Google's Had Privacy Issue for 5 Years

With all the hubbub about Google's new privacy policy and how they're tying data together from their various sources to give better search results and ads, I thought I'd take a look at a piece I wrote more than five years ago on the topic of "Google's Looming Threat" -- which was privacy. Even then, in June of 2007, I wrote, Google faced a "burgeoning challenge".

Is there any other company that knows more about individuals - their preferences, their desires, their habits, their friends, their purchases, even the documents on their computers? And is there anything preventing Google from using that information?.... Now imagine aggregating all that information on an individual, then cross-referencing it with any searches the person has done, any books they've looked at online in Google Books, any videos they've looked at in or uploaded to Google's YouTube, or any documents Google Desktop has found on their hard drive. For Google's engineers, it would be a technically trivial exercise.

You can read the whole piece on Google's Looming Privacy Threat at the site of my company, Teeming Media.

Business Case for Amazon "Silk" Fire

I noted when first hearing of it that the Amazon Silk browser seemed big from a tech standpoint, and couldn't resist a quip. Business Insider makes the case that the browser is revolutionary from a business standpoint: Not only does it make web browsing on Kindle much faster, it:

• will give Amazon exceptional insight into what consumers are interested in, how they use the mobile Internet, and what they want to buy
• makes the Android operating system, the platform upon which the Kindle Fire runs, much less relevant (and, therefore, much less powerful).
• is Amazon's browser that will control the consumer's interface and data—and search window—not the operating system. Google's software, in other words, has basically become a device-driver.

So BI says. And the argument is persuasive, and why media types need to pay big attention not just to the distribution channel, but also the technology.

Ken Auletta on Larry Page's Challenges as Google CEO

New Yorker writer Ken Auletta, as qualified as anyone to give an intelligent take on what's going on with the Google management change (Google it, if you don't know):


"It was always assumed that one day Page would be C.E.O. Now that he is about to be, he will have to change. He is a very private man, who often in meetings looks down at his hand-held Android device, who is not a comfortable public speaker, who hates to have a regimented schedule, who thinks it is an inefficient use of his time to invest too much of it in meetings with journalists or analysts or governments. As C.E.O., the private man will have to become more public. And he will have to rid himself of a proclivity most engineers have: they are really bad at things they can’t measure. Like fears about Google’s size, and privacy and copyright and how to deal with governments that are weak at measurement but rife with paranoia."

Ken's take has consistently been that the Google guys' Achilles heal is their inability to deal with the softer, more emotional sides of the business. His analysis here might be right. Page may, as Schmidt said, be ready to lead. Perhaps that really  is a factor in Schmidt's moving to his new role as Page assumed the helm.. And I'm not sure if one can put such an important management change on one factor, such as the Google moves in China. But Ken's take is worth looking at.


News Desk: Why Is Eric Schmidt Stepping Down at Google? : The New Yorker:

More Sophisticated Use of Google's Keywords and Adwords

To use Google Keywords tool, you should be logged in to get decent results, writes Malcolm Coles (@malcolmcoles) in his post Why you shouldn't use Google's keyword tool for SEO. He offers other tools he says are better.

Some people use Google's AdWords tool as a help as well, but there, too, you need to have some sophistication in understanding it. While the suggestion tool seems straightforward, offering terms that people search for and offering volumes and cost, it's useful to be a bit skeptical, and suspect that Google is offering you as many words as possible to try to get you to buy them. The more you bid on, the more they make, of course. I'm not saying they're dishonest, just that you have to apply some brain power. For example:

- Is past volume an indication of future volume, at least in your target audience for time period you want?

- How much competition is there for the word or phrase they're suggesting?

- Do you have content that will match the word or phrase well and give you a good score in Google Ad words, and therefore help keep your position high and cost low as people click through?

Coles, whom I was referred to by @PerfectMarket, writes that for SEO purposes "I tend to use a combination of Google Insights, Google Autocomplete for web searches and Google Autocomplete for News." He goes on his post, linked above, to describe issues and link to other tools.

Bing and Google Go After Each Other With Ads

Trying to woo News Corp. isn't the only way Bing is taking it to Google. They're also placing ads on the Google site. Looking recently for a restaurant to have a business lunch at in New York, I noticed when I searched on Google Maps that Bing had placed an ad there.

And when I went to Bing, guess what? Google was doing the same.

(By the way, my search was a little too "natural language" for both sites. But that's a different story.)




CLICK THE IMAGE TO BLOW IT UP AND SEE MORE CLEARLY.

Google Not Enemy, Not Friend

Jeff Jarvis says Google is not the enemy but for many it’s also clearly not a friend. Panelists yesterday at Digital Hollywood’s Advertising 2.0 conference cited $Goog for creating an environment in which consumers expect that information and entertainment will be free, and for confusing the idea of capturing and engaging consumers, getting them involved in a marketing message, brand and the like. “Google is the culprit, they’re not interested in engagement,” said Jonathan Klein, CEO of Getty Images. “You come in, and then go out.”

This, just a couple days after The Wall Street Journal’s article on the Justice Department taking a closer look at Google’s deal with publishers to put books online, in the context of a broader push toward antitrust investigations in the technology industry. Clearly, a portion of Google CEO Eric Schmidt’s job is going to be focused on battling Washington, and wooing the advertising and publishing industries. And, of course fending off competition from a host of companies and products like Microsoft’s Bing that are, in the words of Warren Lee, Venture Partner at VC firm Canaan Partners, trying to “out-Google Google.”

For most though, though, Google is simply an “is.” It has to be dealt with and understood. Its analytics are useful for those who want at least an entry-level solution for Web analytics. Its search, and sometimes its ads, and office tools can be used to good effect -- again, especially for those who don’t need large enterprise solutions, or don’t have large staffs to build them. It has a valuable, if not highly diversified, business model, and a model that is not the panacea for media, but rather a component of some media businesses.

How Twitter Plans to Make Money

I fell asleep the other night watching Twitter CEO Ev Williams on Charlie Rose (not his fault, I was tired), so am relying on PaidContent’s synopsis of what he said. He was apparently vague on how Twitter plans to make money. Co-founder Biz Stone was less so in a conversation he and I had for the We Media Game Changer awards.

Biz indicated they’re hoping to forego traditional advertising and instead quiz their power corporate users to find out what kinds of services or features they might pay for -- a way, for example, to officially verify that a Twitter account is actually from who it claims to be. From the Game Changer essay (PDF Format):

They plan to start creating revenues this year, moving up from their original plan of 2010, asking businesses like Whole Foods, Jet Blue and Comcast -- who use Twitter feeds to stay in touch with customers -- what new features and services they might pay for. He doesn’t, he says, expect you’ll see traditional Web advertising.

Biz said they don’t know what the services would be but is confident the companies they ask will have ideas that Twitter can then turn into something that will be paid for and help create a sustainable business. He said he wants it to be an easy-to-use tool (not one-off consulting). Another idea he hinted at was helping companies monitor mentions of their names, and turn that into a commercial service.

With Twitter’s open API, though, and thousands of mashups and applications, with more every week, I can’t help but wonder if ideas like what Biz is proposing will already be developed by someone else before Twitter gets to it. What’s to prevent a third party from making a powerful way for companies to scrape and find mentions of their name? Others have already tried to integrate ads. (Twittads is one example.) StockTwits is building a business off the Twitter platform. Dell has sold $1 million of equipment, it says, off its feed. So, if there is a way for Twitter to help Dell double, or quintuple that, sure, there could be a business. But will Twitter, itself, get there first? One of the very things that has made them so powerfully successful, their openness and ability of others to use and re-use the tool, may also be a challenge. On the other hand, pundits at first said Google had to way to make money.

They don't say that any more.

NYTimes.com Visited by More Californians than New Yorkers

... or at least, according to Google Trends. Like I've said, sometimes when you're poking around for other work, you find curious stats. Like, today, if you search "NYTimes.com" in Google Trends, it shows that more visits come from California than New York.

In Whose Economic Interest?

Just read  the Atlantic Monthly piece on Google making us dumber. A choice quote:

Most of the proprietors of the commercial Internet have a financial stake in collecting the crumbs of data we leave behind as we flit from link to link&lsqauo;the more crumbs, the better. The last thing these companies want is to encourage leisurely reading or slow, concentrated thought. It's in their economic interest to drive us to distraction

.

Really? Aren't there models that support thought, depth, breadth, attention spans? I think so. And this sounds like the whingeing (thanks for reminding me of that word, Jeff Jarvis) of someone who would complain about how stupid TV makes us all, ignoring that it's not the box but how you use it. After all, I read the piece on my Blackberry. Really. Might never have gotten to it otherwise.

What's With the Illegible Word Verification?

Am I the only one who's noticed the Blogspot verification codes are getting impossible for human eyes to decipher?

When I'm told to "Enter the letters as they are shown in the image," I'd like to see what they are.

Yahoo, Microsoft and Google

Ian Schafer has it about right: What Microsoft sees in Yahoo is the chance to increase its ad serving reach, cover more of the market, and improve not only reach and frequency but also the third all-important, beyond “GRP” component in today’s ad sphere: targeting. Both Microsoft and Yahoo have been in furious competition with Google and AOL (and each other) to build or buy ad platforms like Blue Lithium and aQuantive that have a variety of ad-serving, targeting and amalgamating solutions for a networked society.

One thing Schafer hopes for (and Henry Blodget calls for) doesn’t seem likely: that Microsoft will let the Yahoo brand live separately and distinctly. Not only does that not seem to be the Microsoft way, it also would make it hard to achieve some of those efficiencies Microsoft keeps talking about. Ask yourself, if Microsoft buys Yahoo:

• Will they subsume their Hotmail (integrated with Passport and .msn) into Yahoo’s mail? Or are they more likely to migrate Yahoo’s mail over to MSN?

• Are they likely to let Yahoo’s small business and Web hosting area live on its own, or try to migrate all that small- and medium-sized business over to Microsoft (encouraging it all the while to buy Microsoft Office products)?

• Will they let Yahoo’s social networking and blogging and tagging and bookmarking properties live separately, or try to integrate them into Microsoft’s properties, trying to get some long-missing traction for Microsoft’s initiatives?

Blodget talks a lot about the different cultures and the difficulties of integrating the two companies, how Microsoft is already battling on many fronts and is unlikely to be able to fight all these battles and make itself into a GE-like conglomerate. He also talks of Google’s play to help Yahoo stay out of Microsoft clutches and in his post and another alludes to Google’s “Ahabian” desire to sink Microsoft’s Office products with cloud computing Web software.

All that cultural stuff is big, and important, and he’s right that senior execs at Yahoo, and Microsoft’s Internet division, will be working scared for the foreseeable future. But, as said above, the real rubber and the real road here is advertising reach and targeting. That’s what has to work for this deal to be worth Microsoft’s while.

Google at $2,000 per Share

I previously mentioned technology pushing Google to $100 billion in revenue, according to IT analyst Steve Arnold. Now, here's Henry Blodget saying $2,000 per share, or free cash flow of $30 billion, or $750 billion market cap, based on financials.

Google's Privacy Issue

Thanks to Jack Myers for inviting me to write a column for his Jack Myers Media Business Report. The first one went out last week, and today appears on Jack's Media Village Web site.

The nut of it: Google's got a looming issue over privacy, because of all the data it collects on people -- from Gmail to Blogger to Google Ads and Analytics -- and it had better be out front on this issue, or it could pay a high price in the long run.

The argument's been further bolstered by Google's new "Web history" initiative, which I learned about from Shelly Palmer, also in a column for Jack. The search engine will, if you let it, track not only all your Google searches, but if you download a toolbar, ALL your Internet surfing activity, and spit it back to you. I've allowed it to see only my Google searchess, and it's an intriguing peak at what I've used Google for in recent days (wow, do I use it a lot!). It's also a little creepy to think that someone could, some day, take a look and see everything I looked at -- be it business or personal, prurient or pure. I can imagine the picture someone could draw about me, or anyone, and am not sure it's a picture we'd like others to have access to.