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Sheryl Sandberg is a top Googler no more. Now, Sandberg has the good (she hopes) fortune of being Mark Zuckerberg’s right hand woman.
While the media world hails how Sandberg can apply her Googley AdWords and AdSense knowledge to build out a ”new kind of advertising network,” a Facebook kind, the real Googley transference to Facebook will be much more powerful, pervasive and, in good Google fashion, scary.
Why does Zuckerberg really want Sandberg close at hand? The still wet around the ears Facebook CEO is emphatic, about his global domination mission:
“Sheryl understands Facebook’s goal of connecting everyone in the world and is passionate about building a business that will enable us to realize this mission.”
So there Google, YOUR global domination mission to “organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible” is SO yesterday, for Sheryl Sandberg!
Why the whole world ought to beware, of Facebook AND Google:
The REAL Google (and Facebook) Nightmares: Eternal Data Traps and
Facebook Davos PR Blitz: Beware Scoble Hype, Users Still at BIG Risk and
2008 Social Media Warning: Beware Google AND Facebook
ALSO: Spot Runner Ad Agency: Google Sans $139 billion Search Engine?
PLUS: SILICON ALLEY TECH PARTY
Are Google CEO Eric Schmidt’s ears ringing? After all, Spot Runner CEO Nick Grouf is borowing his Googley one-stop online advertising agency lines!
Grouf announces SpotRunner’s acquisition of SEM firm Weblsitic:
“This acquisition further strengthens our leadership position as the comprehensive resource for the full spectrum of local businesses’ advertising needs. Our objective is to help businesses drive awareness and attract new customers through multiple media channels, in an integrated manner, and online advertising is a top priority for us and for our clients.”
The SotRunner goal is to offer a “complete solution”: ”including media planning and buying for TV, radio and online,” because, Spot Runner assures:
TV and Internet advertising, when utilized together, have proven to be a particularly effective combination. According to Jupiter Research, TV advertising is the number one impetus for people to search for a particular company or product online, surpassing all other forms of advertising.
Remember when the Googler-In-Chief’s favorite fantasy was a multi-million dollar “complete solution” one:
The long-term fantasy is we walk up to you and you give us, say $10 million and we’ll completely allocate it for you across different media and ad types.
Long-term is apparently VERY long-term, though, as Google’s billions remain steadfastly 99% “traditional” AdWords and AdSense pure, as I steadfastly report:
SEE Google CEO In-Car Radio Ad Vision Fading and
Google TV Ads Auction: NO AdWords Buyer’s Remorse and
Google Execs Silent On NYC Print, Radio, TV Promises and
MySpace To Google: Learn How To Sell Advertising, OMMA Report and
MySpace To Google (Round 2): Text Clicks Do NOT Rule! VideoEgg Report and
The Web Economy Rejoices: Google IS Overrated and Due For BIGGER Fall!
If Google is not easily able to achieve one-stop online ad agency domination, does SpotRunner have a realistic shot? Unlikely.
Google has ONE very big advantage over SpotRunner, a $139 billion dollar one: Google owns the number one search engine inventory SpotRunner needs to resell! Reseller status is NOT a winning ad sales formula, just ask Google: Google Radio, Google Print, Google TV, Google MySpace…
Nevertheless, Ketan Shah, CEO of Weblistic, confirms his “passion” for “making online advertising easy and turnkey for small and medium-sized businesses.”
Unfortunately for new coproprate parent Spot Runner, however, local passion is hard to monetize.
MORE: Spot Runner Sells For Rival Google: Local SEM Bandwagon Grows and Local Video Ads Battle: YellowPages.com Taps TurnHere, Spot Runner Gets 1200 TV Producers
PLUS: Yellow Pages Get Reprieve? The Myth of King Google Local Advertising ROI and
Reach Local Advertising? How Google Squeezes SEMs and AdWords Buyers and
Local Ad Sales War: Why Google is a Guaranteed Winner and
Google AdWords Plus Box: Local CPC Bidding War Unleashed! and
Google Apps & Maps: Enterprise and Local Business STILL Missing and
Local Advertising Online: SMEs Hold the Billion Dollar Keys, ILM ANALYSIS
Microsoft expands in the cloud.
The Google brand was built off of free lunches. Nevertheless, contrary to conventional blogosphere wisdom, Google is NOT “eating Microsoft’s lunch” in the enterprise cloud.
Google Apps is, literally, a joke in the enterprise, as I reported first hand from the Enterprise Search Summit one year ago and reiterate with each and every not so shock and awe Googley move that responds to serious, proprietary, secure enterprise computing needs with sophmoric, entry-level, shared software devoid of serious functionality and mocking of enterprise-class security and privacy.
Google Sites is but the latest laughable attempt at a Googley consumerization of the enterprise. While geeks gone wild was the tech early adopter blogosphere embrace of a cutesy, template-driven free, Google online Web site service, I underscored how any enterprise foolish enough to use Google Sites, would end up getting what it paid for: NOTHING!
SEE: Why Google Sites Is BAD Business: ‘Til Death Do Us Part’?
Microsoft announces today:
the company will offer Microsoft Online Services to businesses of all sizes. This announcement marks a significant step for Microsoft toward expanding its software plus services strategy.
Geeks are NOT going wild, however, egging Microsoft on for a (food) fight mano a mano with Google solely in the cloud. Will a day ever come that software WILL solely be delivered in the cloud? Unlikley. Microsoft is laying a foundation for a rational, online-offline, complementary enterprise exploitation of software assets.
The stand alone, free Google cloud is NOT enterprise friendly. The stark reality of Google Terms Of Service:
You agree that Google has no responsibility or liability for the deletion or failure to store any Content and other communications maintained or transmitted by Google services. You acknowledge that Google may have set no fixed upper limit on the number of transmissions you may send or receive through Google services or the amount of storage space used; however, we retain the right, at our sole discretion, to create limits at any time with or without notice.
Google reserves the right at any time and from time to time to modify or discontinue, temporarily or permanently, Google services (or any part thereof) with or without notice. You agree that Google shall not be liable to you or to any third party for any modification, suspension or discontinuance of Google services.
The Microsoft BETA Terms Of Service acknowledge the offline reality of serious business:
You are responsible for maintaining and backing up your data that you create, use and store with the service. You are responsible for ensuring that you maintain your primary means of business.
If a business relies on the free Google cloud to maintain its primary means of business, it risks being out of business!
MORE ON THE VERY RISKY GOOGLE “ENTERPRISE”:
There Is NO Google Apps Love in the Enterprise and
Postini: Will Google REALLY Mean Enterprise Apps Business? and
Google Chokes with Postini: Billion Dollar Office Apps Giveaway and
TINY Google Web Services Lag BIG Microsoft Business and
Google Confirms: Enterprise Apps is NO Microsoft Office Killer and
Schmidt to Ballmer: Stop Stealing MY Office Collaboration Lines! and
Microsoft Office Thunder to Blast Google Apps Cloud and
IBM Confirms: Google Poses NO Enterprise Threat
Poor CNET? The latest woe of the vintage online property: A staff writer ”reports” being jilted at a cross-country media altar by Google CEO Eric Schmidt, even while acknowledging the “absurdity of flying 2,500 miles to interview a guy who works about 40 miles from” her office.
Nevertheless, CNET Editor-In-Chief, newly bumped up Dan Farber, jumps on Elinor Mill’s personal bandwagon, even while acknowledging the CNET approved “dispatch” of a CNET writer to “Mickey Mouse” land, apparently with little more than naive dreams of Google headline glory for backup.
Farber likens Schmidt to Putin for ”stonewalling,” echoing Mill’s protestations that she was unexpectedly “stunted” by the Google CEO, despite ardently having ”always wanted to interview Google CEO Eric Schmidt one-on-one.”
Mills admits she got her chance, and, incredulously, offers up a public play-by-play on how she blew it!
Contrary to the CNET double-team against Schmidt, the Google CEO “one-on-one” accorded the CNET staffer was not a fiasco because of what Farber suggests is Google arrogance. It is CNET’s Mills who dropped the ball on her shot at Googley glory by being unable to pose any in-depth, significant questions about the known purpose of the supposed CNET “exclusive”: A discussion of Google Health.
Mills claims she ”dove in with several probing questions about Google Health.” CNET’s version of “probing questions,” however, present as softball opportunites for Eric Schmidt to talk standard Google Health speak. What’s more, Mills neglected to pursue follow-up question opportunities to gain real, new, hard data and information.
The first (not so) hard hitting Google Health question Mills asked of Schmidt: “Was it difficult for Google to get health industry players like Aetna, Quest Diagnostics, and Walgreens onboard?”
Mills reports of Schmidt’s response:
“It took a while,” he said, adding that Google lined up health experts to be on an advisory health council and they are integrating their systems to work with Google’s GData. “It was OK. It wasn’t that hard.”
IT WAS OK. IT WASN’T THAT HARD are non-answers, not deserving of publication. Mills ought to have continued on: Why did it take a while? Were obstacles encountered? What objections were raised? Has any organization declined to collaborate? If yes, why?
Also, GDATA: What about it? How will the “integration” work? How will privacy and security be protected by Google? Mills ought to have really probed.
The CNET-Google problem is NOT that Eric Schmidt only had 12 minutes to only discuss Google Health with a CNET staffer. The Google-CNET problem is that Elinor Mills failed to take professional advantage of the opportunity she had to contribute to enhancing public knowledge about the real workings of Google’s Health initiative.
CEO Eric Schmidt himself alluded to Mill’s less than insightful queries:
I don’t think you have highlighted sufficiently the platform characteristic of this. Everyone is assuming it is personal health record…I think of it as a platform upon which many services can be built and it is through that platform that the real innovation occurs.
Here at Insider Chatter, I have indeed been investigating the platform wars that consumer-facing online health applications are engendering. For example, I scooped Microsoft’s Health Vault solicitation to Google to collaborate with the Microsoft platform!
SEE: Health Vault: Hey, Google, Get With the Microsoft Medical Program! and Microsoft Seeks Healthy Relationship with Google: Health Vault INTERVIEW
Is Google open to Microsoft HealthVault’s openness though? Not likely. On the very day of Eric Schmidt’s keynote at HMSS in Florida, the Microsoft Health Vault team confirmed to me: There’s been no formal conversations to-date between Google Health and Microsoft.
MORE: Why Google Sites Is BAD Business: ‘Til Death Do Us Part’? and Microsoft Flexes Enterprise Muscle: What Google Apps Revolution? and Spot Runner Ad Agency: Google Sans $139 billion Search Engine? and Facebook: Why Sheryl Sandberg is a Perfect Googley Fit
Steve Rubel. a self-described “digital marketer,” describes his employer, Edelman, as the “wolrd’s largest indpendent PR firm.” As a Edelman Senior Vice President:
“Steve is charged with helping Edelman (PR) clients identify key insights, trends and emerging digital platforms that can be applied in marketing programs.”
WOW! Sounds like Edelman’s Steve is keen on “disintermediating agencies,” advertising agencies, that is! It is subsequently not surprsing that the Edelman PR evangelist would rally that the most important “news” out of the Interactive Advertising Bureau’s annual meeting is that “digitally savvy” markteters are “disintermediating agencies - even as they all downplay it,” according to Steve’s unique PR about a Booz Allen Hamilton presentation.
While Rubel warns “the risk to agencies has never been greater,” however, Booz Allen Hamilton itself underscores: “the majority of media executives continue to believe that the responsibility for creative functions, communications and media planning, still lie with the agency of record.” The CEO of the IAB, Randall Rothenberg concurs, with Booz Allen Hamilton: ”media executives recognize the critical role that advertising agencies play and will continue to play in the media landscape.”
Rubel ridicules a “wrong” image of media companies “as lumbering dinosaurs lingering toward extinction in a world of infinite content” while nevertheless signaling out one “agency” as a “late” digital bloomer, Group M.
Edelman cheers a prospective agency disintermediation at its own “extinction” peril though. After all, if media companies are ”expanding well beyond traditional advertising sales roles into areas such as campaign development, creative services and consumer insight,” as Christopher Vollmer, Vice President at Booz Allen Hamilton, indicates, then they are undoubtedly seeking to expand into other communication areas as well: Public relations, for example, for client and/or their own accounts.
The IAB’s Rothenberg says media companies are providing marketers with “a suite of strategic communications solutions that are far beyond anything we’ve seen before.” PR, of course, is a core component of required “suites” of communications solutions for marketers.
Public relations agencies are as much “at risk” of disintermediation as advertising and media agencies are, from both structural industry trends and macro economic conditions.
The CMO Council’s 2007 “marketing outlook” indicated PR agencies were a 2006 target of choice for Chief Marketing Officers seeking to “instill new disciplines, skills and focus in their own organizations”:
The restructuring went beyond internal resources, as agency turnover was rampant. 64 percent of marketers said they dumped at least one agency last year, and over half plan further agency changes in 2007. Public relations agencies got the ax most often, followed by web design & development and advertising agencies.
Who needs PR agencies? After all, a corporate blog is a direct route to participating in the the world wide Web “conversation.”
ALSO: CEO Magid Abraham: Long On Google, Short on comScore! and comScore Web Power Grab: Google Data Games and Cookie Monster AND The Web Economy Rejoices: Google IS Overrated and Due For BIGGER Fall! and Google vs. Microsoft: The REAL Health Platform War Story
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