I just read, a day or two late, that Microsoft bought aQuantive for $6bn! If Google paid $3.1 for DoubleClick and MS paid nearly 2x that for the #2 firm, then I wonder if Yahoo’s going to view its purchase of Right Media for $680m as enough.

Also, I remember reading about WPP buying up 24/7 Real Media earlier this week and wondering why the big agency groups (WPP, Omnicom, Interpublic, Publicis) hadn’t been more active in this climate.

I’m not fully up to speed on what’s been happening the last few days, so if anyone can summarise, please comment. Thanks.

I can’t even begin to analyse the ramifications of this happening! Reports I’ve read say that the two companies are talking and it’s a deal that could be worth about $50 billion.

There’s a part of me that really wants this to happen, but not because it’ll stick it to Google. Quite the opposite actually. I posted before about how it’s currently hard to root for Google because they’re growing so rapidly and seem impossible to stop.

A deal like this would surely put them on the back foot for a while and, in my eyes, make them an underdog again. I like rooting for the underdog.

Technorati Tags: yahoo, microsoft, google, merger, buyout, acquisition

Google’s really going fast and hard at my data. I just searched for something at Google.com and noticed some new “features” they’re offering which I found really disturbing, namely Web History. It aims to make your Internet activity much easier to track and manage. It aims to make your searches more accurate and relevant. It aims to give you some insight about your online habits.

It aims to do all of this using the data that you allow it to collect from you. You and millions of other people.

To you, you’re just one person and you can see how the service is great and will help you. To Google, you’re one tiny bit of a huge amount of data that’s going to help them pretty much figure out how people behave online. That information will, in turn, allow them to release new apps, improve their advertising and search algorithms and, essentially, make more money and be more dominant.

All of this makes me a little uncomfortable. My resentment towards Google seems to grow a little bit every day because of how pervasive its tools have become. I continue to use their search engine. I have a GMail account, though it only exists to collect AdAge newsletters. I flirted with Google Analytics. I use Google Browser Sync. I’ve made some serious money off Adsense. And as I write this paragraph, I realise how long this list is and how reliant I have become on this company. Again, all of this makes me a little uncomfortable.

The funny thing is that I don’t really know why it’s bothering me so much. I have no problem with Microsoft’s dominance. I, in fact, champion MS when people slam it. I don’t really worry about privacy to the degree that most people in the West do.

Because I can’t put my finger on the source of my irritation, I can only conjecture that it stems from the fact that Google has become a massive company. It’s not only the really good company that did search well and was vying to kick Yahoo’s ass, but it’s now a company that is kicking everyone’s ass.

It’s not the nerdy underdog anymore. It’s morphed in to the cool guy, the school yard bully. And no one likes the cool guy or the bully.

I can’t root for Google anymore. I don’t get surprised by new stuff it puts out. Rather, I look for problems — stuff that I can complain about.

That’s how this post started out. I read about Web History and immediately thought, “Damn, they want more of my data.” I didn’t bother to see what it offered me, how it could make things easier for me, how it could make search better for me.

I don’t think my complaints, or those that others are voicing, are invalid. They’re legitimate issues and concerns. And I think that it’s hard these days to like Google. No matter what it does.

Technorati Tags: google, invasion, privacy, data mining, doubleclick

Okay, calling it a monopoly is a bit of a stretch, but one has to wonder what this acquisition binge of Google’s is going to end up doing to the competition. DoubleClick and Google were the two largest online ad distributors and they’re one entity now (at a cost of $3.1bn to Google, in case you’ve been in a cave the last few days).

How big a deal is that? AOL’s a good example of the dominance — about 75% of its ad revenue will now involve DoubleClick and Google. That’s got to be a little disconcerting for AOL and others in the same situation.

A bigger concern comes from everyone else who’s in the same (ad placement) game, because Google’s not going to stop with its attempt to corner the online space. Hell, they just announced the deal with Clear Channel today which, coupled with the purchase of dMarc Broadcasting ($1.24bn) last year, shows that they’re crossing over in to other mediums pretty aggressively.

How do you compete with it? How do you even stay relevant? And what do you do when Google uses its might to start doing other things? They paid a ton of cash ($1.65bn) for YouTube and that’s got to be about more than just ad dollars.

Microsoft is whining about the DoubleClick deal being unfair (ironic and a lot of sour grapes, given that they were trying to buy DC as well). AT&T is getting its panties in a bunch as well. They’ve got their IPTV stuff to feel protective about and I suppose there’s a little of “We got broken up, so others should too” going through there minds.

I’m not sure anyone outside of the Googleplex is happy about this, except maybe aQuantive, who’s share price shot up 12 percent after the announcement.

Technorati Tags: google, doubleclick, att, microsoft, monopoly, advertising, adsense

It sucks when you know, in advance, that you’re going to miss the boat on what seems like really cool technology.

I’ve been reading about Joost for a while now, watching various sites to see how things play out. How it may end up stealing a ton of buzz away from YouTube, simply because the media often likes to play them off each other, even though they seem to have little in common.

But I can’t get over the fact that this is another cool thing that we, in this part of the Third World, are going to be bystanders on. It’ll come, get talked up like crazy to the point where everyone will want to use it — and we won’t have the bandwidth to see what all the hype is about!

I recall reading somewhere that the folks at Joost are saying that it’s going to require a 512kbps connection, at least, and we’re a few years away from that being a “standard’ speed — 128kbps is the norm right now.

Just like it is right now with YouTube — we Pakistanis click play and then pause, go away, wait for the damn thing to cache in the background and then come back in 10 minutes to watch that 30 second clip which, most of the time, proves to be underwhelming.

From the Joost blog: The software downloads about 320MB per hour (as a maximum) and uploads up to 105 MB per hour. The more popular the content is on our platform, the more sources it can be pulled from and the less redundant data we send; that number can be as low as 220MB per hour of viewing.

From what I’ve deduced so far, and the service is no longer shrouded in mystery, so I may just be a little thick, but it’s basically TV-on-Demand on your computer.

They’re signing up content distribution deals steadily, with the Viacom agreement being the biggest noisemaker thus far, so there will be some mainstream stuff to start with, but I imagine that the Joost early adopters will use it for the more obscure shows, since they’re probably all well-versed with BitTorrent and know how to download the latest episode of CSI.

Though I imagine this will evolve pretty quickly, I came across a channel listing at Wikipedia.

The technology works a little like BitTorrent, in that the shows are initially distributed by Joost, but the bandwidth burden quickly gets passed on to users who have already downloaded and watched them, thereby minimising the need for massive server farms at Joost’s end. These are the guys behind Kazaa and Skype after all — they know you don’t use most of your upstream bandwidth, so they’ll use it for you!

It all appears to be really cool in its implementation (full screen, good quality, nice interface, extensible via widgets) and the offering is compelling for people like me who already use their PC for a lot of video entertainment.

TV viewing is a habit and people want to do it sitting in their lounges in front of their big TVs, not at their computer. I wonder how watching CSI on your PC will prove to be a attractive proposition in the short run, because if Joost doesn’t gain traction quickly, it’ll probably be surpassed by something that does it quicker, better, more convenient, etc.

Basically, the key to this thing succeeding will be the variety and quality of content and whether that will be enough of a pull to get users to change their viewing habits and locations.

Technorati Tags: Joost, TV, Television, YouTube, Skype, BitTorrent, Karachi, Pakistan