September, 2008

Google has launched a big new charm offensive at ad agencies, and they are understandably suspicious -- like any fly would be looking at Google's dominant advertising web.

The New York Times has an excellent and humorous article on just how wary ad agencies are of Google -- "Googling in Person to Make Friends."

• Reporter Stephanie Clifford concluded her opening paragraph with a precious and comical capture of the real "spider and the fly" dynamic at work here...
  • The Googlers "emphasized a single message: Google is a friend to ad agencies.
  • No, really."

Let me use Google's new translation software to translate the 'Googlish' language used in this fun article into english.

""We understand that maybe we haven't been the best partner over the years" said Erin Clift, the director of agency relations at Google."

Most everyone has missed the net neutrality and broader competitive significance of Google launching it's own browser -- Chrome -- by myopicly viewing it only through the browser competition lens vis-a-vis Microsoft Explorer.

Goals and motives matter. Listen to how Google describes its goal with Chrome: 

• "The goal was to make people forget they are using a browser," said Sundar Pichai, Vice President of Product Management at Google.

What that means is that Google's goal here is to effectively and increasingly replace the neutral browser bar with Google's search advertising bar over time.

What that also means is that rather than typing a URL into a neutral browser bar that neutrally takes the user directly to the site that the user requested... Google will increasingly default the user of the browser bar to a Google page of search results with Google ads and Google's favored content.

Google is so arrogant it isn't even aware it is being arrogant.

Per a San Francisco Chronicle article:

• "Google Inc. and Yahoo Inc. will start a high-profile advertising partnership by early October, even if federal regulators haven't yet approved the deal, Google CEO Eric Schmidt said Thursday.
• "We are going to move forward with it," Schmidt said in an interview on Bloomberg television after being asked whether the companies would wait for the Justice Department to complete its review."

Let's put this Google behavior into a little context.

DOJ antirust prosecutors are currently involved in a serious antitrust investigation of the Google-Yahoo online advertising partnership for potential Sherman Act collusion/price-fixing illegality.

Google's dominance of the Internet's business model for monetizing content only grows.

ABC columnist Michael S. Malone used some real tough words to describe Google: 'amoral" (twice), 'sinister' (twice), 'Big Brother' (thrice), -- in his column: "Is Google turning into Big Brother?"  

It's a worthwhile read for Googlephiles because it highlights some impotant information Google would like to brush under the rug.

Google, you have a problem. The verdict of your biggest customers is in -- and you've been found guilty of not pursuing your clients' best interests.

• The ANA, the nation's largest association of advertisers and marketers representing ~9,000 brands, just wrote the DOJ formally recommending that the DOJ oppose the Google-Yahoo advertising partnership as anti-competitive.  

I have two big takeaways for you:

Invited to speak at the ITIF forum on ITIF's white paper: "It's Time to End the Broadband Policy Wars" -- I so strongly disagreed with the framing bias of that white paper and the broadband policy debate in general that I decided I needed to counter it by writing my own white paper:

• 
  

  Don’t be Fooled by the National Broadband Policy “Straw Man”

   

  Exposing Three Hidden Policy Biases of Broadband Policy Proponents

The abstract of my six page paper is below:

Google is helping fund a satellite broadband access start-up to reach the 3 billion people in the world that are not economically near fiber access per an FT story.

Now that Google has invested millions to vouch for the viability of satellite broadband as a broadband access technology, it will be harder for Google's Poodles, like FreePress and Save the Internet, to argue that broadband is a duoopoly and that broadband competition is not possible. 

This Google endorsement of satellite broadband technology is on top of Google's endorsement and investment in Clearwire's WiMax broadband wireless deployment, which is yet another Google validation point that wireless broadband can compete with cable modems and DSL. 

Those that continue to argue that broadband is a monopoly or a duopoly simply are not in touch with marketplace reality. 

Can you trust Google to responsibly exercise its power? Google's crusade to make all information accessible -- no matter what -- has indiscriminately mowed down another innocent bystander.

Only 14 short days until Google-Yahoo's September 25th deadline for DOJ to complete its review of their proposed advertising partnership...

• Adding some drama to the deadline, the San Francisco Chronicle captured Google's CEO Eric Schmidt's, 'make my day' attitude toward the DOJ review of his ad deal: 
  • ""We are going to move forward with it," ...after being asked whether the companies would wait for the Justice Department to complete its review."
  • Google's defiant attitude brings to mind a twist on another of my favorite movie quotes: "Approval! We don't need no stinkin approval!" 

Under section 16 of the redacted Google-Yahoo agreement submitted to the SEC, the companies gave the DOJ 105 days from June 12th  -- that's September 25, 2008, to complete their antitrust review (Google-Yahoo can extend that review deadline if they choose to).