(via PaidContent) Bambi Francisco's recent column on Marketwatch, essentially an interview with Kevin Lee, discusses what Kevin thinks about Google's mysterious payment system:As Lee sees it, the true potential power that Google would have, if the world's biggest search engine were to offer an electronic wallet of its own, is to be the facilitator of digital media swapped back and forth on the Web.
The "real killer application potential of Google payments [is] pay-per-view content," Lee said in an e-mail.
If Kevin's prediction is true, and I'm starting to think he may be right, this will have huge implications for online content. Maybe at last a true micropyament system will emerge, one that will not only be viable, but endorsed by a major player like Google.
If it happens, you can probably kiss AdSense goodbye. Who will need to run contextual ads (which are crap, in my opinion) when you can charge pennies for an article and make the same amount with no advertising?
Posted by Cory |
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Wednesday, June 22, 2005
Contrary to what many assume, there remains a lot of useful online ad inventory out there. Those who own good chunks of that inventory are holding tight to it, consolidating it, and trying to grab more of it.
Consider the photo sharing service Flickr, recently acquired by Yahoo. As with search several years ago, it's all the cool aspects of the service itself that catch our attention. The ads that appear on the site are almost an afterthought. Consider, though, how much ad inventory this potentially represents. With upwards of tens of thousands of user-tagged pages that aggregate photos on every conceivable theme, you're talking about a highly targeted ad opportunity that is sizeable enough that it makes a financial difference to the owner of the site.
Up to now, Flickr has been experimenting with both Google AdSense and Yahoo Publisher Network ads. They look similar, and both offerings are evidently struggling to serve relevant ads on these pages. Sometimes they have to fall back on generic photo or blog related ads -- not necessarily a bad thing. Other times, geographic and other markers allow them to show more targeted ads.
What do you think the odds are, now that Flickr is owned by Yahoo, that they'll drop the AdSense ads and go exclusively with the Y! ads? I'd say close to 100%. This just goes to prove that in the runup to an acquisition by one of these two hot competitors, it's not always just about the technology or the strategic value of the team being acquired: you have to factor in the race to own as much targeted ad inventory as possible. That 100% revenue share is tough to ignore, especially considering the fact that revenues are often shared very generously with publisher partners.
Posted by Andrew |
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Tuesday, June 21, 2005
OK, so CEO Eric Schmidt says that Google is not building a PayPal competitor after all. In fact, it's apparently much more -- or perhaps much less -- than that:"Although he declined to provide any details about the project, Schmidt made it clear it won't trespass on PayPal's turf.
"We do not intend to offer a person-to-person, stored-value payments system," Schmidt said during an interview with The Associated Press."
He also said:"The payment services we are working on are a natural evolution of Google's existing online products and advertising programs which today connect millions of consumers and advertisers," Schmidt said. He declined to elaborate."
I think what he's saying is that what Google has planned is "way cooler than PayPal, dude. Like, oh yeah."
Read more
Posted by Cory |
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Monday, June 20, 2005
Batelle again points us to an ever more prescient article (looking forward, looking back) about how "Google beat Amazon and eBay to the Semantic Web" in the year 2009, so I think that automatically means that the rest of us search bloggers are obliged to pick up on it.
Well, consider it picked up on. I think the revolution is under way, in light of Google's e-payment revelation late Friday night.
Every time Google announces another foray into some new area, this futuristic article looks all the more likely. It's hard to distill the article down into a quote, but it talks about four intriguing concepts that the author thinks Google will naturally evolve toward: Google Marketplace Search, Google Personal Agent, Google Verification Manager, and Google Marketplace Manager.
If you want to know what the future of Google looks like, look no further. Can Google Matrix be far off?
Posted by Cory |
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