Tag: google

A land of grace and favors

The quiet abandonment of Google Authorship once again shows why businesses and creative workers shouldn’t trust online services to reward their work.

Yesterday the Search Engine Land website broke the news that Google Authorship is dead.

The quiet abandonment of Google Authorship once again shows why businesses and creative workers shouldn’t trust online services to reward their work.

Google Authorship was a subset of the company’s Google Plus service that let writers and journalist claim their work.

For authors Google Authorship was a useful tool in the battle against the verminous ‘content scrapers’ whose business lies in stealing other peoples’work. It was also a good way of building an online portfolio.

Google benefited from a huge improvement in the quality of its data as its algorithms authorship made it easier for the algorithm to identify original sources.

Using Google’s Authorship tool wasn’t easy, like many of the company’s services it was cumbersome to setup, opaque and subject to arbitrary rules.

Many journalists, bloggers and writers went through the process however as they saw the benefits and trusted Google to maintain the service.

Trusting Google to maintain any service is risky with the company’s well deserved reputation of axing services the moment management’s attention turns to the next shiny thing.

Which is exactly what’s happened to those who’ve invested their time in Google Authorship and they join the disillusioned masses who’ve been burned by the company previously with services like Google Wave.

The lessons from Google’s dropping of Authorship shouldn’t be lost on those working hard to build Google Plus profiles.

Right now, despite the propaganda for those with a lot invested in the service, Google Plus is not travelling well and it’s in a dangerous zone within the company with the departure of its internal management champion Vic Gundotra earlier this year.

The risk of investing too much time on Google Plus is clear, however it would be unfair to single Google out as being alone in presenting this risk.

Every social media service and publishing platform carries the same risk.

Those spending hours creating Facebook communities or carefully crafting LinkedIn or Medium posts need to remember they are only their by the grace and favor of the service.

Nothing replaces your own website as an online property. Your mission is to drive as much traffic to it as possible. Social media platforms can help you do this, but they are not your friends or business partners.

Don’t forget this.

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Standing up to the giants – why the big software companies don’t always win

The survival of QNX illustrates how big companies don’t always prevail on the internet

In the latest Networked Globe post I have an interview with QNX founder Dan Dodge on how BlackBerry wants to be at the heart of the Internet of Things.

One of the things Dodge discusses is how twenty years ago Microsoft told QNX they would be driven out of business by the software giant’s Windows CE operating system.

As it turned out Microsoft failed dismally.

QNX’s survival in face of a big competitor is similar to Google’s failed attempts to enter various industries. Everyone assumes Google will succeed against the smaller players because they are rich and smart.

Often however the rich player doesn’t win because the smaller incumbent is savvy, focused and knows their market well.

Sometimes bigger is not always better in the software industry.

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Amazon learns that profits matter

One of the leaders of the disruptive economy, Amazon, feeling the heat as other deep pocketed rivals put pressure on its businesses.

It’s typical for a new businesses to go several years making losses but Amazon has barely made a profit over the last twenty years despite being valued at $150 billion by the stockmarket.

That luck could be running out though as the Amazon’s stock fell nearly 10% last week after the company announced it had slipped back into losses last quarter.

Amazon’s losses are largely due to Google starting a price war on web services which is a warning that other deep pocketed web giants are now lining up for the company.

Google’s actions in crippling Amazon are somewhat ironic given how Amazon disrupted the publishing industry by using its deep pockets to subsidise its loss making bookselling business.

Amazon’s problem is it operates in commoditised industries where deep pocketed players are prepared to challenge the company’s market position.

Companies like Google and Apple have incredibly profitable products like Adwords and the iPhone while Amazon relies on the largesse of investors hoping to turn a future profit, that is a clear weakness against strong, well funded businesses.

For a tech company, twenty years is clearly the future and now Amazon has to define exactly where the profits are in its business.

Sometimes, just being a disruptor isn’t enough.

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Smartphone safety and online trust – ABC Nightlife technology

The July ABC Nightlife radio segment looks at how elusive the truth can be online along with smartphones and sight impaired tech.

Smartphones for the vision impaired, malware on portable devices and online trust were the topics of the July technology spot on  Tony Delroy’s Nightlife along with why a restaurant claims Google sent it broke and how we can’t always trust what we hear online.

If you missed the show, you can download the program from the website.

For sight impaired smartphone users both Doug and Nick called in to suggest Vision Australia’s services. The organisation has a page dedicated to smartphone and tablet resources.

Nick and Peter asked about malware protection for Android smartphones. Both Intel’s McAfee Mobile Security and Sophos’ Mobile Security for Android are free for home users.

The next spot is scheduled for 4 September, if you have any topics you’d like to discuss contact me or the Nightlife producers.

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Collaboration and buzzwords

Collaboration tools are changing business but the progress is slower than some of us expected

Today in Technology Spectator, I have a piece on collaboration based around the Google and Deloitte paper released last week.

At the moment Google are on a marketing campaign promoting Apps for Business, for a previous campaign I prepared The Future of Teamwork which examined the benefits of cloud computing for industry.

It’s interesting how the message hasn’t changed a great deal in the last five year, despite it being valid.

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Google’s river of gold

Google has another spectacular financial result but weakness remain.

Google’s quarterly results are in – revenue up 22% on the previous year with a gross profit margin of 300%.  Although the adwords river of gold still makes up 90% of the company’s income.

investor.google.com/earnings/2014/Q2_google_earnings.html

While spectacular, such a reliance on one product line is a vulnerablity. It’s not surprising Google’s leadership is experimenting with new businesses.

It’s also notable that payments to network partners fell as a proportion to revenues, which explains some of the pain sites that rely on Google Adsense checks are feeling.

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Small business’ essential online ingredient

The story of Rene Bertagna and the Serbian Lion illustrates how operators in the hospitality industry need to be on top of their listings and online presence.

A Virginian restaurant, the Serbian Lion, went out of business because its Google Places listing was hacked, reports Wired.

The proprietor of the Serbian Lion, Rene Bertagna, wasn’t aware his online listing showed the restaurant as being closed on weekends and as a result customers stopped showing up, he alleges in a law suit against Google.

As a result of result of the drop in earnings, the restaurant entered a death spiral of falling service standards, declining customers and further cuts until the place closed down.

While it’s difficult to judge how true Bertagna’s claim is – it’s quite possible the listing was a mistake by Google’s data scrapers or an oversight by a customer putting the data into the services – the story does illustrate how important getting the correct information into online services like Google Places, Microsoft Bing and Yelp.

Bertagna himself appears to be a classic case of roadkill on the information superhighway with his claims not to be a computer or internet user.

Bertagna immigrated to the U.S. from northern Italy when he was young. He’s 74 now, and, he says, doesn’t own a computer—he’d heard of the Internet and Google but used neither. Suddenly, a technological revolution of which he was only dimly aware was killing his business. His accountant phoned Google and in an attempt to change the listing, but got nowhere. Bertagna eventually hired an Internet consultant who took control of the Google Places listing and fixed the bad information—a relatively simple process.

The sad tale of Rene Bertagna and the Serbian Lion illustrates just how important it is for operators in the hospitality industry to be on top of their listings and online presence. This is where the customers are.

Sadly, this story isn’t news – that customers are using the web to find local businesses and read reviews of neighbourhood establishments has been the case for a decade, the move to mobile has been obvious for over five years.

For all local businesses, it’s a core responsibility to make sure online listings are correct along with having an up to date website. If you don’t, you only have yourself to blame if the customers don’t show up.

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