It’s unlikely Google will ever find another money machine as efficient as search advertising, which accounts for about 40% of the $40 billion advertising dollars spent online each year. But that doesn’t mean they aren’t going to try. Today they unleashed two new forms of advertisements: click to buy links on YouTube and adsense for Flash games.
The New York Times says Google plans to release several other ad products in the coming weeks as well, so don’t think we’re done yet.
Most people still think of Google as a search business. But what the analysts understood long ago, and the rest of us are realizing now, is that what they really want to do is organize all the world’s information, and then put ads on it.
Which is fine with me, as long as the ads are like this one. But taking a break from my favorite Flash game to watch a video ad for insurance?
No thanks.
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Its amazing that as good as Google is, they really have a long way to go in serving up the desired search results. Case in point: last night, I wanted to roast a leg of lamb in a convection oven but I needed instructions. So, I googled “Lamb convection oven” and a number of variations. I was amazed by how many irrelevant results I got. Many of the pages were duplicate content on different URLs. I actually never found the info & had to wing it. Did I search wrong or is there an issue?
Here, try Omgili:
http://www.omgili.com/omgili.s.....on+oven%22
Gaggle is geriatric when it comes to organizing anything. Ever wonder why they spit out garbled multipage results users never use. makes them look big? why not one page of results on one scroll. Once Gag organizes the information they will have less page views less clicks less income. Ever wonder why they dont offer logo, or color ads on there addense? why does Gag not have colorful display ads like the ones above in your picture. Where is the innovation, its been 10 years. Yes algore search is 90% solved. Strategic niche vertical natural language location is 95% untapped and is the final fronteir to finding what you want on the internet in a uniform organized natural language format. 65% of gags adense income is from syndication on other sites. Centalized organization on google means less clicks on addense on syndicate sites.
Once gaggl gets organized it can kill a huge portion of there business model. Common sense.
http://professionallocator.nin...../mylocator
KillerLocator.com- Easy Prey
You should always search according to words that should probably appear on the page rather than what you (as a human) consider to be a good title of the page.
We can not blame Google for their monopoly, rather it is lack of common sense with its rivals yahoo and MS. Yahoo and msn portals look exactly same as 10 years ago, and their recent ajax things are not robust to work if a single connection request goes bad.
They show good face(open free etc.) which they are not, though they need not be as good as they try to show. Also no point they showing too much hatred towards MS, which will definitely harm their margin and growth. I hate google services for their lack of aesthetics in the heap of text they put forward, i’m dead sure this headache will cost my health, but cant help.
That same ‘lack of aesthetics’ is considered by many to be one of the contributing factors to Google’s success - simplicity & lack of clutter on the web is not a bad thing.
Those underlined links are called clutter. And god loves gmail for its looks, they underline all links!, but their ajax is too robust, it retries request and works as simply as common sense would suggest - no programming brilliance, but programming the common sense.
But what comes out of their search blackbox is decent, and their sponsored links attract mainly by misleading novice users which i bet is bound to decline.
Making links underlined is one of the most fundamental usability principles on the web… check Jakob Nielsen’s site on that subject.
I agree that the page isn’t ‘pretty’, but it IS functional; I think the fact that all other search engines have aped Google’s results page says a lot about what works for most users. Besides, what are the alternatives?!
For cooking tips try Cookthink or Howcast, both sites have great instructional videos.
http://www.cookthink.com/
http://www.howcast.com/
Well I was hoping to beat YouTube to the punch on making an announcement. I have been developing this on my site http://NowScene.com. It seemed only logical for YouTube which is now becoming the place for artitsts to get exposure, to incorportae links for people to purchase MP3s. I show a link to Amazon next to every live music video I display. Works pretty well. But because the video title also contains location information. I inform my customers to click the link then remove any extra text from the artitst information for better results. But I will make improvements in the future.
More power to YouTube’s success with this. I certainly believe in the concept since I developed this too. More improvements in the future since this the site is still early stage. But I wanted it documented that I did this first before YouTube made their announcement today.
-Randy O
Founder http://NowScene.com
LOL nice idiocracy picture. The only prediction that the movie got wrong is that it would take 500 years to get there.
Tell me about. In Idiocracy 2 Tina Fey plays the president
“Most people still think of Google as a search business”
Most people I have talked with in academic circles have been saying since many years ago that Google is in the advertising business.
“But what the analysts understood long ago, and the rest of us are realizing now, is that what they really want to do is organize all the world’s information, and then put ads on it.”
Organizing the world’s information is a nobble idea but it costs money to do it in a monetary system. So, you can’t blame them for the advertising.
“organize all the world’s information, and then put ads on it” add “health and medicine” then you have Medpedia.com, whithout the ads, so far.
–it would be a Wikipedia for medicine, with contributors from all over the world [with dubious medical knowledge and credentials.] They plan to offer this info for free. Very noble intentions, but very unreal, too. they are already heading for the dead pool…
I find this article ironic considering Google is in the midst of scanning every book ever published or made… so in the future, you will be reading books and have pop-up advertising every couple of pages as they try to monetize all that investment as well.
Jon
http://woodmarvels.com - Create Unique Memories
I think they shall fail with their book model.
And now you can embed Google Books results in your….blog. Wow-ee.
And to all the people who say “algorithmic search is 90% solved”…have any of you used Google? Ever?
Try putting quotations around all 3 words that *must* be in your results in order for you to find what you need. (I did this last night- hours of fun.)
If your search terms even begin to flirt with the long-tail you are SOL. Google will still give you three gazillion billion results, but those results will be for terms they literally pulled out of their algorithm’s ass, that have absolutely *nothing* to do with what you actually searched for, that contain *none* of the words in your search string.
Then jump over to Google Blog Search and watch the results further deteriorate…right into spam on Blogspot and malicious redirects, for the most part.
I’m sorry, but algorithmic search isn’t even 50-60% solved…not on Google. It could be at or close to 100% solved - the brainpower to control the algorithms is there - but Google’s desire for ad money makes them dishonor the purity of the algorithmic answer in favor of nonsense (or even harmful) results meant to keep you on the page looking for what you need (which you’ll never find) until you click on a goddamned ad already.
Thanks to CustomizeGoogle and AdBlock Plus, of course, I will never see an ad, much less click on one. I only wish everyone else could say the same.
Google have a lot to learn about the ad business. sure, they nailed search but aside that they show a fair bit of misunderstanding about what motivates agencies and more importantly, advertisers - making people want to buy your product over a competitors.
Video and game traffic is totally un-engaged in making a decision outside of entertainment.
But it doesn’t mean that it can’t make be monetized.
The best thing about this deal is that Google has a bzillion dollars to invest on serious A/B proof of concept testing. If it works, there’s room for competition (for now at least…)
Google quietly changed from time to time. The “official mission” of organising the worlds information is no lie, but it is the half truth only, as you point out. Google is an advertising company – THE advertising company of the world.
I count it on my fingers. We will see perfectly contextual mobile advertsing FOR EVERYONE soon, for every local business – easy as an Adwords account – it will be an extension of it.
And there is still the dilemma at the core of the business model of Google: Do not make your search results too good to keep the click-through-rate high because this is just the source of revenue. Null sum dilemma.
Because of the endless daily seductions the morning prayer in Mountain View has to be: “Don’t be evil!”
Anyway I like the Google way and the smart people behind.
Gaggl’s achilles heel.
“Do not make your search results too good to keep the click-through-rate high because this is just the source of revenue. Null sum dilemma.”
Mr Schroll hit it on the head.
Classic Picture ! At first I thought Micheal Arrington was sitting on the sofa… lol
Sure they want to organize all the world’s information. And Google could also start by hosting newspapers as they already do with their Blogger. As they know best how to distribute and monetize content on the web, deal with scalability and storage, newspapers would just have to do what they do best : produce original content.
Here is the analysis of Jeff Jarvis : http://www.buzzmachine.com/200.....pressroom/
Michael,
I think the great thing about Google’s approach is that the ways they’ve chosen to integrate ads proves that advertising is NOT always intrusive. In fact, it can often be HELPFUL.
Now they’re helping to organize that data on the go… from your phone… with Google Maps, Android Apps and more. Their stock is plummeting but they are forward thinkers and will be HUGELY rewarded in 3 years when mostly every American is browsing the web from their phone.
What I like about Google is that they constantly try to experiment new things. They failed in referrals but will succeed in mobile. I like constantly innovating companies instead of stagnant ones.
nice picture, ha……
I think google should be concentrating on getting people some benefits by clicking or viewing ads, and that is some special deals, or offers or coupons rather than just straight ads which are hardly going to garnish people’s attention.
im still using google adsense.
The definition of spam is simple.
SPAM: indiscriminately send unsolicited, unwanted, irrelevant, or inappropriate messages, especially commercial advertising in mass quantities.
Google will give us spam also in games, not only in emails.
Locator dude is not spam. its official. Andy’s definition says so. I feel liberated and so at home now.
Gaggl is king when it comes to cyberspam search results and adwidgets.
Go read their TOS, you fool! By using their site, you agree to accept advertising. If you don’t like it, go somewhere else.
Their first goal was to “help people find information efficiently” which is a lot bigger than organizing the worlds information. Organization needs structure which comes from purpose and information has different uses and purposes to different users at different time so organizing all the world’s information is both loftier and less useful than helping find information efficiently.
You don’t need to organize the information to stick an ad on it.
You just need to provide the access to it.
The higher the relevance between the ad and the information only creates extra, and important, value. It is not a necessity in and off itself.
Frode - There is a very important Trust issue that plays into the longer term viability of Google or any other search engine. Users must trust that search results or “access” to information will be consistent and of relevance. If that relevance deteriorates over time, less and less people will use the tool and Google or any other search engine would essentially lose value and ad revenue.
Absolutely Allan, the information can never appear to be a reason for the ads, like the old ’soap opera’ entertainments.
Mmm…here comes another bubble…lalalala….
i think click to buy is a very innovative idea.. with already billions on hits on the youtube itself, its a hot bed for selling video albums or who knows even movies
nice handy Videos for Free
http://www.hdhandy.com
Well, no matter how many other products does the google launch but to be they can’t be as good as their search business is and that can’t be replaced by someone else either in near future too. Moreover if you see these Games and Youtube thing, they are also the extension of their primary business but still I wish best of luck to google because I love that .
http://www.richappsconsulting.com
more ads = more money
What a genius.
Personally i think google trying to devour the market and be the last man standing, soon it will be one world under google. Is that good or bad, You decide.
I love google.
http://gatesandjobs.blogspot.com/
that youtube video was cool.
Can we get attribution on the photo? I’m guessing it’s from a movie and I’d be curious which one.
You could also say Google deals in human attention, which they acquire for a lower price than they sell it.
Search is big business, but I still think someone needs to crack the local business search game. I gotta believe there’s a lot of money to be made there if it could some how be better “organized”.
You’re right, Google wants to organize the world’s info then plaster it with ads. They’d like us to help them achieve this through user generated content. An example is Google Earth - they’d like us to build up their 3D content and ad POI’s - then they’ll stick a load of ads all over it.
and what to do when we put in all the information and get banned by AdSense?
I mean alternatives.
To me, Google’s mission appears to be: “Organize all the world’s information mainly using one dimensional lists.” One dimensional (1D) lists are boring and limit the discovery of related information. Also, 1D-lists do not reflect the social structure of information: every bit of information is a member of a family of information but Google Search mainly treats search results as ‘orphans.’ I feel that for every listed search result, a user should be able to intuitively bring forth related results for that listed search result.
Google’s organization of the world’s information has to evolve from 1D-lists to the presentation of information using 2D-lists (flat outlinessuch as in http://www.clusty.com) and finally, to 3D-lists (semantic storyboards). While Google Search probably presents the most ‘relevant’ results for a search query, there is a large room for improvement in the organization of results especially for text. Until Google Search evolves to visually presenting search results so that a user can easily access related results for each item, I’d say that Google is not effectively organizing the world’s information. Efficient Google may be in the organization of search results, but effective it is arguably not.
I look forward to the day when Google Search is semantically and visually presenting search results, for instance, using 3D lists. How much more fun search, discovery, and organization of information would be on the Internet!
Best,
Rod King.
http://search.galaxyit.com
http://projectstoryboard.ning.com
created through google
http://landofpics.blogspot.com
crazy and weird pictures for ur timepass
Google is crazy so am I
Arington, did you include “ALL” for a reason? Google’s mission statement is “rganize the world’s information and make …..” with “all”
http://www.google.com/corporate/
Wow. After reading all these comments, I’m now sure that TechCrunch is /. with more colorful ads and a different name.
Where are the thoughtful comments of old?