A Fuller View

I disagree with Mr Blodget’s comments on SAI re: 20% time at Google. That just proves that Wall Street analysts don’t get tech innovation or how the Valley works. The 20% is great “life hacking” and I am sure Google still gets 125% from most staff… On a related note this over on Fast Company is cool and well worth read!

• Marissa Mayer’s 9 Principles of Innovation

Plus, worth checking this one on NYT:

• Yahoo Reveals (Some) Details About Its Ad Plans

I added some comments to yesterday’s post on AOL below.

Great video interview with Nicholas A. Christakis on The Edge about his research into social networks (and not just the online variety, but the real social networks offline).

This just in on TechCrunh a rumour that Google may try to buy 20% of Yahoo to block you-know-who. Totally wild.

AOL CEO Andy Falco was talking tough this week at the IAB meeting in Arizona:

“I hope they [Google & Microsoft] beat each other’s brains out over search and leave the display market to us,” he said to the Interactive Advertising Bureau annual conference. “I think it’s a mistake. But I think Napoleon said never interrupt your enemy when they’re in the middle of making a mistake.”

…

“Microsoft and Google can ignore us and leave us of charts if they want, but they do that at their peril,” this from AdAge.

Good stuff. Let the games begin. I would love to see more innovation and more dynamism from AOL. For that matter lets see more from all of the big 4 - GYMA.

I also like this video posted up by Mr Scoble about some cool tools from AOL - GO HERE  to view it.

Follow-up notes/comments: I would comment that actually Microsoft definitely gets display, just check out MSN’s ad offerings and the Aquantive acquisition last year as proof. Plus Yahoo is a BIG display player. Google too has made moves in the area with expansion of ad types for AdWords/AdSense and their attempt to buy DoubleClick. I agree that while GYM are distracted with each other that creates new opportunities for AOL - they just have to execute. Here’s a wild predication: Microsoft does buy Yahoo in the end and then Google buys AOL.

Of course there is tons and tons of comment and analysis on the proposed Microsoft-Yahoo deal. I am not going to be able to add anything of value to this debate, instead I will point to a few of the pieces on the subject that I’ve found most enlightening.

• Internal MSFT email on WSJ - nothing surprising but sounds pretty confident on a deal
• Avenue A SVP: Microsoft + Yahoo = Irrelevant - worth a read if you have time
• Microhoo vs. Google: The Battle for Audience and Keystrokes - least we don’t forget about display ads (~30% of on-line ad spend and 2nd to search)
• First Evening at Microsoft’s SAS: Aha! - should MSFT be more like GE, maybe it makes sense

This is a great resource - from mydigimedia.com - that outlines who own who and gives a nice tiddy summary of M&A by the big Internet players - Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, AOL, IAC and News Corp. There is also a handy PDF version you can down load.

Ok, I was planning to chuck my comments into the Yahoo! debate based on their recent revenue numbers and the unfair (in my opinion) general bashing they have been getting in the press and blogosphere. Well, it looks like MSFT gets to eat YHOO in the end. This is a great deal for both companies and for the Internet industry. We need a strong rival to Google for sure…

MSFT is bidding $45 billion for Yahoo - more details here[CNN] and here [TC] and here (this one on SEL has the full letter from Ballmer to YHOO). I’ll be back with some more thoughts this later today.

TC have come up with a new logo - copied below … I kinda like it :-).

Well, its only the middle of the work week and there has been a lot of interesting stories and posts already. More stuff than I can keep up with. Here are some of the tidbits I think are interesting…

No, Google Won’t Buy the NYT. But Google.Org Could - I like this mini-post form John Battle’s search blog. I completely agree, lets put and keep the best news organizations in a trust. Living in the UK you sort of take it for granted, but I gotta say the BBC rocks and papers like The Irish Times and The Guardian also very cool and not run to make a profit for share holders.

Search Stocks & The Stock Crash: GOOG, YHOO & MSFT - this post is over on SEL. My opinion is all 3 of the majors are solid. I’ve got to think ad dollar$ continue to go into search during a down turn year, but that probably display gets hurt… This means Google could fair a bit better overall but they still have to finish the DoubleClick deal and they are still way over valued. I would sell GOOG short, hold YHOO or buy if it dips under $17 and buy MSFT all the way its cheap :-). Disclaimer: do NOT trust my stock tips. This is just fun.

The parent company of WordPress - Automattic - secures B round funding - this report from the NYT. Great news. I love WordPress! Related to this is a post by Greg Sterling - Harnessing Blogs for Local - this one has got me thinking about new micro-publishing mash-up business ideas… More on that after a few more beers.

Enteprise search provider Endeca closed funding from SAP and Intel - this over on TC. This interesting in light of the MSFT FAST deal and the Sun MySQL deal. Doesn’t sound like a lot of money, but lets see what happens with Endeca. I keep wondering when will someone do a “redhat” version of open source Lucene?

Internet Trumps Print Directories in Britain - this post again fro Mr Sterling based on a neat report from UK based welovelocal. I Love it, lets recycle all those print directories! Save the trees.

Publishers’ vertical search can rival Google, says AOP forum - not sure I agree, but I have to say job well done to my buddy Simon Baptist who gave one of the presentations. My sources tell me he did a great job. Nice one!

This is a brief wrap-up of various news and stories for the past week. I’ve included a few comments.

• Sun is buying MySQL - interesting news indeed. MySQL is a big piece of the backend of many Web 2.0 applications and is here to stay as a mainstream database. Maybe Google buy Sun one of these days?
• Google acts fast with a MSFT smackdown move in the enterprise search space and there is more commnet on this here at CMS. This relates to the MSFT FAST deal from last week. Google is definitely being a bit cheeky on this sales effort. Apparently they are even offering a free spa day to customers?! See below, I think the person who sent this to me toke some poetic license on the last line…

Offer details To make it easy for you to switch, we’re offering existing enterprise search customers some exciting benefits when they replace their existing solution with a Google Search Appliance by March 31st, 2008. You can choose from one of the following options:

· FREE website search.

· FREE training.

· FREE jumpstart package.

· Spa Day at Googleplex – Alleviate all your worries and come enjoy a paid trip to sunny California, including round trip airfare, hotel, a gourmet lunch from our 5 star chefs, and, of course, one full hour of massage therapy. OK, we’re just kidding about this whole Spa Day at Google, but we know the recent events will only represent more work and stress for you. We’re here to help!

• Semantic Wave 2008 Report - free interesting report available to RWW readers. Worth getting this if you have time.
• More rumor mongering on MSFT YHOO - a good analysis of why this deal is not going to happen is here.
• Xobni launched its beta last week - thanks to my buddy at Razorshine for pointing me to this new app. I’ve got to get it next week when I move back to Outlook for my work emails.
• Newsgator is now apparently free - cool.
• Survey finds people are loosing trust in search results.

Last night I attended the mashup event here in London and the theme was ‘local.’ First off I applaud the organisers of the mashup events for continuing to put together these generally very good events. The mashup events are filling a useful niche in the London online business community. So, please keep organising the mashups… However, last night’s event was very much ‘local search 101′ and I didn’t find it particularly valuable (that’s my view anyway). What I did notice was the significant number of investor types lurking around. I’ve got to think there isn’t much room for any more local Web2.0 start-ups - at least not in the UK. There are too many. There is too much local UGC that’s just not user friendly (more on this in thread in a future post). So a note to Investors: before you invest anything in the local space, contact me first I’ve got some valuable insight to share (I mean sell you).

Found this cool little ajax interactive timeline of acquisition by GYM and Amazon since 2001. Thank you Peter Abilla for putting this together.

Over on O’Reilly Radar there is a good summary of the recent deals by Google, Yahoo and Microsoft (GYM) over the past 12 months to June ‘07. This goes into the digestion phase hopper for review later to add to my previous post on this subject… The image below is from the Library House blog which started this analysis.

I’d like to put together a summary focusing on 2007 that tracks advertising, mapping, mobile and search deals in particular and expands to include AOL, Nokia and others…

I’ve also been thinking a lot about what I have learned over the past 8 weeks while blogging and immersing myself in the blogosphere - that’s worth a 250+ word post for sure later this week. One thing for sure it takes time, it takes effort and is harder to do well that I would imagined (blogging that is).

Other posts I’d like to do when I find time include Doco Loc review, Globrix beta, pre-history of branding, randomness of the long-tail, top life hacking web 2.0 apps and update Fuller’s rules for social networking.

There is an interesting rumor reported on Mashable about a possible newspaper ad network alliance:

Five of the nation’s largest newspaper publishers are rumored to be working on their own online advertising network. Such a network would allow advertisers to buy advertising from one central destination, and include 7 of the top 10 markets in the US according to the report.

This would sync up with news of the Yahoo! newspaper partnerships being on the ropes. R/W also has a piece on this.