Tim Marman's Loosely Coupled

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• Looking at Google's acquisition of Postini

  Last week, Google (GOOG) purchased Postini for $625m . Jason calls this Google's most enterprisey acquisition yet - and despite all the other acquisitions, it's "the first evidence . . . that Google is ready to take the kid gloves off outside of the ad-driven model." Cote says that $625 million is not flippant , and regardless of whether you consider this a move to "directly compete" with Microsoft (MSFT), it does mean (especially when considering other efforts like Google Gears) that "Google is a threat to Microsoft". Fred, as an existing Postini customer, outlines what he'd like to see Google do with Postini . Fred focuses on mail because, let's be honest, that's what they're best known for. But as Jason suggested, I think the acquisition goes beyond this. InfoWorld coverage of the acquisition outlines this broader application. Postini provides on-demand security, archiving, and policy enforcement services, primarily for e-mail and... Posted Jul 17 2007, 11:35 AM by Tim with | with 1 comment(s) Filed under: Technology, Business, Microsoft, Google, Enterprise

• Refocusing Net Neutrality

  Awhile back, I echoed the electricity analogy : the problem is that the "telecoms are threatening to charge a premium for how the utility is used, instead of how much of it is used." Someone from the Hands Off the Internet Coalition commented on that post. Tim, the analogy is flawed and doesn't make sense. Unlike electricity, the internet and e-commerce sector is growing exponentially. It seems that the telecoms are already implementing some of Lessig's points on usage but our entire internet's infrastructure must undergo a series of major upgrades that net neutrality laws will slow down, further relegating the US the slow lane (no pun intended). Net neutrality is simply a distraction. I work with the Hands Off the Internet Coalition and I don't think we should be adding rules and regulations to fix a problem that doesn't exist. More recently, Andrew pointed to a rebuttal by David Cowan : ISPs are not public utilities; they are businesses whose owners–including individual investors and... Posted Jun 04 2007, 01:36 PM by Tim with | with 2 comment(s) Filed under: Technology, Rants, Things that bother me, Google, Video, Net Neutrality

• The real reason for Google's free 411 service

  Tim O'Reilly speculated why Google is really doing a free 411 service . In short, I'm speculating that the 1-800-GOOG-411 service is designed to harvest voice data to build Google's own speech database, rather than licensing from Nuance or another player. Charlie confirmed this at the recent Google Developer Day. Dr. Norvig said that the primary motivation behind Goog-411 is to provide something useful to Google's users, but the voice data the service collects will certainly help the company improve its voice recognition capabilities. This isn't surprising - Google has a proven track record of providing useful, free software that is ultimately a vehicle to feed the AdSense cash cow. Perhaps the more interesting question is how Google will put this speech database to work in the future. Such a database would be incredibly useful to deliver contextual AdSense for audio products. Of course, the injection process is a bit more complicated (and less dynamic) in a podcast as opposed to a web... Posted Jun 04 2007, 12:32 PM by Tim with | with no comments Filed under: Technology, Web 2.0, Google, Advertising

• How Microsoft can crush Google

  Dare points to this insightful, if nefarious, post on how Microsoft could crush Google in one easy step . I've long made the argument that Google is not a technology company, but rather an advertising / media company. Clearly, the distinction between technology and media is at least blurring. In fact, it was observed at a recent nextNY event that a lot of startups - particularly those in New York - are less about "technology" and more about employing it intelligently. Though it's unrealistic and unlikely that Microsoft would (or could) ever do this, the post recognizes a simple truth sometimes lost in this discussion: unlike Microsoft (or Apple), Google doesn't really "sell" anything. (Search appliances and Google Premier Apps aren't even on the radar). They are largely dependent on advertising, and most of their products, purchases and partnerships are about securing vehicles for that advertising. As Henry suggests, Google would be disproportionally affected by the loss of a major vehicle... Posted Apr 10 2007, 01:01 PM by Tim with | with 1 comment(s) Filed under: Technology, Business, Microsoft, Google, YouTube, Advertising, NextNY

• Google launches Google Apps Premier Edition

  As rumored yesterday , Google made a major announcement : a subscription package of premium, hosted business applications. (Man, Arrington's sources are scary good). The service combines GMail, Google Calendar, Google Talk and Google Docs & Spreadsheets for $50 per user annually. I still insist that Microsoft is well positioned to compete with a hosted version that integrates with existing Office apps. There are elements about a hosted Office that are appealing, but there are just as many that are not - particularly in publicly traded enterprises. Aside from potential downtime issues, you're placing a lot of trust in Google and its security ( which may not be the best idea ). No word on any plans for a self-hosted server like their search appliance - to me, that would be key for broader adoption and erase a lot of these security and compliance concerns. Getting back to Microsoft, I'm still puzzled that they haven't done more with Foldershare. By integrating this technology with a Office... Posted Feb 22 2007, 06:04 AM by Tim with | with 2 comment(s) Filed under: Technology, Software Development, Security, Web 2.0, Business, Microsoft, Google, Enterprise

• Google bought the brand, not the technology

  Scoble says Google bought YouTube because it "realized it couldn’t make its own video service look as cool as YouTube." As I said before, Google was buying YouTube's audience and/or employees, not the technology . After listening to the Google-YouTube conference call, it definitely sounds like Chad and Steve were a big part of the purchase. Eric Schmidt gave them very high praise, comparing them to Larry and Sergey. Though I have to wonder if Larry and Sergey were this giddy when Google went public. (Mind you, I can't fault them too much, because I probably wouldn't act too much differently if I just made that kind of money). Posted Oct 12 2006, 05:23 PM by Tim with | with no comments Filed under: Technology, Rants, Web 2.0, Business, Google, YouTube

• Google adds news archives

  Google announced today that it has "added the ability to search through more than 200 years of historical newspaper archives alongside the latest contemporary information." As with its current News service, Google will merely index the content and will not handle content delivery. They will also not charge content owners or consumers for the service. Some of the content Google will be indexing has entered the public domain, but there is still plenty of content that is still under copyright. Google has announced agreements with The New York Times and Time Magazine to provide archived content for the service, but will also include articles "indexed from the Web without formal arrangements with their publishers". If you recall, that practice prompted a lawsuit from the Angence France-Presse , alleged that the headline presented with the photo and excerpt constituted the "heart of the matter" and was thus an infringing use. While I can certainly appreciate the merits of AFP's argument, I do... Posted Sep 06 2006, 05:52 AM by Tim with | with no comments Filed under: Technology, Intellectual Property, Copyright, Google

• Google launching Adsense for Radio

  Google has launched Adsense for Radio through its dMarc acquisition. They are already running ads on a Detroit radio station plan to make the service "generally available" within the next three months. Google also announced a deal with XM Satellite Radio today to automatically insert ads on non-music channels. Google Adsense has been so successful not because of the big name sites but because of what Chris Anderson would call the Long Tail of Advertising. I know that many podcast producers are still trying to figure out how exactly to monetize the podcasts and subsidize bandwidth costs. Google Adsense would do for podcasts what it did for the web - enable an entirely new market of small-time, "long-tail" producers in niche markets. Of course, it's not quite as easy with podcasts as they are generally downloaded as opposed to streamed. This raises real logistical problems when trying to figure out when and where ad insertion happens and how to accurately track the... Posted Aug 02 2006, 12:45 PM by Tim with | with no comments Filed under: Technology, Web 2.0, Google