by Rick Hendershot
We
do all know that Google is the dominant search engine, and controls a
large percentage of online advertising. But many of us -- even regular
Google users -- are not aware of some of Google's other services. Most
of them are presented as new ways of listing and categorizing the
universe.
However, consistent with Google's new status as a profit-first public
corporation, what lies at the root of most of Google's expanding
ventures is the need to become less dependent on context-based
advertising revenue. In other words, the people at Google are
desperately looking for new ways of making money.
** Froogle
Still Looking for itīs Mission in Life
Google's product search and comparison tool called
Froogle, was launched years ago, in December 2002. It was developed in an attempt
to cash in on the obvious market for online shopping that major sites
like eBay and Amazon had so successfully exploited.
Unlike alternatives like eBay, Froogle lists
products for free, and it has no integrated purchase capability. You
just look for products by product name or description and are presented
with a list of products with links to sites where they are available.
Product information gets into Froogle in one of
two ways, according to the Froogle instructions. It can be submitted
electronically by merchants and will then be included in the database.
Second, in the course of spidering the Web, Google's spidering software
"automatically identifies webpages that offer products for
sale". These are then included in the Froogle database as well.
What Google wants is to make Froogle a product
search tool of choice, and open up various monetization opportunities.
The obvious ones are embedded advertising and paid listings, but others
include direct sales possibilities on the eBay model.
After more than three years Froogle is still
called a "beta" suggesting that Google still has no definite
plans for it. The latest development was to add "local
shopping" information to the listings giving Froogle potential to
become an online yellow pages.
** Google
Local Integrates Maps, Local Product Search
Everybody agrees that local search is going to be
very big in the next couple of years. Say you're looking for a place to
buy a digital camera in a particular city. Just do a search for
"digital camera in MyTown", and Google Local will give you a
detailed street map of the area along with stores that carry the
product, and locations indicated on the map.
Since products are indexed by keyword, you can
search for virtually anything, rather than being restricted to the
categories pre-defined by a service like the yellow pages.
Also unlike the yellow pages, Google Local
includes all stores they have a listing for, not just paying
advertisers. Local gives you a map with locations, plus listings with
links direct to the stores. The potential for this resource seems
awesome.
Plus Google Local has integrated a very slick map
utility that arguably looks better (simpler) and in some ways, works
faster than other services such as MapQuest. For instance, you can
search for a relatively obscure place like Carlyle, Saskatchewan or
Brora, Scotland and you are taken to a detailed street map for the
entire region. If you are looking for a broader overview of the area,
you can just grab the map and scroll along a highway or the coast
without having to clïck on navigation arrows as you do with MapQuest.
Google has also integrated its satellite imaging
service into Local. If you are looking at a specific map and would
rather see a satellite image of the area, just clïck on
"satellite". Or if you would like to see the satellite image
with a map overlay, you can see that too, by clicking on
"hybrid".
** Google
Video Lets You Put Your Videos Online
Google Video was introduced in beta back in the
spring of 2005, ostensibly to give video producers an outlet for their
work. As Google says, "Whether you produce hundreds of titles a
year or just a few, you can give your videos the recognition and
visibility they deserve by promoting them on Google - for free. Signing
up for the Google Video Upload Program will connect your work with users
who are most likely to want to view them."
No doubt Google has something else in mind here
too -- providing video-related services to generate revenue. The logical
move is for Google to eventually build a large library of amateur and
then commercially produced videos and movies that it can
"rent" on a pay-per-view basis. The company has already taken
a step in this direction with its recent AOL alliance in which it
committed to promoting AOL's video library.
As John Battelle said in a June
2004 blog post, "this will help the spread of an alternative
universe for video distribution and playback, one independent of the
walled garden business model in which video is currently locked... the
sooner independent voices have an outlet for their work, and a business
model to pay for it, the sooner we'll see content creators revolt from
the hegemony of cable and studio models."
But there are other possibilities as well. As Jon
Udell says in a blog
post, "the larger goal is to bring the social effects we see at
work in the textual blogosophere into the realm of audio. Linking and
quotation drive discovery and shared discourse, but media formats,
players, and hostïng environments are notoriously hostile to linking
and quotation, and I'd really like to see that change."
Google made a move in this direction by switching
its player technology to Flash in the fall of 2005. While encoding
options for flash (FLV) are still relatively limited, the capabilities
to make flash movies more "link-friendly" are much better than
the other mainstream alternatives (Quicktime, Windows Media, and Real).
In other words, it is much easier to build hot
links and other types of scripting into video and audio using Flash,
making it a much better fit with the traditional "interactive"
features we expect from the web.
This also gives it more potential for the
integration of advertising into pre-existing videos.
