Robert Cringely, notable author/speaker/business guy has a post about Google taking over the web.
What’s scary is that it’s not that far fetched, nor is it necessarily a bad thing.
Category Archives: Google
Google Finally Allows Content Bids
People have been asking for this since Adsense started. This should make advertisers much happier. On the other hand, it COULD hurt publishers who were benefitting from high search bids filtering to their content.
However, I know many advertisers who cancelled putting their ads on the content network because they couldn’t change it, now that they can, I imagine the amount of ads available will drastically go up, and thus raise revenue for Adsense publishers.
Google Base’s First Usage?
Has the New York Times spotted the first use of Google Base?
Google apparently is using Google Base data to power local results for Froogle searches. It starts to become more clear how Google will pull Base data to use in other ways and applications.
It’s amazing how many ways Google can use their tools and data, but they still need to do some of these things right for them to succeed.
Google Analytics: No New Accounts
Google Analytics has stopped allowing new accounts and is currently not allowing accounts to add new sites.
When I saw the Google Analytics presentation at PubCon 10 last week, I knew it was bound for big things. It’s a solid web analytics product that has more features and data than probably 90% of web sites need, so I’m not surprised at all to see that it’s being overwhelmed with new accounts.
Before Google Analytics, there wasn’t anything close to that product available for free. Combine Google’s name with it, and it was bound to take off. You’d think Google would have expected this.
As the ZDNet article linked above suggests, an invitation-only signup like they did with Gmail would have been better.
Regardless, Google Analytics is going to change the web with the amount of free quality data site owners will now have. Web analytics just entered a new world.
Google Adsense: ‘Advertise on this site’
The Inside Adsense blog has announced that Google is now putting an ‘Advertise on this site’ link along with Adsense ads for all publishers. Clicking through allows advertisers to create an Adwords account and directly buy targeted ads on the site.
Adsense publishers can customize the landing page advertisers land on with their own logo, color scheme, and site description. Google also has a guided tour if you want to learn more.
This was really a no brainer for Google, and I’m surprised it’s taken them a few years to get it done. It’s a great way to get more Adwords advertisers, and it helps publishers generate more revenue. Ask Adbrite how much traction they’ve got from their “Advertise here” link with their text ads.
Google Base Discussion on Web 2.0 Explorer
Richard MacManus discusses Google Base at Web 2.0 Explorer and brings up this interesting point:
Of course, Google Base is not without its potential problems. The main one I see is that the data millions of people enter into Google Base may not be as valuable as Google wishes it to be. By which I mean, it’ll attract spammers like flies and even content entered by genuine people may be (ahem) crap. Google could in fact be building the world’s largest database of structured shite.
Early reviews tend to agree with Mr. MacManus.
Although while developing this product, don’t you think Google would have realized it’d be a haven for spammed content and they’d have a plan to how to deal with it?
I know some people think Google might not be so great, but it seems like this would have been something they were aware of beforehand.
Either way, they should probably fix it quick before the buzz is over.