Aqute Intelligence: Google

AdWords UK: call a local number

The UK AdWords login page now features a local rate telephone number for new advertiser signups. I have not seen this before, so I guess it must be new. A shift away from self service, even though Google has not been purely self service for years.

Google China presentation

A couple of highlights from Google's recent presentation in China:

 


I know these statistics don't mean much in practical terms, but Xu Jing Lei has 238M readers!

Google Zeitgeist Europe: video roundup

• The World in Data, Hans Rosling.
• Opening Keynote.
• HRH Prince of Asturias, The Crown Prince of Spain.
• Staying the Course: Part I.
• Staying the Course: Part II.
• Dignity in Development.
• Itay Talgam.
• Realising Responsibility.
• Reinventing Media.
• Combining Tradition with Technology, Chief Almir Surui.
• "A World View Fit for the 21st Century" - HRH The Prince of Wales.
• Collaborative Creativity.
• New Frontiers.
• Citizen Politics.
• Closing Reflections, Nikesh Arora.
• Conference Opening & The Road Ahead.
• Perspective from Google.

Marketing Donut: not very Googley

Google and Royal Mail have launched Marketing Donut, a marketing website for small businesses. It is the kind of website that you would expect from Royal Mail, which has done little online that is worth mentioning.

But it is a mediocre website by Google's standards, and undermines Google's sales proposition. Google's success with businesses comes from making money for them, not from more intangible services such as marketing. Small businesses want sales much more than they want research, or customer service, or prodcutivity. Google has long been consistent in positioning itself as a sales generator. Schmidt has said that AdWords budgets should come from sales departments, not marketing departments. Marketing Donut, however, is merely a collection of 'helpful tips' about advertising, customer care, market research and other soft business topics.

The main sales section includes banalities such as "Sales bring in the money that enables your business to survive and grow - they are vital elements of marketing". The sales generation section is almost the opposite of what Google should be advocating: "Simple lead generation usually starts with desk research and you might find sales leads in directories (on- and offline), or by buying a targeted mailing list".

The main advertising section states:

There are several ways to advertise on the internet. You can pay for website advertising with a price based on the number of times the ad is displayed. So the more viewers see your ad (or at least the page on which your ad is shown) the more you pay. This simple form of payment might suit you if the aim of your internet advertising is to build brand exposure. It's often referred to as CPM - cost per thousand (with M being the roman numeral for 1,000). 

Other alternatives take advantage of the interactive nature of the internet. If you advertise online with the aim of increasing website traffic, then pay per click advertising (PPC) is ideal. You only pay for the viewers who actually click on the ad and come to your site. 

Taking this a step further, sometimes advertising on the internet is charged for on a cost per action (CPA) basis. For example, you might be able to negotiate an agreement where you only pay for the number of viewers who actually buy your product as the result of an ad. This kind of payment scheme requires a close relationship with the website where your ad is published, and is typically part of an affiliate marketing relationship.

Perhaps Google decided to stand back and allow a neutral point of view in the writing. But "If you advertise online with the aim of increasing website traffic, then pay per click advertising (PPC) is ideal" undermines the whole point of AdWords. AdWords is meant to generate sales, not traffic. True, that often does not happen, and Google's rejection of CPA emphasises the fact, but Google should be the last company to admit that.

Google's informal relations with WPP's Mindshare

Google takes the cup at the Inaugural Google AU vs. Mindshare Table Tennis Championship. One of the informal ways in which Google manages agency relationships. Mindshare is part of WPP.

Lars Bak, Chrome developer

This article from the FT is a good profile of Lars Bak, the man who wrote Chrome (as far as such a publicity-shy man can be profiled):

“Virtual machines are a strange beast,” says Bak. “There’s no perfect solution, instead you optimise for the ‘sweet spot’. There’s a lot of craftsmanship. It’s a long game, you can’t burn out.

“There’s a constant workload,” he adds, “so I always stop for dinner. You can have a normal life.” For Bak this means family and privacy. The issue of work/life balance crops up again and again in conversation – and though he’s not anti-American, he clearly prefers the Danish way of life. “In the US, there is an aggressiveness, the extra level of belief in yourself that is needed. The European way is less aggressive. But in the US, you can get promoted and stay in touch with the technical side. In Europe, you turn into a paper manager. It’s hard to get your fingers dirty.” By working in Denmark for Google, Bak was aiming for the best of both worlds.

Chrome was a major product whose existence was long suspected, was much hoped for by many people, and much dreaded by many others. Google deserves credit for ensuring that Chrome remained a secret until its launch, and the type of person that Lars Bak is played a part in that.

Google's ChercheNet announcement: way old news

Google France blogged about ChercheNet. But aside from some minor details, the initiative is actually two years old. It is part of a broader set of initiatives including Google and Calysto. There is some interesting commentary on this French blog. Nothing much very exciting can be happening in Google France if they blog about old initiatives that have made little progress.

Google Book Search and the Bodleian Library

Google has finished digitising a major chunk of Bodleian Library books. This has been a low profile announcement. With Google facing revenue pressures, monopoly issues, redundancies, privacy problems and perhaps losing some of its magic among some people, it is easy to forget how amazing a feat it is to have one of the world's best libraries digitised. And in an age when we are inundated with millions of snippets of banal information, it is amazing that we take such an important corpus of knowledge for granted. I am as aware as anyone of the harsh side of Google, but in this case, I can only say thank you.

20% of Google's traffic comes browser search bar (in France)

This is interesting data on how much of each search engine's traffic comes from "search bar". It is not clear what that means, but seems to be everything except the search engine's website. One caveat though, which has not been pointed out elsewhere: this is data for France (hence the prominence of Orange, Alice, Free) etc.

Sexist reactions to Google's new Latin American boss?

Two of the headlines welcoming Adriana Noreña, the new boss of Google for Argentina, Chile and Colombia:

• Google Argentina with the scent of a woman.
• A woman now leads Google Argentina.

The articles are both complimentary of Noreña. It just struck me that Noreña being a woman is worthy of the headlines. Other local female CEOs mentioned include Sandra Yachelini, head of Microsoft and Analia Remedi, head of HP. At the same time, a study from Grant Thornton International shows that 47% of companies in Arentina have no women in managerial roles.

Google's submission to New Zealand ISP code of practice

Here is Google's submission to the ISP Code of Practice consultation in New Zealand. Some excerpts:

Copyright’s core goal is to benefit the public by providing adequate incentives for the creation
and dissemination of creative works.

Google is proactive in informing its users about copyright and infringing content online, while
also working to assist rights holders in protecting and exploiting their copyright online.

Google believes that section 92A threatens to effectively reverse the burden of proof onto a user
to establish that there was no infringement of copyright, which may put user’s fundamental rights
at risk. It also threatens to put substantial burdens on ISPs based on enforcement of such
policies. This outcome may negatively affect innovation and deter users from creative expression
on the Internet.

Recommendation: Because it has the potential to be viewed as a default industry standard, the Draft Code should clarify and confirm that there may be a variety of ISP termination policies that meet the requirements of section 92A.

Recommendation: Clarify the concept of ‘user education’ to include information about users’ rights, as well as limitations and exceptions that enable lawful use of copyrighted materials.

Luxury in a recession: Google Street View splashes out

The/a Google Street View car in Ireland.

Via SiliconRepublic.

Google Asia: not so strong

The Google Operating System blog has put together an interesting list of Google's market share in various countries.

The broad trend is that Google is weak in Asia. Not that Sukhinder Cassidy has much of a role in driving Google's search market share in Asia, but it is unlikely to do her any favours in getting Armstrong's job.

New Android team in Taiwan: why?

Google is setting up an Android development team in Taiwan, ostensibly because HTC is based in Taiwan. So is Asus, which can't do any harm to the possibility of Android on netbooks. But the myriad of handset manufacturers who must surely be clamouring to develop Android handsets (how else will Android overtake the iPhone by 2012?) may feel left out.

And to what extent did Google base this team in Taiwan because that is where the best mobile talent was? Google's expansion in London was supposed to be attracting the world's best mobile developers (even if that was for mobile as opposed to Android). Of course, good mobile developers can exist in both countries, but the Taiwan recruitment (particularly if it is anything more than a support team for HTC) may make the London developers feel that little bit unloved.

Google product roadmap: multilanguage ecommerce

Google wrote last week about enabling ecommerce websites to deal cross-border with automatic translation. From some parts of Google, including product management, this could be little more than a long-held pipe dream. However, the comments came from the public policy team, who have a lot of clout, and who have taken the time to talk about a little-mentioned goal, when they are already busy with privacy, political party lobbying, anti-Microsoft campaigns, promoting hosted services, discussing spectrum issues and so on. The European public policy team has continued to hire in Europe even as the rest of Google's recruitment has ground to a halt, and cross-border ecommerce seems to be one of its new projects.

Automatic ecommerce website translation is still years away, but should be added to any long-term Google product roadmap monitoring. The comments also serve as a reminder that the original purpose behind hiring machine translation genius Franz Och, that of replicating all web content across all languages, remains valid

Google supports Telecom Italia's Working Capital project for startups

Google is supporting the new Working Capital project from Telecom Italia, which will fund and support startups in Italy. Google has allowed Telecom Italia to use Google's brand aesthetics and to use the Google story (Larry, Sergey, Stanford) as inspiration for Italian startups. Google wrote about the campaign in its own blog.

Google runs coordinated PR for YouTube Orchestra

The selection of YouTube Orchestra members from around the world has been supported by a global PR campaign which I think is a first for Google. Versions of the same story ("local man chosen for YouTube Orchestra") have appeared in countries around the world (for example Poland, China, Bermuda, the UK, Australia, the Netherlands, Canada, Colombia, Spain, Mexico and South Korea) and at a local level in the US (for example Washington, Kansas, Minnesota, Ohio, South Dakota and Oregon).

This is unlikely to be a coincidence - instead it represents a well synchronized effort from Google.

Google still trounced by Naver in South Korea

The Economist has written about Google in Asia, something that gets little attention normally (the same applies to Yahoo! in Asia). Naver beats Google in South Korea by at least the same margin as Google beats Microsoft in the US, so we should apply to the same level of expectation to Google's chances of success in South Korea as we do Microsoft's in the US. Like Microsoft, Google has been trying for a long time, through innovation, copying and most recently acquisition, to gain market share, and has failed.
Incidentally, Naver's plans to expand to the US are a non-event. Not only is the Asia-to-US transition always difficult, but NHN tried a similar thing in 2005 and failed. The mediocre performance of Yahoo! Answers also suggests that Naver's answers service would not resonate in the US.