Google (GOOG) unveiled a slew of new features to its Google Finance site late Monday. The new functionality is scheduled to be publicly announced on Google’s company blog Tuesday and is intended to help Google Finance improve a service that has lagged far behind those offered by rivals Yahoo! (YHOO) , Microsoft (MSFT) and AOL (TWX) since its inception in March 2006. Google’s most recent changes — a revamped user interface, a bigger bundling of historic data to work with its charts, a new way to sort through companies based on the day’s news, the ability to import and customize portfolios, a new homepage design that allows users to monitor sector performance — are the first steps of what hopefully marks a greater emphasis on a service that should get a lot more attention from the search giant. Indeed, many of the new additions are a step in the right direction and a marked improvement, such as the streamlined user interface and the feature allowing investors to easily track sector performance. The new interface makes the site considerably nimbler and easier to navigate. The sector feature enables investors to be tipped off to broader market movements — such as an overall rotation into basic materials or health care, for example — that can be more telling than the action in just one stock. Other features, meanwhile, continue to be driven by Google’s penchant to put what it sees as its strong suits — be it interactivity or search — ahead of a hardheaded consideration of what would best serve investors who use the site. The integration of up to 40 years of historic data into its charts, for example, is an impressive accomplishment. But it’s tough to see how having the stock price of General Motors (GM) in 1972, for example, translates into a big advantage for investors. Even more so than vision, the biggest challenge for Google Finance will be its alarming lack of resources, especially considering the company’s hordes of engineers.
All Cylinders Not Firing
Google Finance has fewer than 10 engineers working on the product, with four of those devoting a scant 20% of their time to the effort under Google’s famed system of allowing engineers to devote one-fifth of their time on test projects that are not their main staple, says Katie Stanton, product manager of Google Finance. But when it comes to its Finance site, Google should be putting a lot more muscle behind the rollout. Unlike many of Google’s heavily anticipated product launches, including Gmail — the company’s widely adopted and acclaimed email system — or Google’s News Site, Google Finance has yet to make a big splash in the marketplace. Google Finance counted only 579,000 unique users in October, compared with 13.7 million for market leader Yahoo! Finance, according to researcher Nielsen Net Ratings. Microsoft’s Finance site saw 11.7 million unique users in the same period, while AOL Finance logged 10.3 million. It’s still too early in the game to pass a verdict on Google Finance, says Stanton, and 2007 will likely be the make-or-break year for the site. Though she acknowledges that the reception to Google Finance has not been spectacular so far, she says that the site was launched sooner than it could have been with an eye to working out kinks based on user feedback. Still, for Google, a company with some 85 identifiable products, the time draws nigh to decide what to keep and what to kill. Letting products languish under the label of experimentation will ultimately drag down the Google brand. The company recently showed that it was capable of doing away with struggling projects when it quashed its lagging Google Answers service — the first time a significant Google project had been publicly scrapped. But the company should take the other road when it comes to Google Finance. A win there would give it more than a strong product in a fast-growing field — it would show that the company was able to apply to successfully leverage its deep technical roots into richer media environments it will increasingly find itself competing in. Trimming down on many other product lines may be the order for Google. But doubling down on its Finance site could be a promising investment.
Google has offered the first glimpse at the results of their controversial Book Search project, releasing the top 10 most-viewed texts in English for one week in September.
The list is topped by a study of tropical flowers, and also includes a 1934 translation of the Qur’an, Noam Chomsky’s Hegemony or Survival, and a handbook for building an all-terrain robot.
With no relation to any bestseller list past or present, the list offers an intriguing snapshot of what users were searching for in the week beginning September 17 2006.
Chomsky’s 2003 critique of US foreign policy owes its presence on the list to Hugo Chavez’s midweek endorsement on the floor of the UN General Assembly.
Google Book Search allows users to search the full text of millions of books worldwide. Readers can view sample pages from books supplied by the programme’s publisher partners alongside information about where the titles can be purchased.
The internet search giant has so far proved unwilling to give any idea of the numbers of searches involved, fearing that rivals would gain a competitive advantage. But Dr Kim Zwollo, global rights director for the German publishing house Axel Springer Verlag, said that since they had joined the programme “thousands of people” had looked at their titles, and that they had “seen a 10% rise” in backlist sales.
The European director of Google Book Search, Jens Redmer, was keen to stress the programme’s potential for both readers and publishers.
“For the reader, the service opens up the world of literature and learning by typing a few simple keystrokes into a computer. For publishers and authors it enables more people to find more books in more languages.”
The most controversial aspect of the project involves digitised copies of books contained in major world libraries such as the university libraries at Harvard, Oxford and Madrid, and includes books both in and out of copyright. Readers can view books in the public domain in their entirety. If the book is in copyright users are able to see basic background information, such as the title, the author’s name and the library where it resides, and view two or three snippets in order to demonstrate its relevance.
But some publishers and authors have greeted the service with dismay, claiming that by scanning entire books into their database Google is infringing copyright. Bloomsbury’s chief executive, Nigel Newton, has described the project as a “literary land grab”, and called for readers to boycott the search engine. The president of the US Authors Guild, Nick Taylor, called the project a “plain and brazen violation of copyright law”, adding that “it’s not up to Google or anyone other than the authors - the rightful owners of these copyrights - to decide whether and how their works will be copied”.
Since its launch at Frankfurt in 2004, the service has been expanded to include thousands of participating publishers and is now available in French, Italian, German, Spanish and Dutch.
Google faces lawsuits in France and the US over allegations that the service breaches copyright.
Top 10 most viewed texts in English:
Diversity and Evolutionary Biology of Tropical Flowers, Peter K. Endress
Merriam Webster’s Dictionary of Synonyms
Measuring and Controlling Interest Rate and Credit Risk, Frank J. Fabozzi, Steven V. Mann, Moorad Choudhry
Ultimate Healing: The Power of Compassion, Lama Zopa Rinpoche; Edited by Ailsa Cameron
The Holy Qur’an, Translated by Abdullah Yusuf Ali
Peterson’s Study Abroad 2006, Thomson Peterson
Hegemony Or Survival: America’s Quest for Global Dominance, Noam Chomsky
Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary of English Usage
Perrine’s Literature: Structure,Sound,and Sense, Thomas R Arp,Greg Johnson
Build Your Own All-Terrain Robot, Brad Graham,Kathy McGowan
Why would Google pay $1.6 billion for YouTube? Because it can.
That’s the instant reaction among media and tech types Friday to reports that the search giant is considering buying the immensely popular video-sharing site.
A deal, reportedly still in early stages, would give Google (nasdaq: GOOG - news - people ) the kind of clout in the fast-growing market for video content that it already enjoys in the Internet search business. In the last week of September, YouTube drew almost half of all United States visitors looking for Web video, according to research firm Hitwise, Inc.
The purchase would also solve a problem, albeit a nice one, that has recently been worrying Google executives: What should they do with all the cash and equity the company has amassed? Even after Google’s stock has dropped from its high of $470 early this year, the company still sports a market capitalization of $128 billion. And it has mountains of money: As of June 30, the company had $4 billion laying around its Mountain View, Calif. offices.
And while the reported price tag would make a YouTube deal the largest acquisition that Google has made in its eight-year history, a purchase would actually fit Google’s pattern of buying small, early stage companies. For all the noise that YouTube has made in the last year, the company still employs just 60 people at its San Mateo, Calif. headquarters.
The potential deal was first reported in the technology blog techcrunch; neither Google or YouTube would respond to requests for comment Friday. YouTube co-founder Chad Hurley did spend the day at Google’s headquarters this week, but his visit didn’t raise many eyebrows at the time–the search giant was hosting one of its “Zeitgeist” conferences, aimed at advertising and media companies.
Google already has its own video service, which it launched in January. But the offering hasn’t enticed nearly as many web surfers as YouTube–Hitwise pegs its most recent market share at about 12%. But both of the companies have drawn howls from media companies who have complained that users are posting copyrighted videos to the sites. Last month, Doug Morris, head of Vivendi’s (nyse: V - news - people ) Universal Music Group, threatened to sue YouTube if it didn’t pay his company for the rights to its music and videos, or take them off the site.
Those copyright issues are also what skeptics have thought would ultimately doom YouTube–according to that logic, either YouTube will have to pare down the 100 million videos it hosts on its site or spend all of its time fending off lawsuits.
Internet entrepreneur Mark Cuban, who has frequently argued that YouTube’s copyright issue will cripple the company, said those same concerns should dissuade Google from making the deal. “They’d be crazy to. What [Google] went through when they started all their video originally, they thought people would appreciate the traffic,” he said Friday. “But it didn’t turn out that way. YouTube is in a far worse violation of copyright.”
The counterargument : If anyone has enough resources to handle a slew of copyright complaints, it’s Google.
“It makes a strange kind of sense,” said Forrester Research (nasdaq: FORR - news - people ) analyst Josh Bernoff, who predicted last month that legal issues would kill YouTube. “To solve illegal content problem requires mostly an automated solution. Who do you think would be better at solving that problem? The engineers over at the Googleplex or the overworked 60 people at YouTube? It’s true that Google presents a very attractive target for a lawsuit. But Google has a lot of assets with which to negotiate.”
Executives at other startup video companies said they would welcome a Google-YouTube deal.
“It’s a sensational validation of how significant online video and its attendant opportunities are,” said Revver.com co-founder and Chief Executive Steven Starr. “I think it expands the competitive landscape dramatically.”
Google’s formidable online advertising muscle could help drive more ad dollars into online video sites, so it would be “a net win for everybody in the space,” said Break.com Chief Executive Keith Richman.
“You’re delivering an audience and a community that Google doesn’t already have despite the fact that they have mass reach in certain ways,” Richman said. “They’re accelerating their ability to enter a space where someone else has already established a reputation in.”
But Google isn’t the only big media company with a potential interest in YouTube–the company has a laundry list of potential suitors. Here’s a quick rundown:
Yahoo! (nasdaq: YHOO - news - people )–Yahoo! already streams billions of video clips a year, but most of them are professionally made clips from music and movie studios. In a bid to offer amateur video-sharers something they don’t already have, Yahoo! acquired online video-editing tools company JumpCut last month. “People interested in creating now have an interesting place to go in Yahoo!,” says JumpCut Chief Executive Mike Folgner. “The other leaders are going to have to do something like this very soon.”
Microsoft (nasdaq: MSFT - news - people )–The software company, trails Internet competitors like Yahoo!, Google and AOL in most areas, and it’s moving slow with user-generated video. Its first offering, Soapbox, launched in invitation-only form on Sept. 18. Its professional video site, MSN Video, has little more than 5% of the video market. Yet Microsoft’s MSN Spaces blogging platform is the most widely used around the globe, according to ComScore, so the company likely wants to get as many of its 100 million users of that product onto Soapbox. If that doesn’t pan out soon, expect Microsoft to belatedly consider other options.
Viacom (nyse: VIA.B - news - people )–Viacom Chairman Sumner Redstone hasn’t written off pursuing YouTube; on Wednesday he told television host Charlie Rose that, “It’s a very good company. After letting MySpace slip away to News Corp. a year ago, Redstone could be eager to seal a deal with YouTube. Viacom already licensed its own content to Google Video in a deal announced in August; it bought the video-sharing site iFilm, for $49 million a year ago.
News Corp. (nyse: NWS - news - people )–Online video is a high priority for Rupert Murdoch. But why buy YouTube when News Corp.’s MySpace already generates more video streams? Even as YouTube and MySpace wage a battle for eyeballs, News Corp. inked a huge advertising deal with Google in August, making Google the exclusive search provider for MySpace and guaranteeing News Corp. shared ad revenues of at least $900 million by mid-2010.
Time Warner (nyse: TWX - news - people )–At the same time that the company’s AOL unit dropped the remaining subscriber walls around its content, it launched a new video portal with user-generated video content. Meanwhile, it is still refining its strategy for implementing Singingfish, purchased in 2003, and Truveo, acquired in December 2005. Both sites gave AOL ample video search assets, but the company has yet to breakthrough as the clear leader in Web-video trawling–its share of the online video market doesn’t break into the top five, according to Hitwise.
Sony (nyse: SNE - news - people )–The Japanese media and electronics conglomerate hasn’t done much on the Internet to date. But it clearly has some interest in doing so: It paid $65 million for online video startup Grouper.com in August.
Walt Disney Co. (nyse: DIS - news - people )–Disney’s subsidiaries, including Walt Disney Studios, ABC and ESPN, own one of the largest content libraries around. But the company has exhibited little interest so far in user-generated video. Meanwhile, the company has proved willing to experiment with online video in general–it was the first to let Apple Computer’s (nasdaq: AAPL - news - people ) iTunes sell its TV programs and movies online, and it has experimented with streaming its television programming for free on the Web.
NBC Universal–User-generated video doesn’t appear to be a high priority for the General Electric (nyse: GE - news - people ) unit, although it was one of the first major content owners to partner with YouTube, where it hosts a channel. The company also launched an ad-supported online video service in September together with a team of content partners, including Forbes.com.
Comcast (nasdaq: CMCSA - news - people )–In June, the nation’s largest cable company acquired thePlatform, a Seattle maker of digital media software to distribute online audio and video. User-generated video doesn’t appear to be a high priority for Comcast, which is focused more on competition with major telecom companies to sell voice, broadband and video services.
Google on Thursday launched a notification service that makes it easier for blogger or blog-hosting services to notify the search engine of new blogs or changes to existing ones.
The pinging service is for people or organizations that want to have blogs crawled by Google and then updated on its blog search engine. Although Google monitors other pinging services, notifying the service directly could make it faster to get an update in the company’s index.
Google provides a manual process for submitting the URL of a new or modified blog, and application programming interfaces, or APIs, for those who want to automate the process.
Google has posted more details of the service on its site.
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