Search
Related Links
Google Is Much More Than A Search Engine
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 desparately looking for new ways of making money.
**Froogle still looking for a mission in life
Google's product search and comparison tool called Froogle, was
launched 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
an 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 click 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 click 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 moves 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 (http://battellemedia.com/archives/001658.php>http://battelle
media.com/archives/001658.php) 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 (http://weblog.infoworld.com/udell/2005/12/06.html>http://web
log.infoworld.com/udell/2005/12/06.html) 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 hosting 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.
About the author:
Rick Hendershot publishes Linknet News | For online
promotion see Linknet Promotions
| For online video ideas see Videoinabox.com.