Digital Discourse / Archives for google

IIS Breakthrough Recap: Titans of the New Information Order Chasing Each Other

February 5, 2013 By

Written by Deborah Richman, Consultant, Zions Bank

Deborah Richman, Consultant, Zions Bank

What do titans like Apple, Amazon, Facebook, Google, Microsoft and possibly Twitter have in common? Of course, they offer platforms where users access and share content. As titans, they also aspire to become each other – while currently delivering different value from their platforms.

During the Information Industry Summit, key publisher and digital leaders offered clear-eyed views of these companies and their intrinsic rather than market value. “There are more interesting things than making a ton of money in the last quarter,” declared Esther Dyson, EDVentures principal.

The titans were not getting judged by form factors, such as the computing, mobile or operating systems. While that’s important to the companies and shareholders, the IIS leaders focused on how titans should improve their connections to users.

Sell people a mirror

Most of the titans know they should personalize their offerings and “show you what you didn’t know you wanted to know,” said David Kirkpatrick, Senior Technology & Internet Editor at Fortune. It comes down to algorithms based on their platforms.

Of course, Facebook leads in capturing social connections and friend links. Google is trying to keep up through its own G+ social circle. Yet they are challenged by defining relevant content. Friend or content sources may be throttled or controlled through personalized Facebook feeds or Google search results.

Will the titans succeed in selling mirrors? Will these mirrors show relevant content and connections? Esther Dyson wondered “how far these companies can go before they start annoying their customers.”

Use commercial insights

Google, Apple and Amazon bring powerful, highly-scaled advantages due to their search, shopping and/or buying functions. Google’s search and online advertising hegemony not only creates value for consumers and businesses, but also keeps those shopping behaviors tight to its vest.

Meanwhile, Apple and Amazon bring their own online retailing powers. Apple makes so-called razor sales, offering media and other apps through its operating system. Amazon makes money from its blade sales, along with enterprise efforts. It will be interesting to see how these titans take further advantage of their “big data” capabilities regarding buyers, products and services, and credit cards.

Future of the titans

All the titans grew with their founders at the helm. While some, like Apple and Microsoft, have next generations in charge, Amazon, Facebook and Google are run by their founder entrepreneurs.

Dyson voiced her concerns about the titans’ abilities, explaining “they’re all really badly managed inside.” By contrast, Forbes CEO Michael Perlis felt the titans would continue “making each other better. They all have aspirations to [become] each other.”

Thomas Glocer, ex-Thomson Reuters, wasn’t sure how the titans would work together or with other content providers in the future. He asked, “who’s in front, behind, the Trojan horse?”

Impact on publishers

Perlis, from Forbes, explained that consumers aren’t that interested in who wins. As a publisher, he has different content distribution or advertising relationships with all the titans. “We have experienced collapse, avoided relapse [and] don’t relax. You can’t just coast,” he cautioned.

Glocer shared his concern about living “in a world at multiple speeds including repressive regimes, and platforms. I do worry about the lowest common denominator where the platforms [have] content geared for wherever.”

“Everyone will have to constantly re-evaluate paths,” said Fortune’s Kirkpatrick. “The pace of change requires every [publishing] company to think of themselves like a software company. Be unbelievably curious and not afraid.”

_______________________________________________________________________________
Debby Richman spent her formative years at D&B, leading the reference business from print to online and web offerings. She has since held digital leadership roles at Overstock, About.com, Looksmart, Starz, Collarity and Zions Bank.

 

Share|
Filed Under: Content, Information Industry Summit Tagged With: , , , , , , , ,

Google in the Middle

September 18, 2012 By

A U.S. ambassador is killed in a consulate in Libya, along with three other Americans. Anti-US riots spread throughout the Middle East.  At the heart of the unrest is a short anti-Islamic video posted on YouTube.

What should YouTube’s parent company, Google, do? It cannot review videos before the fact, because there are too many of them, and because its system of user-generated content is designed to allow a broader range of expression than the old broadcaster/newspaper model of strict editorial control.

But Google has an elaborate system of review after the fact. After its review of the anti-Islamic video, it made a judgment that the video “is clearly within our guidelines and so will stay on YouTube.  However, given the very difficult situation in Libya and Egypt we have temporarily restricted access in both countries.”

YouTube blocked access in others such as India and Indonesia because it is localized in those countries and received a valid court order or official government notification that the video violated local law.  Other countries including apparently Afghanistan blocked access to all of YouTube pending the removal of the video.

The U.S. government asked Google to review its decision to keep the video up, but Google repeated its judgment that the video was within its community guidelines.

The issues here are complex and muddied.  Jonathan Zittrain got it right when he dismisses those who think this is a “no-brainer.” What is clear is that Google is in the middle.  They have a responsibility to act in the face of this complex mixture of speech that is offensive to some, and yet appears not to violate its community guidelines.

So Google did the right thing by acting. In our system it is their decision, and that’s the way it should be. It has stepped up to its responsibility by crafting a balanced, reasonable response to this challenging situation.

Mark MacCarthy, Vice President, Public Policy at SIIA, directs SIIA’s public policy initiatives in the areas of intellectual property enforcement, information privacy, cybersecurity, cloud computing and the promotion of educational technology. Follow the SIIA Public Policy team on Twitter at @SIIAPolicy

Share|
Filed Under: Policy Tagged With: ,

Google, Oracle Execs & Pulitzer Prize Finalist Nick Carr to Keynote All About the Cloud

April 19, 2012 By

Executives from Google Enterprise and Oracle, along with Pulitzer Prize finalist Nick Carr, a columnist and celebrated author of “The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains,” have been announced as keynote speakers for the 2012 All About the Cloud conference. The seventh annual event will take place May 8-10 at San Francisco’s Palace Hotel.

All About the Cloud is the software industry’s most comprehensive ISV conference on cloud computing and is presented by the Software and Information Industry Association (SIIA)—the principal trade association for the software and digital content industries—in partnership with OpSource, a Dimension Data Company—the leader in enterprise cloud and managed hosting.

This year’s conference will focus on a range of emerging trends and critical issues—including mobile, security and compliance, big data, and more. Through keynote speeches, panels and product demonstrations, the event will explore how the cloud is revolutionizing the way software is developed, consumed and delivered.

Keynote speakers include:

• Chris Baker—Senior Vice President, Global ISV/OEM Sales for Oracle Corporation
• Nick Carr—Author of “The Big Switch” & “The Shallows” and Columnist for the Guardian
• Michael Lock—Vice President, Americas for Google Enterprise

Rhianna Collier is VP for the Software Division at SIIA.

Share|
Filed Under: All About the Cloud, Cloud Computing, Events, Software, Software Events Tagged With: , ,

This week’s IP enforcement headlines

March 23, 2011 By

Google Counters Ads for Counterfeit Goods (Information Week)
Google announced in the second half of 2010 it shut down 50,000 accounts for advertising counterfeit goods, and will continue to take additional steps to combat advertising of counterfeit goods through its advertising programs.

Chinese Writers Slam Baidu for Copyright Infringement (Reuters)
China’s top search engine, Baidu Inc., is being accused of copyright infringement by a group of Chinese authors who claim the search engine allows users to post their works online without their consent.

Some More Bad News for Copyright-Enforcer Righthaven (Paid Content))
Righthaven loses a second fair use ruling in a lawsuit against an Oregon non-profit in which U.S. District Judge James Mahan ruled the non-profit’s posting of a full copy of a news article from the Las Vegas Review-Journal was “fair use.”

Court Rejects Google Books Settlement (CNET)
A New York federal district court has rejected a controversial settlement in a class-action lawsuit brought against Google Books by the Authors Guild, in which Google was granted the right to continue a six-year book-scanning project.

Time Warner Cable may be getting itself into a licensing dispute with content providers over its new iPad app, which allows subscribers to view live television channels via the iPad. (PC Mag)
Does Time Warner Cable iPad App Violate its Content Licensing Deals?

Trademark Battles Over “App Store” Continue, as Apple Sues Amazon (Paid Content)
Apple sues Amazon over the use of the phrase “App Store,” which it sees as its trademark and not just a common descriptor.



Share|
Filed Under: Anti-Piracy, Policy, Policy - Intellectual Property Tagged With: , , ,

Judge strikes down agreement between Google and publishers

March 23, 2011 By

It was a relatively slow news week for intellectual property. Perhaps that’s why Judge Denny Chen chose to issue his long-awaited decision in the copyright infringement case brought by book publishers against Google.

The publishers and Google had okayed a proposed agreement that would settle the suit, but the proposed settlement hit many bumps on the road. It had been revised substantially, and the final obstacle was the approval of Judge Chen of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York.

This obstacle proved to be insurmountable as Judge Chen issued a decision on Tuesday rejecting the proposed settlement when he concluded that it was not fair, adequate, or reasonable. The judge found that the settlement would grant Google both “significant rights to exploit entire books, without permission from copyright owners” and “a significant advantage over competitors, rewarding it for engaging in wholesale copying of copyrighted works without permission, while releasing claims well beyond those presented in the case.”

He suggested that the proposed agreement might be acceptable if it was based on a system that allowed copyright owners to “opt in” to the settlement instead of the present “opt out” approach. In sum, although Judge Chen recognized that the digitization of books and the creation of a universal digital library are beneficial, he concluded that the proposed settlement went too far.

Share|
Filed Under: Anti-Piracy, Content, Copyright, Policy, Policy - Intellectual Property Tagged With: ,

Online subscription models: Will new Apple and Google plans woo publishers?

February 21, 2011 By

For those interested in selling premium electronic content, the week of Valentine’s Day this year was filled with hearts, flowers and, potentially, some candy boxes with pieces already missing. Recent back-to-back announcements by Apple and Google unveiled plans to support premium subscription sales, leaving many publishers surprised, puzzled and a little stressed out as to how to react to these offerings. Should they give these new plans a fat, wet kiss, blow kisses from afar, or send them back with a note saying “address unknown?” By week’s end, many publishers were still searching for the right reactions.

The problem that content publishers face with these plans is that they are in some ways quite radically different, both in their structure and their implications. The opportunities and stark choices that publishers face now are underscored most by Apple’s announcement of their subscription plan. Used so far only by Rupert Murdoch’s The Daily news app for Apple’s iPad and announced with no apparent preview to major media companies, the new Apple subscription plan seems to have been received by most publishers with a hushed surprise.

At its core the Apple plan is fairly simple, but not necessarily easy for media companies to stomach. Apple will take a 30 percent cut of all subscription revenues generated by sales through their iTunes app store, though publishers selling subscriptions through their own e-commerce services may sell apps and take 100 percent of the subscription revenues. However, if they do sell their subscriptions for apps outside of Apple’s e-commerce facilities, publishers must use their own technology to validate the subscription on Apple platforms. Moreover, from within a subscription-supported Apple app a publisher may not link to other content or offers outside of the app, and the pricing for the Apple subscription must be no more than any other subscription offer outside of the Apple e-commerce stores.

The economics of the Apple plan are restrictive enough in many ways, but even should publishers opt in to all of these requirements, there’s no guarantee that they’ll know who their subscribers are. Apple will release information about apps users obtaining content via a subscription only if they opt in to share it with them. For magazine publishers used to being able to share demographics with advertisers and marketers as one of the core of their marketing efforts, that tends to put a rather large chink in their typical expectations for media sales. [Read more...]

Share|
Filed Under: Content Tagged With: , , ,

Top 10 predictions for 2011 from futurist Mark Anderson

January 19, 2011 By

Mark Anderson, noted technology visionary and futurist, gives his top ten predictions for 2011. Anderson will be speaking at SIIA’s Information Industry Summit next week in New York. He will also be chairing the ninth annual Future in Review (FiRe) conference, May 24-27 at the Montage Laguna Beach, CA.

  1. The Smartphone Market Breaks in Two: Secure / enterprise, vs. consumer / entertainment. a) Android dominates – and balkanizes – the consumer Smartphone Market, with Apple close behind offering its Monolithic Operations. b) RIM and XX dominate the Enterprise. XX should be Microsoft, but Apple gets it.
  2. Carriers Grab Power: Google has interrupted a transition of power from Pipes to Boxes. Android gives carriers power, while the iOS takes it away. Whose walled garden do you prefer? Pray for Apple, if you are a user.
  3. iTunes Seeds Its Own Competition: More real distribution competitors grow and prosper. Consumers want choice. This is a major business opportunity, on a global scale. [Read more...]
Share|
Filed Under: Content Tagged With: , , , , ,