Google’s been buying up more and more assets away from its core search competency:
Search? Check.
Video inventory? Check.
Software to serve ads? Check.
Feed management? Check.
When it bought Feedburner, it only further encroached itself on organic ad results, after all, with YouTube, Google was showcasing its own properties front and center. I personally never objected to this, because YouTube was in fact a great source of content… so it did not make sense for Google to handicap one of its units to please a vocal minority.
Yesterday, Google attacked Wikipedia by launching a platform that allows writers to create encyclopedia-like pages on topics. There’s definitely a “target: Wikipedia” feel about this.
But I think by now, despite the amount and respect and fear that Google commands and instills respectively, time will tell whether this will succeed or fail, but a couple things come to mind.
Google launched Base, to compete with Craigslist, and that has gone nowhere.
Google launched Checkout, and Paypal has not even noticed a dent in business.
But, after launched Google Video, and that became a #3 in the marketplace, it then threw in the towel and bought YouTube, wisely.
Of course, Google cannot buy Wikipedia (though we did ask what is it worth?)… so this begs the question: will Google do everything to make Knol a winner… or are they laying down the foundation to evaluate an acquisition of Mahalo? After all, Mahalo might not be have all of the traction in the world, but Mahalo was - like YouTube - funded by Sequoia… and that usually created a connection in YouTube’s case from investment to exit, so it might prove to be the case again with Mahalo. Time will tell.
But one thing is certain, I previously wrote:
Advertising is based on matching marketers with an audience given the demographics of the audience (be it readers, listeners or viewers).
But, the audience’s demographics are largely driven by the content. However, the content has historically been created, edited and presented by the publisher.
Translation: Google thinks it has a strategy in place for video advertising, the fastest growing segment in online ads, but to really scale and dominate in display too, it needs to have such content and not simply rely on search.
December 14th, 2007 at 4:02 pm
[…] and … God, is anyone keeping track of this stuff?), Google is now making a run, as you may have heard, to start populating its own search results by […]