The CES Google yawn (or was it a Googleflop?)

I think I'm comfortably in the minority in being overwhelmingly underwhelmed by Google's CES keynote. Although from the description by Engadget it Robin Williams performance was definitely great, I hardly think that's something to write home about for a multi-billion dollar company.

So here we go...

Google Video
Lets first take a look at Google Video. Although relatively few people knew about Google Video at the time of the CES announcement it has actually been out for a while now (months). But up until now most of the content was contributed by users and is of the home-movie or ripped as in ripped-off but the owner didn't find out about it yet kind. It's okay I suppose - the playback is good enough and its useful to have a free as-in-beer repository for big videos. But for home use its nothing like say Flickr is for photos (and I've heard they'll be supporting video eventually), so it was clear this was destined be for greater things. Like all home grown Google products the user interface is simple but weak.

So what of those bigger things? Well Google Video gets mainstream i.e. commercial content. Like I said it was obvious that was going to happen, I think everyone expected and if they didn't they should ask themselves what self respecting advertising company would want to get into video, especially mainstream CBS content. Although Google will initially sell video and video sans advertising at that (just like Apple is doing) my prediction is that they'll find a way to make it free and insert user, locality or content specific ads into it while you watch. I mean that's what all those TV guys want really - sure they charge big bucks for TV ad space but the world is moving away from watching TV, at least in realtime and they have to find someone who really knows how to put content, locality and user targeted ads in front of people watching their media.

For those kinds of ads advertisers will pay as much is not more to the media companies as they do today, indeed Google has the opportunity to open up video advertising to a whole new raft of advertisers who'd never consider TV advertising - especially small local businesses. Imagine there was a food show and you had a local cooking store or restaurant - imagine you could put an ad out there to show when only users from your neighborhood watched it. Google could do this, for a low price because they could sell the same ad space in different areas many, many times over. You know it makes sense and will happen. And for the big advertisers imagine they could pay to have their ads only in front of certain demographics based on information viewers had already willingly provided to Google (check their privacy policy - they can already use that info to target ads to you). You know that kind of facility will give Google big opportunities and again they can resell the same ad space over and over to many market segments.

With these kinds of revenue opportunities I think Google will soon be able to launch an ad supported video stream for free and Google will make tons of money and so will the media companies. Ever wondered why Google has been busy buying up dark-fibre? Will of course they'll need it to distribute and stream all those terabits of content throughout the country. They already have the servers and server know-how to stream it - they just need the bandwidth to distribute it.

I suppose the big news about Google getting into the video business is the Apple factor - basically Google has the potential to effectively kill Apple's little video download service and the reasons are many.

• Google is a cross platform company, widely supported by Windows, Linux and Apple users whereas Apple stuff still sells mostly to diehard Apple hardware users. Apple tried to broaden that market by tying their music and video download to the iPod but that has many limitations because there is so much more competition in the portable media player market these days.
• As already mentioned Google can bring its considerable advertising muscle to the problem and offer, hopefully free ad supported service for those that don't want to pay. It's my contention that any company than can insert enough highly relevant and good quality ads into media stream will find considerable support for viewing them. Thus Google will be able to corner the considerable market of people who just don't want to pay to have ad-free entertainment.
• Finally Google has just so much muscle it can starve Apple of content providers. Signing up CBS was a baby step, sooner or later all the providers will come rushing to Google for a piece of the action they deliver. Eventually the small market of pay-per-view ad-free users offered by Apple will lose interest and they might even enter into exclusive deals with Google that shut Apple out completely.

Naturally all these things are bad for Apple, it only remains to be seen if Google can actually execute and change the face of advertising and media distribution for good. Lets hope they don't give us years of "beta" labeled service with mediocre UI and limited content, if they do others like Yahoo and MSN will rush in to fill the landscape of opportunity that has temporarily opened up.

Google Local Mobile
Again to those who follow the Google technologies this is just a launch of something that's already been out for a while now. In fact while I was interviewing at Google back in September it was already out so how new is it? Finally as someone who worked on WAP applications since 2000 technologically this is no miracle, its just using (albeit well) technology that's been embedded in phones since 1999 and earlier. Its good to hear that Motorola will embed Google apps (search and mail I assume) into its future phones but again I know that takes nothing more than developing a J2ME application which is far superior for this sort of thing than WAP (which typically has severe limits on content type and size it can handle).

Google Local Mobile would have been a much more interesting announcement if it included a tie in with the carriers ability to locate your phone via built in GPS or cellphone tower triangulation. Yes they can do that now and with triangulation they don't even need to ask your permission to do it (although carriers don't give that info out to just anyone). I expect the big sticking point here was very greedy carriers. Let me tell you, next to people like AOL and media companies the cellphone companies are about the greediest. Back at the turn of the century (i.e. six year ago) people like Sprint would demand seven figure sums to put your WAP site on the first page of the phone's default link menu. Imagine what kind of a deal they would want from Google to partner for location specific services and advertising. My guess is a huge pile of cash or a giant slice of revenue. Google would be better off launching its own cellular network (hint, hint) that it had complete control over.

Google Pack
Oh please, this had to be the biggest disappointment of the lot. A company announces at CES its going to bundle its major free products and throw 3rd party software that you need that's already free. I mean who ever had a problem downloading Adobe Acrobat Reader? And who didn't get a free subscription of Norton or some other anti-virus program when they bought their computer? Or couldn't get a 6 month limited subscription of Norton AV from somewhere else? Lets face it, this is just a huge marketing ploy for Norton. I would have been much happier if they'd thrown in a truely free forever version of an AV product like say Grisoft AVG.

While AdAware is a well known and popular spyware removal solution it is also well known that is not the best and really not that good at all for pre-emptive protection against Spyware. On a PC you'd be much better off with Microsoft's own and free antispyware solution or if you really must pay someone for the best removal solution then there's Webroot's Spysweeper.

Yes indeed, Google Pack was nothing but a self promoting and cheap (to create) bundling of convenient but good software which will probably make Google some money along the line from the 3rd party s/w it bundles. Really nothing anyone should be excited about.

Wind Up PC
Well its good to know that Google is throwing dollars at this project. Overall I think more Internet everywhere and for everyone is good for the human condition. However don't lets pretend there is no ulterior motive - more internet users means more internet commerce customers and more advertising revenue which means... more Google bucks in the bank. Even so, I wont fault them for this - they are damned if they do and damned if they don't.