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http://www.philipaustin.co.uk

If you don’t think Gmail isn’t a major innovation in email, then I’m just speechless. Yeah webmail had been done a million times before, but I don’t think it was seriously anything more than a decent backup option or for low usage users before Gmail. Gmail made you forget it was webmail.

I think it would be fair to call GoogleCalendar and GoogleTalk a success. Despite the fact that GoogleTalk hasn’t really made any sort of dent in the major IM client’s userbases (MSN, Yahoo, AIM), I think it still has done well and has had steady growth because of its tie ins to Gmail. I know I only used it originally as a cheap Gmail notifier, but over time the fact that email contacts automatically show up on my GoogleTalk bar means that now all of my important business contacts are on GoogleTalk.

I don’t know enough about GoogleFinance or GoogleSpreadsheets, but all the rest are definently poor offerings (Don’t forget GoogleFeedReader). The jury is obviously still out on GoogleCheckout.

Man, that is a lot of products

Google Pack blows (WTF?)
Google Video blows (Killed by a 3-person garage startup from San Mateo)
Google Talk blows (I don’t know anyone who uses it)
Google Base blows (WTF?? Was this one of their April Fools jokes?)
Google Finance blows
Google Spreadsheets blows
Froogle blows (They killed it, axed from the front page)
Gmail.. ok not bad. Wow. WEB EMAIL! Yay! WOW that has never been done!

Note that all of the above suck and none are market leaders.

Google: stick with search, stop releasing failed products.

By Simply replacing the single quotes with double quotes after the copy, and you should be good to go.

javascript:setCookie(”np”,”old”);window.location.reload();

As for Google as the monster, its amazing how as a search engine you can let the data manipulate the vision. For example, you publish a cookie that changes the layout: because people care more about a Google product before it is released, and the can write cool code, they are able to source back all the data written about it and make a very informed decision–amazing stuff. Who else in the marketplace can do this without losing stream or ground to competitors? On the flip side, with all this data the Google now has vs the Entrepreneur they can see what they (the entrepreneur) is doing and go ‘what a great feature’; assign that to engineering team 7013, and get it done in weeks, if not days, or hours. The entrepreneur then has no legs to stand on.

So the question with Google becomes how you do release cool software that they can not copy instantaneously and promote it to their own creation? How do we index copyright before there PR machine tromps all own your unique idea? This problem is actually rampant Internet wide. Of the 400,000,000 million computers in the world, 40% Internet connected it is said there are 100,000 master mavens, 1,000,000 active builders, 10,000,000 dabblers and the rest just surfers of the Internet. The 100,000 master mavens thrive on sites like TechCrunch to get inside dirt on their competitors and future competitors tiny little design details that can ultimately make a business model successful or fall right the f*ck apart. The 1,000,000 active builders copy in exact detail and duplicate interesting models like rabbits. The rest don’t have any clue where to go surfing; where to start; what to care about or how to get there. They may have interests and actively search on them. The site they find may only have AdSense ads to monetize them so the content level is low and they go on surfing. Or they may be lucky and find a deep resource from a intense believer in the subject, and they go on surfing.

So we come back to Googlies AdSense business model. What a great model that cannot be copied without the mass data they collect. Just purely amazing what they did. They saw an opportunity (a fisher if you will), stuck there claws in and won. Now the big guys who had been in the space for years, or who didn’t see that space and want to copy them. The large entrepreneur is now getting it by the long term established business that was once an entrepreneur but has lost that soul, and just wants a piece of Google action.

Now think about the costs related to on-line media and offline. If your The New Yorker you sell a print ad for $50,000 because you have a distribution of X that you claim will see it as they flip through the paper, and inherently if they read front-to-back they will. Now on a website you have tiny little spaces reserved for advertising on each page that have variable costs based on traffic flow, and most certainly it would take 50-100 visitors to capitalize those spots (if your a lucky high volume site) to the effect of $50,000, else if you use something like Google AdWords on a Blog it would take 1,000,000 visitors to create a $50,000 Return-on-Visits–however on the flip side Google would make $50,000 on 1,000,000 of those actually ads delivered, which are only sold through for Google advantage, not the advertisers.

There is a huge fundamental flaw on the Internet in regards to advertising effect and reward–but yet every business model relies on Advertising as a line-item for sustainability. But clearly the model does not exist for either off-line to afford on-line efforts, or on-line to afford off-line methods (print, radio, TV)–and off-line can sustain themselves off-line anymore because ad dollars are moving on-line, and on-line can’t increase their reach without using off-line techniques.

We are at the beginning of the year of the breaking point–by mid 2007 there will be another dot-com bust, but it will include off-line as well. But this time there will be clear champions, like Google, who siphoned profits away from everyone else so that they can’t exist. And if off-line does not exist Google no longer has content to grow there revenue base. This looping effect will destroy 50% of so-called media companies (maybe even Yahoo), and put the power into very few hands–maybe this is a good thing. Maybe then will I have a clear direction of where to sell content too that ‘I can’ make money off of.

All the Internet can do now is benefit large companies that have been smart and built something and brand image before today. Copycats create Dodo-birds.

I have a different natural solution that would not cause this looping effect of destruction, while keeping with Google amazing growth structure model. It would benefit man&women-kind, but why would I want to share it when all the big guys will do is copy it, mess up the model, get parts right, get parts wrong, but overall disillusion my ability to create a marketplace and brand that sustains local markets, not take away from them.

It seems we’re back to that time when entrepreneurs had to watch what M$ was doing to make sure that we didn’t do anything that they might want to do – and if we planned to do it well, don’t do it too well, lest you attract too much attention, and let M$ know that there was ‘gold in dem dare hills!’

I wasn’t really into this entrepreneur stuff when M$ was busy stomping the Netscapes and Reals of the world with illegal monopolistic / anti-competitive / anti-consumer practices, but to me, it seems like Google is scarier – they’re just better. They get it. M$ was never more than GM in hipster clothing – they only reacted when forced to. Google, on the other hand, is still doing things more or less right – even as big as they are. Sure, the haters will always think Google’s product strategery sucks, even as Google continues to stomp everyone in its path, but I’m interested in serious criticism – not hyperbole.

It’s scary that Google’s management is not yet messing them up too badly – yet. Apple management usually manages to crush whatever inspirations the workers there come up with – we’ve seen it a trillian times in the valley (General Magic) – how long before Google management effectively gets too arrogant for their own good and starts suppressing their workforce to the extent that M$ used to do?

It may also depend on how much Google forces folks to use their other products (email/calendar/IM/etc.) -> tie-ins. Will they do like Microsoft, and force everyone to use their universal spying/log-in thing?

Also, when does it really start to hit the tech-using public that Google is just a corporation, out to make a buck, and your searches and entire life are owned by Google? I just started using Black Box Firefox search plugin for google searching. Not sure if it is ‘generally available’ yet. Remember that old saying, “they jail the communists, but they murder the anarchists”? Yeah – me neither – but I have a feeling it’s true.

Will Google’s new porn features trigger some sheep into starting to think critically about any single corporation’s dominant role in their digital lives, which is increasingly their non-digital lives too?

Seems like we might be getting closer to that first anti-Google-monopoly lawsuit. And, at first, everyone will say, “but their products and web services are free, therefore Google is great for consumers”, just like M$ apologists used to say – with M$ going before the courts with their propagandistic argument, “but we’re giving the proles a free browser, your honorific!”. And then Netscape was gone and we were stuck with a crappy, security-hole-ridden browser from M$ for years – no tabs. NO TABS. Because so many ‘well-intentioned’ sheep were out there pimping M$’s nobility. Unbelievable.

How long before a disgruntled Google employee takes your Google search data and starts extorting? What are the internal controls in place to make sure that a single Google employee can’t get to your email, your calendar, your search data, your new online Google shopping cart which tracks everything you buy all over the internets, your mistresses, your illegitimate children, your everthing? Do those internal controls exist?

The scary part, to me, is that Google continues hiring and expanding, meaning their ability to buy more and more-effective politicians is growing. And they directly and indirectly continue to pump money into the opinionmakers here in SF, SV, and around the U.S. and world – creating a Legion of Doom of apologists for Google and corporate behavior, in general. Nobody wants to lose that ‘fast-track to retirement’ funding. How long before all the sites we surf are supported by Google ads? What subtle and not-so-subtle ways will Google be able to influence the content of those sites? Would Google/Paypal/Yahoo hire me if they knew the way I savaged corporations, in general, and those particular companies themselves? PayPal emails me once a week – as they do most of SV – must be a great work environment over there – how long before they’re owned by another, even-bigger, company? Oh wait, they are? How long before *that* company is bought by Yahoo? Oh wait – Yahoo contacted me when they saw my resume on HotJobs – a Yahoo company. Did Yahoo look at my search data before sending out the email employment feeler? No – but would they if they were actually close to hiring me? What’s to stop them?

Seth Godin pointed out, in a truly pro-human rant (whether he knew it or not) that the bigger a company gets, the less attached its employees become to the end results of their deeds. Like government employees, workers for large corporations are able to distance themselves, in their heads, for the moral culpability of their actions. They didn’t turn over my emails to the Federales, they were just doing their job – they were little people in a huge organization, trying to pay the mortgage, put the kids through college, etc. Same thing as the folks who flipped the switches on the gas chambers – they, too, were just workers – it was all bigger than them – they didn’t really have a choice. We’ve already heard scary stories – whether just U.S. government propaganda or not – about Chinese dissidents getting rounded up via Yahoo search data. I know the U.S. is not China, we don’t torture (Abu Ghraib) or commit war crimes (Haditha, Hiroshima, etc.) or lock up our citizens incommunicado (Padilla), but still, there’s reason to be wary.

The Real Threat of Fascism
http://www.comm...s05/0930-25.htm

p.s. when does the leading web 2.0 blog/jobboard/etc. get a fancy ‘preview comment’ feature?