Alliance Blog Reviews

Google is stirring up buzz to rival Apple’s yearly expectations with an invitation for reporters to an event January 5—yep, just days before the CES show. Apple has made a tradition of big (or not so big) announcements scheduled conveniently upstaging the popular Consumer Electronics Show. So Google will definitely be cutting into the speculation market between now and then—especially since they told reporters the announcement, hosted at the Mountain View facility—will have something to do with their mobile OS, Android. First launched on the G1 over a year ago, “this is just the beginning of what’s possible,” Google said in the email invitation. The announcement comes less than a month after Google sent its employees home with an unlocked Android phone called the Nexus One , sparking a viral media frenzy when the employees hit social media. With free buzz already in the air and more to come, it seems entirely possible that Google will officially unveil the Nexus at the event. Apple, on the other hand, appears to be keeping any major announcements under its hat for now, with a major product announcement scheduled for January 26, according to Reuters . The anticipated Apple tablet computer would definitely rival a Google phone for buzz, but it looks like they won’t be in direct competition for consumers’ presales attention. So far, not a whole lot is certain about the Nexus One. Search Engine Journal takes a look at the definites and rumors from technical specs to carriers. On the other hand, there’s been a lot of buzz (which seems mostly misguided) around the Chrome OS being used on netbooks. Recently Google premiered a netbook with a Google OS—Android. What do you think? Will Google formally unveil the Nexus One? Or do they have something else up their sleeve?

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Google to Host Android Announcement Event

Six months ago, Google launched Google City Tours. A Labs product for Google Maps, City Tours was based around pedestrian sight-seeing, with maps, walking times and sight suggestions. Now Google is continuing to edge into travel (at least pedestrian travel) with enhancements to City Tours . They’ve added more detailed directions and travel times as well as integrated better with My Maps and tweaked the UI. Interestingly, some of these were already in place in Google Maps but just recently added to City Tours: Today, we start providing complete pedestrian routing information for every step of your tour, taking road types, bridges and bodies of water into account just like a regular Google Maps walking directions search . We still try to minimise the time you spend walking and we still won’t recommend a visit to an attraction when we think it’s closed but, now, the suggested tours are a whole lot closer to reality. You can also now import your own My Maps or other public My Maps to create walking tours: create or find a My Map with the sights you want to see and City Tours will customize a walking tour with detailed directions for you. So City Tours is not bad and getting better—but is this really Google making the first steps toward Google Travel?

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Google Edging into Travel Again

Early last month, Google announced it was acquiring AdMob for $750M. The deal is still in the works, of course—in part, at least, because the FTC is taking a first and, as of last week, second look at the deal. As the FTC continues to scrutinize the search giant buying the mobile ad giant, consumer groups are taking their opportunity to have their say —and it’s not in favor of the deal. The biggest concerns of the Center for Digital Democracy and Consumer Watchdog include decreasing competition in the mobile ad market and consumer privacy. The groups say that together, Google and AdMob would control most of the mobile ad market. AdMob is already the leader in the market, thought there’s lots of competition in that area. However, with backing from the search engine, it’s possible that AdMob could come to dominate their arena just as Google pwns theirs. The second argument is based on the fact that Google and AdMob both collect considerable information about their users. Together, that information may be a threat to consumers’ privacy, with the two entities sharing everything from searching habits to location data. The groups’ full filing with the FTC is embedded below. It’s easy to understand the appeal for Google, though—with AdMob “approaching a $100M business in the next three years,” as TC puts it, this could be the way for Google to stake their claim in the emerging mobile market. CW and the CDD often make this type of filing on Google’s acquisitions, and it doesn’t always seem to have an effect. But with the FTC already taking a harder look, their word may have that much more sway with the regulators this time around. LtrFTCfinal – What do you think? How much influence will CW & the CDD have this time? Will the FTC ultimately okay the deal?

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Consumer Groups Lobby FTC to Block GoogleMob

As the great Yogi Berra once said, “It ain’t over ‘til it’s over” and the deal between Yelp and Google is the latest proof of that. In the Internet space in particular an extra dose of caution is recommended when hearing a ‘rumor’ (i.e. something that comes on ‘good authority’ and is almost a done deal) to take a step back and give the rumor a chance to breathe. Unlike a bottle of fine wine, though, rumors in this space often go south but that’s just part of the space. The latest ‘event’ that received the treatment of a lot of attention but didn’t finish as rumored was the ‘deal’ between Google and Yelp. Last week we told you of TechCrunch’s report on the imminent Google deal to purchase Yelp. Google and Yelp are in advanced acquisition negotiations, we’ve confirmed from multiple sources. And while the deal isn’t done, we’ve heard that it’s very likely to close. The price is supposedly at least $500 million. Well, TechCrunch reports that this deal has derailed and that Yelp is walking away from a significant offer. The deal was, as we wrote late last week, in the later stages of negotiation. The two companies had agreed on a price – around $550 million plus earnouts – and were working through the final details of the acquisition. Then something happened that made Yelp reconsider the deal. Over the weekend they notified Google that they were not going to sell, say multiple sources. That something must have been pretty big and pretty sudden. These negotiations take a considerable amount of time to get to the point where an anonymous source gets the itch to leak the ‘truth’ to the Internet media press. This information was leaked but apparently there were a few landmines that were not seen or not considered ‘deal breakers’. One can speculate all day long as to why this deal fell apart but we are not going down that road. In fact, until something is officially noted by either company (which may or may not happen) we’ll sit on the sidelines for now. So with everything in life and, in particular the Internet marketing industry, step on the rumor mill with your grain of salt handy. As for now let us know if this is good news that the deal fell through or were you thinking there was some good to come out of the acquisition.

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Google and Yelp a “No Go”

Google Street View began its European adventure a while ago—and it’s been met with resistance in more than a few places. Switzerland, like several other countries, was concerned that Street View wasn’t sufficiently blurring people’s faces and cars’ license plates, and that the height of the camera meant they’d see over privacy hedges and fences (which, even in the US, might constitute a breach of privacy). Today, the Swiss government tells Reuters that Google is already ready to accede to its pending ruling. The Federal Data Protection and Information Commissioner (FDPIC) Hanspeter Thuer brought the case against the street-level panoramic photo mapping service, and though it hasn’t been heard yet, Google is ready to comply. As part of this agreement, Google may continue to photograph Swiss cities, but will not put any photos online until the agreement is approved. They must also give at least a week’s notice in cities they plan to photograph. Although today’s agreement didn’t touch on this problem, Google has previously said they’re not willing to lower their cameras (though they did this in Japan, but that was for photo quality in narrower streets). A source told Reuters that a decision from the Federal Administrative Court was “unlikely” in 2010. Switzerland joins England , Germany , Greece , Japan , Australia and even America as countries with some level of backlash—be it grassroots, individual legal challenges or governmental challenges. What do you think? Will Google also give in to the height restrictions, or will they ultimately win out?

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Google to Bow to Switzerland’s Street View Wishes

Deloitte’s 2009 State of the Media Democracy report was released today. Unsurprisingly, it reports that TV has become more popular in the struggling economy (beating out other forms of entertainment). But the big news might be two of the “lesser” findings—about online recommendations and the mobile Internet. Online recommendations are becoming increasingly influential, especially compared with online advertising. Online advertising doesn’t stack up against its offline counterparts—83% of those surveyed cited TV advertising as having an impact on their buying decisions, but less than half mentioned online advertising among their top three. Even clicking through to another site has dropped from 72% to 59% over the last three years. (Only half would click more on more targeted ads, down from two-thirds last go round.) Online recommendations and reviews, on the other hand, are on the way up: Over half of all U.S. consumers and 69 percent of Millenials believe that online customer reviews and ratings influence their buying decisions more than any other type of online advertising, and 51 percent have purchased products based on an online recommendation. In fact, 24 percent of U.S. consumers would like to have an online service that recommends a product based on other consumers’ preferences. Meanwhile, the mobile Internet is making great strides in separating the Internet from the perception of a desktop. Of those surveyed, a third used their phone as “an entertainment device” and nearly half (47%) of smart phone owners say their phone is one of their three “most valuable” media/entertainment products (up from 20% last year). 48% of those surveyed have data plans, and nearly all of them (88%) are using their phones to access the Internet. (The rest are paying too much .) Shopping is already making headway on the mobile Internet—15% have purchased something on their phones. Also popular: texting, online search, downloading apps and online GPS. Clearly, both of these findings show us how the Internet is spreading not only in influence but in accessibility. What do you think? How can better you use online recommendations to your or your clients’ advantages? Are you ready for the mobile Internet?

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Online Recommendations > Advertising

Google is the master of creating demand, and it started with a single tweet: Since then, technology and gadget bloggers have been in a frenzy not seen by me since the iPhone was first announced. I’m not about to get into the many details of Google’s Nexus One phone–I’m going to take a different angle, below–but you can read all about the unlocked Android phone, here , here , and here . Oh, and here’s what it looks like: So, what’s my take on this? The media frenzy! OMG! I don’t know how much Motorola and Verizon spent trying to hype up the launch of the recent Droid phone, but that publicity doesn’t compare to what Google has accomplished over the weekend. How smart was Google? It handed out free phones to Google employees, either didn’t tell them to keep quiet about it, or actively encouraged the discussions, and let the details slowly leak out. All weekend long, I’ve seen post, after article, after post hit the web. Right about now, everyone that doesn’t own an iPhone is currently drooling over becoming a Google Nexus owner–and there are probably a few iPhone owners feeling the same way too! Perhaps Google has realized that it’s just not that good at artificially creating excitement with its own advertising . The company became the world’s #1 search engine via word of mouth. Could it own the world’s #1 cell phone the same way?

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Google’s Nexus One Phone; Like Shooting Media Fish in a Barrel