With an inflated share price in the region of $400, Google it would seem aregradually turning it on to the extent that even Microsoft are worried (seebelow). While Google is making obscene amounts of money every second, theirmain source of revenue is ad-based. It will be interesting to see how they turnsome of their other ventures into viable propositions to keep their shareholders happy and the price increasing.
With a new attention grabbing headline every week it can be easy to loose trackon the progress that Google is making. News.comoffers around up of these features and speculates on what their direction mightbe. World domination may be a way off yet but it appears clear they’ll doeverything they can to achieve it.
With the dust yet to settle with the announcement of GoogleBase, Microsoft has at least been a little more honest with its crack at the classified / small ads market place. Earlier this month a thinly based attempt at Craigslist was launched called Base;
“Google Base is a place where you can easily submit all types of online and offline content that we’ll host and make searchable online …….. may be included in the main Google search index and other Google products like Froogle, Google Base and Google Local.”
Ok, so I’m a believer! If you’d have told me about podcasting 5 yearsago or tried to convince me that I would be a massive fan just 12 months ago, I’d have probably laughed in your face. Lets face it,Podcasting to the uninitiated is nothing more than amateur radio. Even now, and I listen to probably close on 8 -10 shows a week, if I try and explain it to someone they look at me like I am some closet geek with a homemade radio transmitter in my loft!
“Its like radio shows that you can download and listen to at your own convenience. They can be made by you and I, for a relatively little amount of money, yet some of the traditional broadcasters have caught on now as well. With subject matters as diverse as web design to film and music to gardening.”
Rumours are beginning to circle the web regarding Skype offering an integrated video call option in a new release soon.
Festoon, which recently changed its name from Vskype, offers a current alternative but the name change must be taken as a signal that Skype are going their own route.
Further according to Skype Journal, an independent Skype blog commentary, last September they posted extracts from Skype’s Product Development Road map illustrating the planned video release in October.
Now with the unforeseen introduction of the Sony’s IVE, ‘Instant Video Everywhere’, application (a collaboration with Glowpoint) it must surely force Skype’s hand.
Sony’sEric Murphy: “The launch of the IVE service as a free, unlimited useservice is a communications watershed moment for consumers – aninstantaneous, easy-to-use application that brings people together by literally putting them in the same room.”
With some 200,000,000 downloads, Skype has grown exponentially and has developed to a point where Ebay purchased them last month for an estimated $2.6 billion. Skype is the no.1 name in Voip and video is a natural progression, for Sony to beat them to release must be seen as a major coup.
The concern would be that Skype’s product is rushed to the market place and the application not impress in the same way it did when first released!
Ok I probably aint the first but definitely wont be the last to comment on this but Riya the photo search people that uses face andtext recognition, are supposedly being lined up as the next Google acquisition.
Firstly, this seems like a pretty sensible move on Google’s part and great business sense. Yahoo clearly got a major step up on the big G with Flickr and is in danger of completely loosing out in the photographic market. Secondly this software is hot, from the stuff of science fiction novels little more than a decade ago this can completely revolutionize the waywe store and retrieve photo’s. The fact is Flickr is damn good and theproof is in the massive community but if we could automatically tag photo’s when uploading them with peoples names and places then it would take the only headache out of the equation.
Don’t get me wrong, there is an awful lot of crap floating around again in this Web 2.0, dot com part 2 or whatever you wanna call it but this is a good example of what all the fuss is about. The figure quoted at the moment is along the lines of $40m which for a fresh, venture capitalist, start up is good business all round.
