Google

Overheard: Google frogs going back to the small pond

It would be easy to dismiss the exodus of some of Google’s best people if it were an isolated occurrence. It isn’t. Adam Lashinsky, Where does Google go next?

Fact is, Google’s torrid growth is finally slowing, as the company’s sheer size dictates it must. And size necessitates changes. Gone are the days when Google could take full advantage of its quirkiness. It’s the market leader now, which presents a classic conundrum: Which is more important, process or innovation? For all Google’s success, it still has just one meaningful way of making money: its powerful search-advertising system.

 This article ties in with CNN Money ’s Top 50 employers list.  I had the pleasure of working for their #3 pick during college — Wegman’s.  The Google article has me wondering — is it always more fun when you’re young and struggling? Or is it just that looking back, it SEEMS like it was more fun.  

Overheard: Salesforce - GoogleApps marriage takes place in the cloud

When it takes just a mouse click to open Gmail and have the message saved with the prospect record, it won’t take long before Gmail becomes the default email system for most Salesforce users… For Google, the combination brings Google Apps into big enterprise accounts and also expands its footprint among smaller businesses. For Salesforce.com, it expands the reach of its Salesforce application and further validates its Force.com integration and development platform. But more importantly for both of them — and for the rest of us who are committed to the on-demand model — it puts extra weight behind the gathering trend towards running business applications and computing in the cloud. Phil Wainewright, Salesforce and Google team to conquer the enterprise

I’m not so sure about the first statement I grabbed from Phi’s excellent post — but I’m pretty sure he’s got it right about us looking back and seeing this as the beginning of the tipping point for enterprise computing in the cloud.

Overheard: Google platform-as-a-service (PaaS)

“Google could parlay its search and advertising technology, market dominance, and its infrastructure prowess into a powerful engine that runs and monetizes thousands or millions of externally developed applications. Salesforce.com provides a more mature example today with its Force.com platform. It allows developers to write applications, mostly CRM-oriented, in a variety of languages that can run natively on the Salesforce.com software platform and data centers.” Dan Farber, Web 2.5: The emergence of platforms-as-a-service

I like this analogy. Hadn’t thought of Salesforce this way before.

Overheard: Microsoft-Yahoo vs. Google-AOL?

This time the rumors were true: Microsoft has made a $44.6 billion, $31 per share bid for Yahoo… Microsoft believes that the tie-up will give the companies needed scale in the online advertising space and is expecting at least $1 billion in synergies for the combined company. Joseph Weisenthal, Microsoft Makes $44.6 Billion Cash And Stock Bid For Yahoo; 62 Percent Premium

This also adds urgency to another possible combo: Google-AOL. Google already owns a five percent stake in AOL and a full acquisition would aid Google on the advertising side as well as with traction and traffic in portal areas it has yet to conquer such as finance and sports.

This has the potential to be the first serious threat Google has had to their online advertising business and the first time the battle cry “antitrust” has been sounded.

Diane Mermigas provides a little background for those of us who may have missed an episode of this particular soap opera. The fact that Microsoft is going into debt for the first time to fund this acquisition illustrates just how important this deal is.

Overheard: Gov’t wants total access to Google search records

The nation’s top spy, Michael McConnell, thinks the threat of cyberarmageddon is so great that the U.S. government should have unfettered and warrantless access to U.S. citizens’ Google search histories, private e-mails and file transfers, in order to spot the cyberterrorists in our midst. Ryan Singel, NSA Must Examine All Internet Traffic to Prevent Cyber Nine-Eleven, Top Spy Says

On a related note, the Bavarian police want the gov’t to sanction a Trojan to help them eavesdrop on Skype conversations.

Overheard: Google is leading the new industrial revolution

The real electrical innovation wasn’t Thomas Edison’s idea of installing individual power plants in factories. It was Edison’s financial clerk, Samuel Insull, who thought of creating a central plant that powers an entire region, turning electricity into a utility and vastly dropping its price. Nicholas Carr, as quoted in When Google Grows Up

Overheard: What do aliens see when they look at planet Earth?

Without a doubt, the best thing that ever happened to crop circles is Google Earth. PC Magazine, The Strangest Sights in Google Earth

With Google Earth, you can extend your brand with crop circles, a type of geoglyph. A geoglyph is simply a drawing on the ground. It can be a natural — a geographical formation that we interpret as a face, for example — or it can be man-made. Coca-Cola has a geoglyph. So does Firefox.

It’s surprising how many people spend time using Google Earth for entertainment too. Check out this video.

Overheard: Google Earth videos

There are quite a few videos on YouTube where people have strung geoglyphs together to make a video, complete with soundtrack. In this case it’s Gustav Holst’s The Planets and you may want to turn your sound down if you’re not into drama.

The cool factor for Google Earth has moved way beyond finding the street where you live.

Overheard: Googlepedia

“Anyone writing for Knol is likely to at least peruse Wikipedia content before publishing. And if they see anything good, they are at liberty to simply lift and copy it over to Knol, and get a adsense check for their time.So, in a way, Google has found a way to monetize Wikipedia content after all.” Michael Arrington, A Few Thoughts On Google Knol

It’s been interesting to watch Google and Wikipedia battle it out. Wikia is supposed to announce their new search engine soon, meanwhile Google stays one jump ahead by announcing ”Knol.” According to Udi Manber (Google official blog), a knol is short for a unit of knowledge.

Google  says “A knol on a particular topic is meant to be the first thing someone who searches for this topic for the first time will want to read.”

Other points of interest: “The key idea behind the knol project is to highlight authors. Books have authors’ names right on the cover, news articles have bylines, scientific articles always have authors — but somehow the web evolved without a strong standard to keep authors names highlighted.”

Overheard: Need more electricity to power your datacenters? Make it yourself!

“Our goal is to produce one gigawatt of renewable energy capacity that is cheaper than coal. We are optimistic this can be done in years, not decades. (One gigawatt can power a city the size of San Francisco.) If we meet this goal, and large-scale renewable deployments are cheaper than coal, the world will have the option to meet a substantial portion of electricity needs from renewable sources and significantly reduce carbon emissions. We expect this would be a good business for us as well.” Larry Page, Google’s Goal: Renewable Energy Cheaper than Coal

Google’s putting a new slant on the phrase utility computing.

There should be a sexy word for “monetizing your infrastructure.”  Then we can call it the _______ Revolution and compare it to the Industrial Revolution.