Google OS Makes Sense, Creates Problems

Google Apps, Google browser, Android . . . Chrome OS. As most of you know by now, Google announced a full-blown operating system for netbooks and PCs:

Google Chrome OS is an open source, lightweight operating system that will initially be targeted at netbooks. Later this year we will open-source its code, and netbooks running Google Chrome OS will be available for consumers in the second half of 2010. Because we’re already talking to partners about the project, and we’ll soon be working with the open source community, we wanted to share our vision now so everyone understands what we are trying to achieve . . .

Google Chrome OS is a new project, separate from Android. Android was designed from the beginning to work across a variety of devices from phones to set-top boxes to netbooks. Google Chrome OS is being created for people who spend most of their time on the web, and is being designed to power computers ranging from small netbooks to full-size desktop systems. While there are areas where Google Chrome OS and Android overlap, we believe choice will drive innovation for the benefit of everyone, including Google.

Quick thoughts:

• Until people see and evaluate the OS no real assessments can be made of its prospects but Android suggests it will be solid and viable
• Accordingly this potentially gives MSFT a real run for its money (literally) in the netbook segment — the only healthy segment of the PC market. Could also eventually go “upstream” and challenge on laptops/PCs but that’s farther off and much more speculative.
• Google now is almost a complete alternative to MSFT (OS, apps, mobile, browser)
• Open source code (like Android) means that netbook OEMs will probably use Chrome to boost margins (if only a very little)
• The move is logical because Chrome (the browser) was a kind of OS or platform for developers and apps development. Android is an OS but perhaps not technically “robust” enough for netbooks and certainly not full PCs
• Chrome the OS will be deeply integrated with the browser experience and try to create a more seamless online-PC experience. Google made much of HTML 5 in the browser and what it could do — not quite enough it would seem, however.
• Apple and Google are now true competitors across a broader range of fronts. Google is very much like Microsoft now in many respects. It’s only a matter of time before Google CEO Eric Schmidt will be compelled by investors or regulators to depart the Apple board (the DOJ is looking into the two common Apple, Google directors)
• Even though there’s nothing explicitly anti-competitive here — in fact it makes the OS market more competitive — Google makes its position potentially more difficult with regulators simply because the company spans several key market segments and is using their integration to maintain leadership (though not illegally) in search online and extend it to mobile

You can read the scores of posts on Techmeme.

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Agree with Henry Blodget’s remark about Chrome:

If Google wants to succeed in its boldest product launch to date, the Chrome OS, the company needs to focus on its success with the same intensity it once dedicated to search.

If it doesn’t, Chrome OS will end up just like Chrome: yet another irrelevant skunkworks project used by a handful of digerati and Microsoft-haters and ignored by everyone else.

Not sure that the criticism of Chrome the browser is fair yet. But Google’s “if we build it they will come” attitude more often than not has lead to products falling short of their potential. But Android success suggests that if Chrome the OS is good OEMs will use it.

Google Offers B2C Directions Widget

Google has announced a widget that easily integrates driving directions on websites:

This simple gadget allows webmasters to add customized Google Maps directions to their business locations. With the directions gadget, you no longer need to type and update multiple sets of text directions. Let’s face it: customers are only looking for directions from their specific location.

The gadget allows you to pre-fill the “To” field with one or multiple addresses. Customers are then able to print their directions with a single click. And if they would prefer not to drive, the gadget also provides walking and public transit directions.

Here’s Stanford University’s integration:

In the B2B store locator world, Where2GetIt, MapQuest and Microsoft (Virtual Earth) are the significant competitors. This is Google’s entry, which should prove popular.

Bing vs. Google Round 5

From Citigroup’s Mark Mahaney this morning:

We Conducted Our Own Proprietary Study of Comparative Search Results – We three-screen tested 200 of the most popular current Search queries using Google, Yahoo!, and Bing.

1. We found Google with either the most relevant results or tied for top relevancy 71% (142 Searches) of the time.
2. We found Bing with either the most relevant results or tied for top relevancy 46% (92 Searches) of the time.
3. And we found Yahoo! with either the most relevant results or tied for top relevancy 30% (59 Searches) of the time.

(emphasis added)

We view our study as generally validating the positive Bing reviews . . . but also demonstrating Google’s very strong position.

In Terms Of Stock Takeaways… – We find these datapoints incrementally positive for MSFT, incrementally negative for YHOO (although strategic options provide a bit of a hedge here and Street estimates appear to already assume Search market share erosion for YHOO), and generally neutral for GOOG.

In my initial discussion of Bing and Google on SEL the day Bing launched I said:

Some may look at the screens above and shrug. Indeed, some people have argued to me that Bing “has to be at least 50 percent better” than Google to start peeling away users loyal to Google (or Yahoo). Bing isn’t 50 percent better than Google. However, Bing does offer results that are, across the searches I conducted, highly competitive with Google and in some cases it offers features that are more user-friendly.

Given the strength of Google’s brand and its “ownership” of search Bing may struggle to make market share gains. However I predict that it will gain share. Those potential gains may come not at Google’s expense but rather from Ask, AOL or even Yahoo.

Consolidation in the Place-Based Media Segment

Digital out of home has been a growing media segment. It’s interesting to me also because it’s “place-based,” meaning the screens where you see the media and advertising are in particular locations, although in most instances the ads and content are only nominally local. Yesterday two of the more visible players in the category, Danoo and IdeaCast, announced they were combining:

Danoo, a leading digital location-based media network with interactive video screens in popular retail locations, has acquired IdeaCast, the leading provider of advertising in the rapidly expanding captive television category. This combination creates one of the largest and most advanced media platforms in the location-based media space. As part of the transaction, National CineMedia, LLC (NCM), operator of the largest digital cinema network in North America for cinema advertising, alternative entertainment and events, and Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers (KPCB), a leading venture capital firm with a rich history of building entrepreneurial investments into successful enterprises, will each hold a minority interest in the new company. The assets acquired by Danoo had been previously acquired by NCM from the original IdeaCast entity. The new Danoo corporate entity will continue to operate and sell advertising across its digital media networks under the Danoo and IdeaCast brands.

Danoo and IdeaCast have exclusive contracts to present content and advertising in thousands of high traffic and extended dwell time venues, including top-tier health clubs, airport newsstands, seatback TVs on JetBlue, Frontier and Continental Airlines, and a dense concentration of coffeehouses, upscale delis and cafes in the top U.S. media markets. The arrangement unites the best location-based media opportunities with leading technology, such as transparent ad insertion, IP-based geo-targeting, mobile interactivity, digital content distribution and dynamic content localization. The new entity provides advertisers and marketers an unprecedented platform to reach the elusive upscale mobile professional underserved by traditional media such as television.

This combination will give the new company much more leverage and clout with advertisers, as well as reach with consumers (it’s all about reach). Existing local sales channels haven’t really tapped into Digital OOH as a distribution medium to date. RippleTV offered (I don’t know if it still does) a unique self-service ad capability.

One of the more recent developments in the space, Danoo (in its earlier incarnation) added mobile marketing as an extension of what it was doing. This mobile-traditional media (although Digital OOH isn’t really traditional) combination is going to be more and more prevalent.

Google ‘Real Estate’ Not New

There was a great deal of coverage yesterday about Google adding new capabilities to enable users to search for properties on Google Maps. Matt McGee wrote it up on SEL and Om Malik offers something of a cautionary note on GigaOM.

This was triggered by the launch of real-estate search on Maps in Australia. While the capability may be new in OZ, real-estate search on Google Maps (or Google.com itself) and the use of Google Base to upload listings have been around for at least a couple of years — at least. See, for example:

• Google Promoting Real Estate Search, Base
• Google Adds RE Search Option to Maps

Matt correctly points out: “What you’re seeing is an updated and more comprehensive version of the real estate listings that Google Maps has shown before, along with a new search tool.” Google’s LatLong Blog explains:

Previously, you had to specify “real estate” from the search options menu, but now we’re making it easier to find available listings

You’ll notice that we’ve made some other enhancements that will improve your real estate searching experience. We’ve added lots of markers that will show not only the ten most relevant listings with pins on the map, but also show a small circle on every other listing in that area using the search results layer, so you can get a really good idea of the distribution of properties for sale. You can click on each marker and each small circle to get more detailed information about the property.

This feature means you can now conduct a real estate search around a specific neighborhood, or see at a glance all the properties close to a BART stop. You can also pan the map to another area entirely to see listings there if you decide that another part of town is more your speed.

This is a set of refinements of existing capabilities that have been present for at least two years. Nobody should be surprised or not expect Google to try and refine its user experience. (Street View has always been a great real estate search tool and is incorporated into Trulia for that reason.)

Just as with behavior in the Travel category, people are going to rely on more than a single site for information about real estate. Google’s refinements and improvements may help move it up the list and improve its “curb appeal,” but it’s not going to dominate online real estate. And Google is never going to devote the attention to a single vertical that a dedicated site like Trulia or Zillow would. With a couple of possible exceptions Google always looks for scalable “horizontal-vertical” approaches.

Here’s Hitwise data on the traffic hierarchy in the real estate category:

The Local Copy Made Me Click

I was reading a story on Yahoo! about the “Codex Sinaiticus,” the oldest version of the Christian Bible and how that’s being brought online. At the top of the page was a geo-targeted display ad for the Alameda County Fair. I live in Alameda County and was probably targeted by IP address in this case.

I was otherwise unaware that it was going on and wasn’t looking for things to do. In other words I very definitely wasn’t in “search mode.” This was pure awareness building.

However the fact that this was a local event by itself made me click on the ad. On the site there are a bunch of social media (Facebook, Twitter, YouTube) tools that they’re using to promote the event and build email lists. And while I won’t follow the fair on Twitter, if I were somebody else (who didn’t cover this stuff for a living) I might.

Beyond the interesting fact that the county fair is using all the requisite online social tools to promote itself, the initial display ad was effective in getting me to the site.

The Online Publishers’ Association recently produced research that shows the value of display advertising for brands and other awareness marketers is not in the click but in subsequent user behavior. However the purely local nature of this ad caught my eye and got me to take action.

While there has been considerable use of (IP-based) geotargeting in online display, the fact that this had locally relevant ad copy and messaging was a critical piece of this ad in capturing my attention. Geotargeting without local messaging is not going to be as effective.

PR, Coverage and Unintended PR

This is pretty interesting: Spinning the Web: P.R. in Silicon Valley from the NY Times. Its focus is on the PR strategy surrounding a startup Wordnik and the people and investors behind that PR strategy. As an aside it’s also partly a story about the collapse of the prestige hierarchy of traditional media and publishers:

This is the new world of promoting start-ups in Silicon Valley, where the lines between journalists and everyone else are blurring and the number of followers a pundit has on Twitter is sometimes viewed as more important than old metrics like the circulation of a newspaper.

Gone are the days when snaring attention for start-ups in the Valley meant mentions in print and on television, or even spotlights on technology Web sites and blogs. Now P.R. gurus court influential voices on the social Web to endorse new companies, Web sites or gadgets — a transformation that analysts and practitioners say is likely to permanently change the role of P.R. in the business world, and particularly in Silicon Valley.

In this particular case widely read tech blogs were snubbed by the launch too, including TechCrunch. And Michael Arrington responds:

Forget the tech blogs, said investor Roger McNamee. Brew PR head Brooke Hammerling instantly acquiesced, and decided to go with a sort of guerrilla approach instead by “whispering” into the ears of prominent Twitter users like Kevin Rose, Jay Adelson and Jason Calacanis. CNET was also given the story, but it managed to eek out only a single comment . . .

The result? Not much. Wordnik is flatlining at an abysmal amount of traffic. Comscore and Quantcast don’t even register the site as a blip.

Compare Wordnik to Topsy, another recently launch service. Topsy launched on TechCrunch exclusively. The domain now has 577,000 results on Google, compared to 56,000 for Wordnik. And the traffic difference is stunning . . .

Most people, including people in the tech industry, haven’t heard of Wordnik. As Arrington suggests, the original PR strategy failed.

But the irony is that this (traditional media) NY Times article and the related, secondary coverage it gains (e.g., TechCruch) about the PR strategy behind Wordnik will do more for Wordnik’s exposure than the original launch PR described in the article.

Time to rethink assumptions again?

Collapse of the US Newspaper Industry

Business Insider captures the decline in 2009 (and before), citing statics that approach shocking:

• 105 newspapers have been shuttered.
• 10,000 newspaper jobs have been lost.
• Print ad sales fell 30% in Q1 ’09.
• 23 of the top 25 newspapers reported circulation declines between 7% and 20%.

Reading of the Dec. of Independence

I listened to the reading of the Declaration of Independence on NPR this morning. Aside from one unfortunate characterization of Native Americans it’s a remarkable document, written by one person: Thomas Jefferson. And the reading by all the NPR reporters is both interesting and powerful.

Listen to the whole thing; it’s only about five or so minutes.

Happy 4th of July.

TrustedPlaces’ CEO on LocalPeople

I had a quick call with CEO and Co-Founder of TrustedPlaces Sokratis Papafloratos about his role in the LocalPeople deal. TrustedPlaces is providing the business directory and self-service advertising capability to LocalPeople.

He told me the partnership was a significant milestone for the company and that it provided a big financial boost and new stability so that TrustedPlaces could focus more on product development and technology rather than ad sales.

The company had been trying to sell ads to local businesses without a formal sales force. It has been also relying on AdSense. By contrast the Daily Mail has a huge local sales force to sell ads to local businesses and can distribute those ads through its network of sites and now on LocalPeople. While Yell has had many challengers on the consumer side, the sales force behind LocalPeople may emerge as the first viable competitor on the ad sales side.

Papafloratos said that this partnership model would be one that TrustedPlaces would pursue with others potentially. However he also said that the TrustedPlaces site would continue to exist. He told me that Yelp, Qype and TrustedPlaces were engaged in a kind of three-way race in their category. Of course he cited Google, Yell and various newspaper publishers as also significant competitors in the broader local segment.

LocalPeople an Interesting Hybrid Local Concept

London-based social directory TrustedPlaces has teamed up with Associated Northcliffe Digital (owned by newspaper and classifieds publisher Daily Mail) to create LocalPeople. The site is an interesting hybrid; it mixes a local newspaper model with a directory site (with reviews) and social features including Twitter-like Q&A and individual profiles.

According to the press release the LocalPeople sites, which are conceived of as a network will target smaller cities and towns:

This week the first phase has gone live with the launch of the initial twenty-three local community websites in the South-West of England, these cover areas with between 10,000 and 50,000 inhabitants that typically do not have a dedicated local online proposition today. The sites are designed to encourage the local community to interact with each other, report on what’s important in their specific neighbourhood. A further twenty plus sites are due to launch in the South-West of England throughout the summer of 2009.

The social features, including Twitter-like comments stream, are front and center, making this different than a conventional local news or directory site:

The local news and dynamic Twitter-like/Q&A element will keep people coming back to the site throughout the day potentially — creating  much greater usage frequency than a comparable directory site. I kept suggesting that Yell buy TrustedPlaces, but now that ship has probably sailed.

For more background on LocalPeople see PaidContent.

Twitter vs. FB: Which Is More Effective for Local?

I just spoke in some detail with Dylan Fuller who is behind the “Cheers to Social Media” UK social media case study that I referred to earlier today. To refresh your recollection, Dylan and a colleague were promoting a small beer festival sponsored by a local business just outside London, about a 10 minute train ride from Victoria Station.

They used Eventbrite for the registration and pointed to the Eventbrite site with their social media promotion. They began promoting the event online about a month before the scheduled date. There was limited space so they didn’t want to have too many people but there was also concern about getting enough people to the event outside the city. They initially released 500 tickets and then subsequent batches of roughly 100 each. In the end they exceeded their goals and had about 1,350 people in total attendance.

Here’s the really interesting part . . . Fuller said that the owner’s internal email list drove roughly half the registrations/ticket sales. The other half were from Twitter and Facebook promotion. In this case Fuller said that they got 23 attendees (twenty three) based on their Facebook promotion and more than 600 (six hundred) from Twitter. Fuller told me that retweets were approaching 10X for each tweet they put out. Among other things, they discussed the types of beer varieties that would be a the festival and were generally thoughtful about the content they presented on Twitter.

Let’s be careful about generalizing, notwithstanding my inflammatory headline, but in this case Twitter was dramatically more effective as a promotional tool.

Yelp Adds Sharing on Facebook and Twitter

Yelp is adding a capability that allows users to easily and automatically share their reviews on Facebook and Twitter. How far we’ve come since Facebook’s Beacon caused such an uproar for doing essentially the same thing.

You sign in, check boxes and viola . . . your reviews are posted to news feeds on Facebook and your Twitter profile. Here are some screens provided by Yelp illustrating the process and product:

And on Twitter:

As evidenced by the above, Facebook and Twitter have become increasingly important distribution and marketing platforms for publishers and businesses.

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Related: Facebook Connect Is A Huge Success — By The Numbers:

• Registration: sites that use Facebook Connect as an alternate to account registration have seen a 30-200% increase in registration on their sites.
• Engagement: sites with Facebook Connect see a 15-100% increase in reviews and other user generated content
• Traffic: For each story published in Facebook, we see roughly 3 clicks back to the site.  Nearly half the stories in the Stream get clicked on. This creates opportunities for the site to encourage more user actions – knowing that each one may result in 3 new visits to their site. With other models like search, there’s nothing you can do to increase user traffic besides optimizing for keywords.

Zillow Prospering in Time of Downturn

The real-estate market hasn’t really stabilized yet . . . yet Zillow is seeing growth and high levels of usage. According to data I received:

• 44 percent year-over-year growth in page views in the first half of 2009.
• 35 percent more for-sale listings on the site in the first half of 2009 versus a year earlier, as the result of more listings feed partnerships with brokerages and Multiple Listings Services. In total, 3.6 million listings are posted on Zillow today.
• More than 535,000 people have downloaded the Zillow iPhone App since its launch in late April, more than any other real estate-related app.
• Consumers submitted 265,000 loan requests on Zillow Mortgage Marketplace in the first six months of 2009. Lenders responded with 3.5 million custom loan quotes during this same period.

And:

The Zillow Directory of real estate professionals now lists nearly 200,000 real estate agents, and more than 12,000 lenders who have created a profile and are active on the site. In fact, 25 percent of Zillow’s monthly traffic – or 2.1 million unique visitors in June – self-identified as a real estate professional.

This latter bit suggests to me that when SMBs/realtors see a clear benefit they will self-provision listings and profiles. This also speaks to the success of Zillow’s Q&A community.

What Ad Types Are ‘Most Helpful’?

Harris Interactive conducted a survey (.pdf) in early June about what ad types people found helpful in making purchase decisions and what types of ads they ignored. TV won, with newspapers second and search ads third:

I’ve written up the results on Search Engine Land.

Social Media and Local Events

Dylan Fuller has an excellent case study reflecting how he and a colleague successfully used social media sites like Facebook and Twitter to promote a small UK beer festival. He discussed it in a comment but it’s worth highlighting and includes specific numbers and ROI metrics (click on image for slideshare presentation):

SEL on ‘Local Organic Domination’

Brands, verticals and SMB aggregators can play in the SEM space but it’s often difficult for individual small businesses to be competitive in local search ads. The place where most SMBs will play is in the organic results.

Palore’s Hanan Lifshitz has written up a kind of case study for a New Orleans Chiropractor — who just happens to be a client of Will Scott and Search Influence — in a piece for Search Engine Land. It’s a good example of how optimization can be dramatically effective for a local business. It’s also great promotion for Will.

There’s no advertising here per se (although there is a different local advertiser at the top), but the doctor mentioned in the article pays Will a fee for his services. This is what I’m talking about when I argue that in many cases some of the traditional advertising dollars that may have been spent in yellow pages or local magazines (in the case of a Chiropractor) may simply “disappear” — going into new sites, SEO/marketing fees or internal headcount to manage programs on Facebook and Twitter, etc. For Will’s client there’s no ad buy here but there are certainly marketing fees being spent.

Web2Print Makes Politico Profitable

Political news site Politico started to cover the 2008 election but moved into print, which has helped it become a (financial) success. From Vanity Fair:

Politico puts its current traffic at 6.7 million unique visitors per month (down from a high of more than 11 million during the campaign), yet it still can’t support its staff of about 100 on the Internet’s low advertising rates (although, with its agenda-moving audience and its preponderance of advocacy advertisers, it manages to get a higher rate than most sites). But one effect of its Internet traffic and notoriety and the ensuing attention of cable news shows is that the original Allbritton idea for a Capitol Hill paper—one that now largely reprints Internet content—has become, with its special-interest-size circulation of 32,000, a major success. Internet cachet, in other words, has enabled a tabloid-size print version of Politico (also called Politico) to thrive and more than double the company’s revenues—which, just about evenly split between Internet and newspaper, will, it appears, be more than $15 million in 2009—meaning, according to C.E.O. Fred Ryan, that Politico, paying its staffers at nearly the level that The Washington Post pays (starting salaries for reporters at the Post are about $45,000 per year), has hit breakeven.

Political is clearly a success story but not without print because of depressed online ad rates.

MapQuest Adds July 4th Locator Icon to Map

In time for the 4th of July holiday, MapQuest has added a July 4th events locator icon to the map:

This apparently isn’t available as a place widget on MapQuest’s iPhone app, which is currently the 25th most popular free iPhone app.