10.24.06
Posted in Personal at 10:49 am by Christine
Joey’s official birthday was on the 12th of October, but we celebrated his big 3-0 this past weekend in style!
It was called the “unofficial J&B met” as it was a joint 30th celebration of Joey and his friend Bruce. Obviously not as a glitzy affair as the ‘real J&B met’, but about 100 of us did a really good job celebrating at a very appropriate venue, and one of my favourite Cape Town breakfast spots called Beleza.
Great fun was had by all, and it will be a night to remember. Happy, happy birthday honey!!
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10.10.06
Posted in General at 3:05 pm by Christine
Mark Walsh reported today that Google agreed to acquire YouTube for $1.65 billion on Monday. Google is making a big bet that it can harness its considerable advertising expertise to turn YouTube’s vast collection of video content into a media gold mine. Exactly what type of ad model will emerge from the Google-YouTube deal is not yet clear. But in a conference call Monday announcing the acquisition, Google co-founder Sergey Brin called video “a great medium for advertising.” Read the full Google YouTube deal story.
Some rather scary stuff that, it’s like a whole new media boom…or would that be “bang”? All the video sites are standing in line to be swept up by the competition I’m sure!
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10.06.06
Posted in General at 12:18 pm by Christine
Read this entry over on BusinessWeek today:
Google is so far ahead of its competitors that stories about whether anyone can unseat its top spot are beginning to look obsolete. Google controls roughly 51 percent of searches, which now include both News Corp.’s MySpace and Time Warner’s AOL. Still, competitors like Yahoo, MSN and IAC/InterActive’s Ask.com are hoping to come up with something so new and essential that users will be forced to change their search habits. They’re hoping that Google continues to shift its focus from Web search to other Web-based applications and services. Doug Leeds, Ask.com’s vice president of product management, thinks that’s a competitive advantage for his company. “Google’s strategy has shifted from trying to get you to information on the Web to trying to capture more and more of your time. … We are focused solely on getting people to their information faster.”
This has been a contentious issue ever since Google expanded their criteria from search to incorporate pretty much everything that involves online, and well, offline (OS/ print / billboards (pay-per-call) / radio etc)
Doug Leeds has a point, BUT if a company employs people that are at the top of their game for their specific industries to run with all of these new ventures they are sure to succeed. Employing people that know their stuff about their relevant niches allows Google to stay focussed on its primary objective - Search Relevance, but provides them the time and viability to expand to other areas - and each of these areas would have some kind of affect on the online industry and “relevance perception” of the consumer.
Not a bad move IMO, and if not - why not? Especially if you have the means to do it.
This also ties in with Jon’s post today over at CherryFlava about how Google will become one big ad agency at the rate its going. He posts the question: “..but we were always lead to believe that media planning was such a complicated thing that you needed specialised companies to guide you through the process. Or has the industry been tricking us dumb marketers all along?”
Jon from my experience and relevant to SEO primarily, there are and will always be two kinds of people / businesses - those that like to try and learn the subject, test it out and ask for advice when needed, and those that will employ a specialist with the experience and knowledge to do it for them. Google is thus catering to both markets IMO.
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