch far too often.

For some unknown reason for which im not going to search for a solution because its inconceivable that it doesn’t work, Firefox has a hard time loading GMail. Who knows why. Whether or not its me or the software is irrelevant. If you don’t work with GMail or you don’t recognize the problem of a load fail and offer a solution, I’m done with you. I’m sure at some level it has to do with something I’ve done with the configuration of Firefox, but I don’t have time to deal with it. This is something that should never be a problem.

Which lead me to Chrome. I have always had Chrome installed on all of my PCs for when Firefox slowed or froze. It was my backup. When I ran into the problems with GMail , it became my primary browser. Its fast. It works. It has extensions. It syncs. Sold.

Which leads us to GMail. It works. I like the threading. Its fast. I have 2 Terabytes of additional storage that I buy from Google  so any file is no problem.  No more  having to prune file sizes or worry about disk capacity which was a huge problem when I used Outlook. I think I have been using GMail 3 or 4 years now , and it hasn’t ever given me a problem (save the random outages which are livable).  I like the labeling. I like the filters. I have used Imap to import most of my old Outlook. Which is probably the worst part of using GMail. It’s a pain in the ass to take 20 years of Outlook, Outlook Express, Eudora and other random email files and get them into GMail using IMAP.  If anyone has a better solution , please let me know. Or better yet, can someone at Google please come up with an import from those files? Then I would never have to buy a copy of Outlook again. I’m guessing that would please Larry, Eric and Sergey to no end. Hopefully someone is putting some of their 20pct time (or whatever the percentage is now ) to work on this opportunity.

Finally, the best part of GMail is because I  basically have my professional  history (I haven’t kept all emails for the past couple years for various reasons, but I probably am north of 500k emails in GMail) and can easily search GMail from any device I can get access to information in seconds that I could never get to before.

True story. I was walking to a business dinner in NYC. Someone told me they were going to start working with a new manager and asked me if I knew him. The name sounded familiar and I thought I had done something with him during the Broadcast.com days.  A quick GMail search from my phone and I found 2 emails we had exchanged when he was trying to sell a company he was involved with back in 1996. That’s why I use GMail.

I find myself using Google Docs the same way. Used to be everything was open and saved with Office. No more. I haven’t been able to dump my copies of office. There are still features and formatting options that Docs doesn’t support. But anything sent to me via email gets opened first in Google Docs and then saved to Docs. Again, access from any device is a time saver and provides me the opportunity to never be without the information I need. No matter where I am.  It’s another opportunity for Google to enhance their products at the expense of Microsoft Office.

I also LOVE google voice. Love it.  I have my mobile phone number forwarded to it. I LOVE the transcription and the ability to listen via email . I LOVE the extra phone numbers to give to people I don’t want to give my phone number to. I love that I can save messages easily without filling up my phone. I love that i can respond to texts via email. It is just a stellar product that will only get better.

When it comes to devices, i try everything. I have my IPads, which I still use. Google products seem to work well. The IPad is the first device I use in the morning to go through my GMail. It’s also my primary device for using SlingBox.  The crazy thing is I probably use the IPad and Slingbox more IN MY HOUSE then I do anywhere else. There just is no point in trying to convince a 7-year-old that what daddy wants to watch is more important than her watching Scooby Doo for the 273rd time.

But the IPad doesn’t have a lock on my tablet use. I just got a Samsung Tab. I have to say that I like the smaller size sometimes. And sometimes I like the bigger screen. So far, when I’m places where I can get comfortable, spread out  and work, whether in my bedroom or in a hotel room, I like the IPad more. When I’m at a restaurant, in someone else’s office, anyplace where space is more limited, the Samsung Tab just feels more comfortable.  The Tab does pretty much everything that I use the IPad for, including all the Google stuff I do and of course Sling Box. Just the fact that it’s not so obvious when I’m at the gym or at lunch somewhere just seems to make it a little more comfortable. I don’t see taking both devices with me when I travel, but so far in this test face the Tab is more than holding its own and I can see why people would prefer it.  Chalk one more up for Android and the Google LifeStyle

The last entry in my Google LifeStyle self-analysis is the Logitech Revue AKA Google TV. The good news is that it was a breeze to install.  Plug it in. Turn it on. Let it download the updates and boom, it works.  The problem is that it doesn’t do much of anything of consequence.  I wanted to find an NBA game that happened to be on. I typed in Heat vs Jazz.  It gave me a list of Heat vs Jazz highlights that were on Youtube.  I gave it a show that was on at the time. It gave me the SD channel for the show rather than the HD, despite the fact that the device required a HDTV and an HDMI cable to work. Beyond searching for shows or games that were currently on, it didn’t interface with my DVR , which I expected and can deal with. It actually was easy to flip back and forth between my providers’ and the Google programming guides.  So the DVR wasnt a problem.

What was a problem was that search results seemed to put web video first. Even ahead of shows that were currently on or about the start. That made it unusable. It quickly became easier to use the default providers programming guide to see what was currently on , or coming soon.

That is not to say the Revue was worthless.  The box showed real potential as a network PC.  Using the built-in Chrome browser, it was easy to bring up Gmail, Google Docs and websites and do all the web-based things I could do on an iPad, Tab or PC. In fact, because of the keyboard, I could possibly do some work using this box.  Possibly being the operative word. GMail in particular was far too slow. Slow to load. Slow to bring up new screens. But if and when it does speed up, the Revue could easily be a very inexpensive network PC.

I also like YouTube’s Leanback. It didn’t work great for me as a TV alternative. It’s too much work and too much of a crapshoot to use it as a primary source of entertainment. It excelled as background noise.  That is probably a bigger compliment than it sounds. Whether its music or a TV, I like to have something on. It’s just a nice diversion.  Leanback excels at putting up music or interesting clips that have the quality of sound and picture to make full use of my big screen.

I don’t know where this puts me on the Google Fan Boy meter, but Google has sucked me in to the Google Lifestyle. Not on all fronts. Google TV has a long way to go, but Google is right there .  Next up … Google App Maker.

Oh, and since most people think I hate Google because I called their acquisition of YouTube stupid and supported Viacom’s lawsuit against them, let me just say that I haven’t changed my mind. I think Viacom is right in appealing the lawsuit. IMHO, and I’m not a lawyer, YouTube broke the spirit and letter of the Digital Millennium CopyRight Act their first couple years of existence. There were many other companies who got into the same business and tried to become successful without breaking the law.  Had they chosen to do what YouTube did and ignore copyright law the entire digital video landscape would be different. I think that’s a bad precedent to set.  That said, YouTube deserves credit for completely changing how they do business. Their contentid system works . The realtime option to content owners to choose to monetize content rather than take it down was and is brilliant. I also think their content people are starting to realize that offering content on consignment is not going to work for any but long tail content. So Youtube is starting to do some things right. But they still have one fundamental problem.

YouTube’s fundamental business problem is that they are in business of subsidizing ALL/100pct of the bandwidth and hosting costs of consumer and small to medium size business video.  That is a huge problem.  Our ability to capture ever-increasing amounts o video at ever-increasing bit rates is growing exponentially. How happy are companies like Cisco knowing that the better they make their FLip cameras , with more storage and better resolution, the more money  Google/YouTube has to spend as people host it on their servers and use their bandwidth to show to their friends and family. Of course it’s also costing Facebook more and more money. Which has created an interesting dynamic as both compete to host video.

Ask anyone what it costs to host their videos for their friends to watch. Everyone thinks its free… Which brings up the business question, will advertising ever ramp up fast enough to cover the costs of hosting and distributing video ?

I don’t know. What I do know is that Google choosing to pay for all my video hosting costs is just one more reason to choose the Google Lifestyle.

Is there a T Shirt for this anywhere ?

Just because it seems like much of the internet wants television to be delivered outside traditional platforms doesn’t mean that it’s a good business to pursue. As anyone who reads this blog knows, I think the future of TV is TV. But what is the future of entertainment on your TV ? Entertainment on your TV and TV (video programming) on your TV are not the same thing.

The first question to ask is “Why is TV so popular ?”. Why do so many millions spend so many billions in order to watch the shows, movies and events that TV serves up ?  The answer is the clue to what the future of Apple/Google and their device competitors should be.

TV is the best cure for boredom.  That is what makes TV so popular.

TV is the path of least resistance alternative to doing nothing. When you do nothing. Time passes too slowly. When you are doing something, even something that barely requires consciousness, like watching TV, there is the chance that time will go by more quickly. We look for the path of least resistance to passing time whenever we are bored. All it takes is a click of the tv remote. The boredom ends and there is even the chance that we will be entertained and really like what we are watching. So there is also significant upside to watching TV. So we watch a shitload of TV .

Now ask yourself what you do when you are bored to tears and you don’t have a TV available.  Used to be you played solitaire at your PC at work. Or maybe back in the day you picked up a magazine or book. Now we go to our laptops or  phones. We check our email. Maybe we check a couple websites. But even that burns a limited amount of time.

Once we are done with those mundane tasks and a TV is still not available,  we turn back  to our PC/Phone/device and we play games.

Why do you think social games like Farmville, Mafia Wars, etc are so popular ? Because they are the path of least resistance to ending boredom when there isn’t a TV around. Add to this the brilliant addition of the social element of competing with your friends that facebook provides and gaming has gone to a whole new level

Yes, there were competitive social games before, but none on a platform everyone you know is already on (facebook). None where they had to do nothing  to join the game and could do it on their own schedule.

Social games are the non TV cure for boredom.

So what do Apple TV IOS and Google TV Android platform offer ? That’s right . Social Games on your TV.

There in lies their Holy Grail to competing with TV.

This isn’t Farmville vs Dancing with the Stars.  This is about the best alternative to boredom.

If Google , Apple and their competitors can find simple games that are compelling to tens of millions of people and create a unique experience on your HDTV, they have a chance to start pulling people away from watching shows on TV.  You could actually see the number of hours spent watching TV decline materially.

Look at the most successful TV programming. American Idol. Dancing with the Stars. Both have a unique social element, voting. People discuss their votes with each other. People take pride in keeping “their choices” on the show (trust me, this is what kept me on Dancing with the Stars). Even Football has Fantasy Football with millions playing. How many times have you watched games with someone more interested in Fantasy scores than the score of the game . “Fall down at the 1 yard line is not an unheard of scream in a group of guys watching a game”

Google and Apple (and  at some point MicroSoft and maybe Sony or Nintendo) have platforms that are open enough to developers who can develop simple games that anyone can play with a facebook login. It wont require any real skill to play, will be very simple, but very addictive.  The law of numbers says someone will come along and invent a game, played best on your TV through one of these boxes,  that catches the imagination of tens of millions and is played on TV nationally or maybe even globally. It’s not inconceivable that this game will release new features, some Power Ups or unique incentives  if you tune in at 8pm EST on thursday night.

The possibility  of millions of people playing some game on Google TV OR Apple TV at the same time has the chance to put a hurt on traditional TV providers. Not whether or not Hulu and Fox , ABC, NBC are blocked from Google TV.

Of course its going to take a few years for enough of either box to get out in the marketplace at current prices.  But its not inconceivable that the right game could drive the uptake of enough boxes to move people from TV Shows to Games on TV

If Apple and Google try to pre empt traditional TV distributors using TV content, the only winner is Netflix and the traditional tv distributors and networks.

If Apple and Google try to   create their own alternatives to boredom, then their only competition is from each other and other comparable platforms. And it really will come down to luck. No one can plan to have that first entertainment application on a device platform that catches the imagination of the country and results in millions of people playing each other at the same time.

But its a business model for Apple and Google that will work.

Before you can win any business, you have to understand what business you are in.

TV as a whole is not in the business of creating great content. Its in the business of curing boredom. Always has been. It has always been the cure with the path of least resistance. Apple and Google TV need to realize that their cures for boredom using TV content won’t ever be the path of least resistance (typing in a search term ain’t it).  BUT, they have a unique development platform that traditional distribution ‘s set top boxes aren’t designed to support. They could create an alternate cure for boredom that is the path of least resistance for tens of millions.

But they have to change the game, not play the same old game.

I personally can’t think of anything stupider for the big broadcast networks to do than give their shows to Google for free. Why ? Because they are finally getting BILLIONS of dollars in retransmission fees from their distributors.  This is new money. It is found money. It is money they are fighting for.  Just ask Fox and Cablevision what they think of each other this week.

The idea that they would take and fight for money from their distributors, who generally are the same ISPs that Google TV delivers content over, and then offer the exact same shows for free through Google TV, or any aggregator that expects that content for free is probably one of the dumbest concepts ever.

Now if Google were to go to those networks and offer them money per month for every buyer of a Google enabled device or TV, that would be different. Then they would be a tv provider competing with the rest and they should take their money. Think Google will ever do that ? I don’t.

So giving the same content  they not only charge their distributors for, but also charge their local affiliates for to Google for nothing or for a share of revenue  ? STUPID.

If Google sticks to their guns of not paying up front for content like Netflix does, they will have handed Netflix the entire streaming universe on a platter.

Did anyone else see the report that Netflix streaming consumes 20pct of download throughput during weekday primetime hours ?

If this is true. Its one more reason to think that Netflix has won the streaming wars and those broadcast networks would be moronic to give their content online away for free. Why ?

First of all, do you know the difference between Netflix and Google when it comes to content ?  Netflix pays up front and offers minimum guarantees.  Google and everyone else for that matter, pays a commission based on ad sales. (which works wonderfully on Youtube for them)

So riddle me this batman. Netflix is on Google TV , correct ? Given that Netflix pays and Google TV doesn’t, why wouldn’t/shouldn’t the broadcast networks offer all of their shows to Netflix as a way to reach Google TV users, knowing that they will get paid for their content. Paid HUNDREDS OF MILLIONS OR MORE for their content.

All you internet pundits want the broadcast networks to give the content away for free. THAT IS STUPID.  Get Netflix to pay you on a per subscriber basis on a par with  what your other TV providers pay you. Netflix becomes a competitive TV provider. BRILLIANT. You get paid. You reach Google TV users and non Google TV users.

Of course you basically cede to Netflix  control of the streaming content world. You give their streaming only subscriptions a unique value beyond old shows and movies. Goodbye Hulu as well.

Of course once they get the broadcast nets, how long until they add the cable nets like ESPN, Disney, etc., etc. ?

Back to the Netflix using 20pct of bandwidth.  Now that they have gotten there, it is going to be easier for Netflix than anyone else to grow their bandwidth usage. They can add streaming subscribers at a controlled level and it could work.  Growing their usage as a percentage of total bandwidth consumption quickly becomes a trojan horse in the streaming wars.  They are consuming so much bandwidth, they literally are blocking out the ability of anyone to compete with them.

If Netflix gets to 25pct do you think Google is going to be able to also get to 25pct during primetime and all of the sudden 50pct of the internet’s bandwidth during primetime  is allocated to streaming tv originated shows, movies and other video ? Of course not. And that’s before consideration for Youtube. How much bandwidth in primetime does and will Youtube use ? After you combine Netflix and their growth to Youtube and its growth, what kind of internet bandwidth  is going to be left for anyone else for streaming TV to millions ?

There will be big problems and lots of quality and delivery issues long before we get close to those percentages. Leaving Netflix in a phenomenal position.  They get to adapt to a declining available bandwidth environment  with an existing product , revenue and subscriber base. There is no such thing as equal access when you are blocking up 25pct of the lanes on the highway 24×7. The others can’t even get on the ramp.

Their competitors have to figure out how not only how to overcome the technical hurdles of reduced available bandwidth, but also a business model since no one will want to give content away for free when Netflix can pay them.

Netflix is smart as shit.

Netflix is also great for traditional TV providers. TV works. TV works for any number of subscribers or viewers. 100pct of the digital bandwidth that TV uses is designed, managed and operated purely for the distribution of TV and complementary features. It will work.

Netflix should end up as the only “TV” provider that truly works on the internet,  Which means that content providers like the broadcast and cable networks can be paid by Netflix on a per sub basis for their subs  who want to subscribe via the net, and from traditional tv providers for those who want buffer free, (relatively) full quality TV the old fashioned way.

Oh, and one more thing. Expect your internet bills to go way way up as ISPs make it clear that all this video over the internet is going to require billions in upgrades. The irony is that while you may not like paying for cable channels you don’t watch. You will end up paying for cable channels on the internet that you don’t watch as well. In this case you will be paying via higher net bills for the extra bandwidth required to stream cable channels that your neighbors like to watch

I’ve written multiple times about the value of independence from Google to Newspapers. Of course, each generated responses from many who disagreed with me.   I just wanted to point out that Facebook, arguably  the largest and most important website in the world has most of its content walled off from Google.

In fact, the biggest loser in the Facebook  privacy debate is not Facebook, it’s Google. Why ? Because the more people that put all their status updates, information and pictures behind a wall of privacy, the fewer status updates available to google (and other search engines as well).  The net result is that Google’s mission to index all the world’s information has been irreparably damaged.  500mm Facebook users and most of what they all publish to their networks is unavailable.  There is probably more information being published by FB users than on blogs, and possibly even more unique content than is published by all newspapers in aggregate. Thats a lot of the world’s information that is not available to Google.

If Facebook can choose to offer no more than basic profile information and the status updates of users that opt-in, why shouldn’t newspapers do the same thing ? Offer its headlines (status updates) to Google, and then let those who want more information click through to the newspaper site. Once the user gets to their site, the newspaper can decide whether they want a login (Facebook Connect ? ahh the irony) and/or want to charge for access, or just give free and open access to the content. It’s their business decision.

Disconnecting from Google hasn’t hurt Facebook, why shouldn’t newspapers do the same thing?

But wait there is more.

There is a wholesale change occurring in how we acquire information. In the past, if we were looking for a new restaurant in our home town, the score of a game or news headlines we may do a search to get information. Now, as the commercial says, “There is an app for that”. Just download the app that lists the restaurants, points of interest, museums, news, sports scores whatever you are interested in to your app enabled device of choice.  If there isn’t an app for it today, there will be.  If you carry an Apple or Android (owned and offered for free by Google) enabled device just look at how your information discovery and consumption habits have changed.  Do you search more or less?  Do you now get information from Apps that you used to get in search results ? Of course you do.

All that information in all those apps on all those devices, as well as the discovery steps you take to get that information are all hidden from Google (at least on the IPhone and non Android platforms, which may be why Android is free and available to all in an effort to counterbalance this problem). Worse for google, with companies like Urban Airship and Superfeedr.com, more and more real time updates are being delivered exclusively to apps, independent of the device operating system  and not being posted on the web.

Bottom line,   Facebook and mobile apps have shown that there is life without Google, newspapers should recognize this as an opportunity and get their apps out and rethink how they make their information available to Google.

Google TV is going to be very interesting. It is far  from a certainty that it will be more than Apple TV in terms of consumer sales.   From a first glance the Marketplace is the most important and interesting element of the announcement.  As a development platform, Android creates the potential for untold  unique and interesting applications that could capture users imagination.  Early on, I don’t think TV oriented apps will have the most impact. If  I understood the announcement, in the beginning of 2011, there will be an Android Marketplace. The money and the opportunity won’t be in TV apps. It will be in gaming and social apps. The low hanging fruit will be in taking apps that work on facebook and Iphone/Pad and moving them (if they haven’t already) to the Android platform and upsizing them to take advantage of working on a big screen.

The Google TV box could be a very cool and hopefully inexpensive gaming console. That is where the money will be.

What about TV ?

The success of Google TV will come down to one thing….PageRank.  Can you imagine the white hat and black hat SEO battles that will take place as video content providers try to get to the top of the TV Search Listings on Google TV ?  Like Google said, there are 4 billion TVs and growing and the US TV Ad market is $70 BILLION. There is a lot at stake if Google TV takes off. How Google does its PageRank for this product  will have a bigger impact on the success of the product in the TV market than anything else it does.

If you search for “House” on your Google TV and it returns a Youtube Video of some kid doing a parody of the Fox tv show House, you can bet the shit is going to hit the fan. Not that Fox or any big media company will sue Google. I don’t think they will. What will happen is that they will “turn off” the Google TV Chrome Browser, just as they did to Boxee.  They will fight and possibly sue over what meta data is used to determine search results. It will be a mess.  That would kill the product because if it doesn’t work with the TV shows you want to watch, why buy it ?

On the flipside if the best Google offers users is what they showed in today’s demo,  returning 5 or fewer results from a search with content from the cable/sat provider showing first and possibly consuming all 5 results, every internet content creator is going to scream loud and long at Google for putting them at a disadvantage.  No one is going to be able to find your video if you show traditional TV shows first and  dont show more than 5 results. They aren’t going to be satisfied with referrals or Google Suggestions as their only access to Google TV users. They are going to claim that this is all  just a ruse to get them to advertise and that Google sold out to big media.

Even if Google lets the user decide how to rank results, it creates too much risk for TV content providers and their distributors. More mess.

On the other other side, if traditional TV makes it to the top, Google TV is the best thing to ever happen to Cable , Satellite and Telco TV providers. Why ? Google just solved their biggest problems, their user interface and programming guide. Not only that, if Google TV is what big content providers and distributors consider to be a good partner, they just off loaded much of the future R&D for the set top box to Google and its partners and developers. Should cable and companies adopt Android on their set top boxes ? They will watch and decide. Even better for the TV Providers, maximum utility from the  Google TV comes from having a TV subscription. They may actually gain subscribers as a result of this product. Which is exactly why Charlie Ergen had Dish Network participate. Its win win win for Dish Network

Google TV isn’t the answer. It’s the question.  I’m sure Apple, Microsoft and even Facebook have an opinion on the announcement. Their response will be even more interesting.

The Future of TV is….. TV. But Google sure sped up the timeline today.

One of the key core competencies of a publication is the process of selecting “all the news thats fit to print”.

No one can read every news story.  Instead of even trying to consume everything, we all have a process we go through for discovery of news, information and topics of interest to us.  We have sources we trust for our news and information. It may be a printed paper or magazine, a website, tv news, facebook or twitter updates, or some combination of everything we have access to.

No matter how we get information there is one certainty, there is a finite number of sources we will use.

When someone selects google news as their destination for news discovery it is probably at the expense of another destination or product who aspires to be a “discovery destination”.  But lets pretend it is just an incremental source.  That for a while at least a consumer will both go to Google News and to the website of their local paper.  What is the branding message the consumer is receiving ?

When that newspaper allows itself to be included in Google News it becomes a de facto endorsement of Google News as an acceptable and probably preferable “discovery destination” . The branding message to the consumer is “I dont need to go to the newspaper homepage. Everything the newspaper has  is referenced  here in Google News. So if there is something of interest to me from the local paper, Google News will send me to their site.  I don’t need to go to both sites any longer. I can just go to Google News.

Thats not good for the publication brand and business. They just lost their position as a trusted source where real people make decisions on what content they think their readers will want to discover – to an algorithm.

But wait it gets worse.

When that consumer goes to Google News, it lists the number of sources. You immediately become one of 2,172 articles.   It is never good for a brand to be considered one of 2,000 plus sources. Ever. That makes you a commodity. All that promotion you did saying how good your reporters are ? On its way to becoming worthless. To the consumer there are 2,000 other people able to do the same thing (even though there really arent 2k sources, thats not what the branding message they get from Google)

And the bad news will keep on coming.

As a newspaper or other information source, you can never discount  the very real possibility that Google starts becoming a content creator. Why couldn’t they hire reporters ? Why couldn’t they give their content priority over all others ? More importantly, why wouldn’t they ?

Never happen you say ? See AOL. See Yahoo. Both are now creating original content in huge quantities. I promise you, someday there will be a bunch of Googlers sitting in a meeting  discussing how they can generate enough revenue and profits to increase earnings per share by a penny.  You can bet someone will pull up a spreadsheet showing the increase in CPMs for original content with the trusted Google News brand on it. It will show that by simply hiring a bunch of reporters to create news, with Google’s traffic and the higher CPMs of original content, we can make a lot of money for our shareholders. You are in denial if you think this will never happen.

It was smart to ride the Google wave of traffic when you were able to sell it all.  Things change. Now you can’t sell all your organic traffic, let alone the traffic you get from  Google.  Now the value equation has shifted.  You are endorsing Google News as a discovery destination making their brand stronger by the day.  Google News’ brand value will increase fast enough on its own. There is no sane reason to allow them to co-opt your brand and use it to accelerate the growth of a business, Google News that will very likely be your biggest online competitor

Update: I want to put a qualifier here because some people think this applies to any or all media companies. It doesn’t. This is meant for media companies that have established brands and brand equity. If you are a startup, you should use Google for everything its worth. It can be very valuable.  If you are trying to create or establish a brand, you should use Google.Google News. If you have no revenue, you should probably rethink your choice of professions and /or business, but Google traffic can only help.

For you, every visitor is a good thing and an opportunity to convert that user and build your brand image.

On the flipside if your company name is one of multiple choices that comes to people’s mind when they need the type of information/news/info you provide, then you need to think through just what impact Google.GoogleNews has on your business today and in the future.

Hows that for a title.  Just thought it would be a fun day to rehash some old posts that made me look a little prescient

Today the feds arrested 2 programmers that worked for Madoff. I wrote this in January:

Jan 18th 2009 10:11AM

Im taking a flyer here, but if they were to put me on the case, the first people I would talk to are the software developers.  Somewhere along the line there was a software program written or modified that allowed Madoff to enter the numbers he made up, who they were paying out cash to and would print the checks and  statements.  Its very unlikely that it was off the shelf software because it would be impossible for all the numbers to balance, or he would need to use suspense type of accounts that would raise red flags for even the smallest of accounting firms.

Maybe I have missed it, but I have yet to see an article written or any commentary about the software Madoff Investments used or read about any programmers that have come forward that worked for him. Someone had to outline the details of what they wanted the software to do, and in a scam of this size, could it be anyone but Madoff himself ? Someone had to take that information and either create or modify software to keep the whole mess running smoothly for him.

Find the programmers who wrote the software and you will find out how the whole thing worked.

And as the Google, Murdoch discussions continue, some people have actually started to recognize there might be something to what I wrote in May of 08

Is there anything more fun than sitting around, growing your hair, drinking a Bud while listening to Jethro Tull and pondering how to change the balance of power in the search world and unseat Google ?
Better search ? Too subjective. Better monetization ? After the fact. Better User Interface ? Will we know it when we see it ? A new and different search ? Semantic ? Human powered ? We won’t know till we know.

But what about the Google Index, all the websites that are indexed by Google ? What is it worth to be in the Google Index ? What would you, as a website owner require in order to remove your site from the Google Index and no longer be available when someone does a google search ?

It should just be a matter of dollars and cents and sense, shouldn’t it ?

How many websites would have to recuse themselves from the Google Index before Google Search was negatively impacted ?

Mahalo.com thinks it needs to support the 25k most common search terms in order to be successful. What would happen if MicroSoft or Yahoo or a MicroHoo went to the 5 top results for the top 25k searches and paid them to leave the Google Index ?

A theoretical maximum of 125k sites, but with overlap, probably closer to 100k or less, times how much per site on average ?

The math starts to get interesting. At $1,000 per site average times 100k sites, thats only $ 1 Billion Dollars. The distribution would obviously favor the larger sites, so of that billion dollars, would the top 1k sites take 500k each and the remaining 99k split the rest ?

Given the stakes, why stop at $ 1 Billion Dollars ? Would the top 1k most visited sites take a cool $1mm each, plus a committment from MicroSoft or Yahoo to drive traffic through their search engines to more than make up for the lost Google Traffic. After all, once consumers realized that Google no longer had valid search results for the top 25k searchs, that traffic would most likely go to MicroSoft and Yahoo.

And why we are at it, why not require that these 100k sites switch from Googles Publisher Network to Yahoo’s or MicroSofts ? It would start to earn back the $1 Billion paid out very quickly.

On top of that, in order to grease the skids even further, why not issue advertising credits to the sites that switched off Google ? Its soft dollars, that would sweeten the pot and drive more traffic.

IN essence, its no different that any other content aggregation play. Its paying for content . But, It would take some big ones to go for it and see if it worked. However, without question, every search engine has some number of core sites, that when removed from its index , destabilizes the value of its search.

The question is how many ? What would it cost to get that number of sites to turn Google off and stay off, and would the traffic created as users switch from Google more than compensate for the cost ?

Or would Google recognize the risk and jump in and offer more to websites to stay ?

Sure would be interesting to find out.

Im going to simplify this as much as possible. I probably should have just included this in the first post. Here are the best and worst cases of Newscorp opting out of the Google Index

1. Best Case: They opt out and see an increase in revenues and commitment to their sites because people choose to go directly to their sites. For those sites behind a paywall, they generate more revenue than when the site was free.   Other sites notice their success and copy Newscorp, choosing to opt out of the Google index. The opt out choice turns out to be the better business move for any and all sites looking to increase revenues. Google’s position as the leading search engine is called into question.  The Search business becomes competitive again. Content companies now understand how to best monetize their content efforts.

Far fetched ? Maybe. But not totally inconceivable.

2. Worst Case: They opt out of Google’s Index. Their traffic drops 99pct. No one buys their pay offerings. They all feel like idiots. Then the last idiot left in the office gets out the text editor and changes the robots.txt file or completely deletes it.  They turn off the paywalls. Make the content free again.  Life as they knew it before they opted out and started charging for content returns to normal as quickly as Google can reindex the Newscorp sites.

The upside of Option 1 is far more impactful than the downside is bad. There is no reason not to take the chance.

Rupert Murdoch has said that his Newscorp sites are going to block Google indexes.  Of course, all the netizens freak out when this happens. Which I love.

I love to tweak all the internet information must be free bigots. They get so damn religious about information on the net that they lose what little objectivity and awareness of the real world they had in the first place.  First a little enlightenment for all of you that think Murdoch is making a mistake. This is not 1999, nor is it 2004, nor is it 2006, nor is it 2008.  The calendar is about to turn to 2010.  What worked and made sense 3,5 and 10 years ago, no longer does.

What has changed  ? Quite a bit, but lets start with this.  TWITTER IS SURPASSING  GOOGLE as a destination for finding information on breaking and recent news  of all types. Whats more,   TWITTER POSSES NO THREAT to any destination news site. 140 characters does not a story make.  Find it on twitter, link to a story on say, FoxNews and everyone is happy. The same concept applies to Facebook Links. Twitter and Facebook are not news  destinations that can compete with traditional news sources.  Google is.   Rupert loves him some twitter. Google, not so much.

Not only are Twitter and Facebook becoming strong competitors for referrals to news sources from topical searches, they both have one HUGE HUGE HUGE advantage for news outlets that Google does not:

TWITTER AND FACEBOOK are platforms that allow the news sources, like newscorp to post breaking news and gain value from their brand. Google does not.  In other words, if I trust a newspaper, tv or any  brand, I can follow it on twitter and expect the news to come to me.  The concept  of “If the news is important, it will find me” works better by the day.  If it matters to me, chances are very good its in one of the twitter feeds I follow.

Having to search for and find news in search engines is so 2008.

Twitter and Facebook have become the ultimate real time programming guides.  Look at it like this. “Hear about bubble boy from a follow”. If: “its a news source, go to that news source” If not: “Look it up on twitter (or i use icerocket.com it shows tweeter authority) to see if there are any 1st hand accouts or check my FB wall to see what my friends have to say,  if anything”  “See tweets/posts to determine how I want to get more information:  from  TV ( stream, regular, phone), or from online written or audio source” if online: “go to that source from link in twitter or facebook”

All of the above complements everything Rupert and Newscorp are doing.   Google is no where to be found in that equation.

Thats not to say Twitter is perfect. Its not. It has  a HUGE and growing problem with spam (unlike Facebook updates and another reason why I pimp Icerocket.com). Nor am I saying that Google is toast and has no role. Non real time feed users will continue to source news through Google.  I just see that as a declining number in an era where much of our first crack at news is via our phone.  But, perfect or not, the bottom line is that in this new era of twitter, things have changed.

News sites blocking Google ain’t what it used to be.  Rupert is right. Deal with it.

Just read a great article at the Neiman Journalism Lab site about Google’s plans to help the content industry.  In a nutshell the concept is to utilize Google’s Checkout, their payment system, to enable publishers of news and other premium content to both sell their content as part of subscriptions and/or via micropayments.  What caught my interest was the concept of allowing multiple publishers to work together to offer subscriptions or premium content together.

Could Google convince Newscorp and say the New York Times Company to work together to offer a “super subscription” to their publications online and then divvy up the proceeds on a pre agreed basis, much as they do with advertisers and site publishers ?

Maybe.

It would take a lot of work and a lot of convincing and negotiating to get it right.  Then , even if  you could get these cats and dogs to finally live in harmony , the question would arise as to whether or not Google Checkout has enough users.  RIght now they don’t. Which would mean most users would have to sign up for CheckOut.  Would people go through the process of signing up for Google Checkout in order to participate in these “SuperPublication Subscriptions” ? .

I dont think they would. In fact, while its a great idea on Google’s part, I think Google Checkout has more to gain than the publishers.

That said, this same approach could be a digital media nirvana to Amazon and its users.

Amazon has pretty much everyone’s credit card.  They have a growing user base for Kindle.They already sell digital video downloads and rentals, as well as music.  They even sell good old fashion magazine and newspaper subscriptions.

They have the ability to create  the path of least resistance for users to purchase and consume digital media.

I thought it was a good idea for media conglomerates to package all their digital assets into subscription offers.  Its a far better idea for a marketer like Amazon to package cross company offerings into bigger and better packages.

While their Kindle revenue shares , IMHO, are far too beneficial to Amazon, if they can work out a fairer revenue share for Kindle distribution, things could start to get very interesting.

Across all the digital assets that Amazon sells, the packaging and marketing options are endless.

Like the freemium approach ? ,Package the USA Today, NY Times, Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, Investors Business Daily into a single price subscription for Kindle Delivery.  Price it a big discount for the first 3o days, with an automatic expansion to full subscriptions at a price that is a discount to their individual subscriptions. With Free Website Access included.

Want to make the bundle more attractive ? Bundle in a movie download. A book delivered to Kindle. Music. Software.

When they come up with even better ideas, Im sure the Publishers, Movie Distributors, Music Distributors, Software Vendors  will be more than happy to give you OEM prices if you commit to minimum quantities.

In fact, it could be even more interesting if Amazon took a page from Google and allowed Marketers to bid on digital content to include in subscriptions, product bundles or one off sales and then market and resell them.

Think of the ecosystem of content sales that could be created if Amazon (or EBay or Google) created a “wholesale” market for content where marketers could bid on 100 annual Wall Street Journal Subscriptions , 100 Downloads of the movie Wall Street, and 100 copies of the book “Random Walk Down Wall Street” to be sold as “Graduation Gifts for Business Majors”

Lame example, but you get the point.

In a world where the marginal cost of delivery of digital content is almost zero, why not throw it out there to be bid on so that great marketers can come up with great marketing and sales programs ?

Why not take those marketing and sales programs and offer them for sale right on Amazon ? They already have a wholesale sales program that  leverages their marketing, order processing and  physical fulfillment advantage for 3rd parties. Why not create the same type of program specifically for digital media and the same Amazon advantages, as well as  their cloud services to let anyone who wants to participate quickly create a digital media store?  This could be the ultimate market for digital media.

Its hard to find ways to sell content, particularly content in any one silo, be it news, sports, business, etc. When you start looking at how to package any  digital content into products and letting the market help set pricing, things could get very interesting very quickly.

Ebay allowed products to be aggregated and sold by anyone. Google allowed anyone to quickly and easy buy advertising and reach a huge audience.  Both based on an auction system. An Amazon Media Market could create a bourse  that leveraged the vast amounts of creativity out there to  find new ways and models to sell digital media.

It certainly could not make things any worse…