Google Is Much More Than A Search Engine
Author: Rick Hendershot

We all know that Google is the dominant search engine, and
controls a large percentage of online advertising. But many of
us -- even regular Google users -- are not aware of some of
Google's other services. Most of them are presented as new ways
of listing and categorizing the universe.

However, consistent with Google's new status as a profit-first
public corporation, what lies at the root of most of Google's
expanding ventures is the need to become less dependent on
context-based advertising revenue. In other words, the people
at Google are desparately looking for new ways of making money.


**Froogle still looking for a mission in life

Google's product search and comparison tool called Froogle, was
launched in December 2002. It was developed in an attempt to
cash in on the obvious market for online shopping that major
sites like eBay and Amazon had so successfully exploited.

Unlike alternatives like eBay, Froogle lists products for free,
and it has no integrated purchase capability. You just look for
products by product name or description and are presented with
a list of products with links to sites where they are
available.

Product information gets into Froogle in one of two ways,
according to the Froogle instructions. It can be submitted
electronically by merchants, and will then be included in the
database. Second, in the course of spidering the web Google's
spidering software "automatically identifies webpages that
offer products for sale". These are then included in the
Froogle database as well.

What Google wants is to make Froogle a product search tool of
choice, and open up various monetization opportunities. The
obvious ones are embedded advertising and paid listings, but
others include direct sales possibilities on the eBay model.

After more than three years Froogle is still called a "beta"
suggesting that Google still has no definite plans for it. The
latest development was to add "local shopping" information to
the listings giving Froogle potential to become an online
yellow pages.

**Google Local integrates maps, local product search

Everybody agrees that local search is going to be very big in
the next couple of years. Say you're looking for a place to buy
an digital camera in a particular city. Just do a search for
"digital camera in MyTown", and Google Local will give you a
detailed street map of the area along with stores that carry
the product, and locations indicated on the map.

Since products are indexed by keyword, you can search for
virtually anything, rather than being restricted to the
categories pre-defined by a service like the yellow pages.

Also unlike the yellow pages, Google Local includes all stores
they have a listing for, not just paying advertisers. Local
gives you a map with locations, plus listings with links direct
to the stores. The potential for this resource seems awesome.

Plus Google Local has integrated a very slick map utility that
arguably looks better (simpler) and in some ways, works faster
than other services such as MapQuest. For instance, you can
search for a relatively obscure place like Carlyle,
Saskatchewan or Brora, Scotland and you are taken to a detailed
street map for the entire region. If you are looking for a
broader overview of the area, you can just grab the map and
scroll along a highway or the coast without having to click on
navigation arrows as you do with MapQuest.

Google has also integrated its satellite imaging service into
Local. If you are looking at a specific map and would rather
see a satellite image of the area, just click on "satellite".
Or if you would like to see the satellite image with a map
overlay, you can see that too, by clicking on "hybrid".

**Google Video lets you put your videos online

Google Video was introduced in beta back in the spring of 2005,
ostensibly to give video producers an outlet for their work. As
Google says, "Whether you produce hundreds of titles a year or
just a few, you can give your videos the recognition and
visibility they deserve by promoting them on Google - for free.
Signing up for the Google Video Upload Program will connect your
work with users who are most likely to want to view them."

No doubt Google has something else in mind here too --
providing video-related services to generate revenue. The
logical move is for Google to eventually build a large library
of amateur and then commercially produced videos and moves that
it can "rent" on a pay-per-view basis. The company has already
taken a step in this direction with its recent AOL alliance in
which it committed to promoting AOL's video library.

As John Battelle said in a
(http://battellemedia.com/archives/001658.php) June 2004 blog
post, "this will help the spread of an alternative universe for
video distribution and playback, one independent of the walled
garden business model in which video is currently locked... the
sooner independent voices have an outlet for their work, and a
business model to pay for it, the sooner we'll see content
creators revolt from the hegemony of cable and studio models."

But there are other possibilities as well. As Jon Udell says in
a (http://weblog.infoworld.com/udell/2005/12/06.html) blog post,
"the larger goal is to bring the social effects we see at work
in the textual blogosophere into the realm of audio. Linking
and quotation drive discovery and shared discourse, but media
formats, players, and hosting environments are notoriously
hostile to linking and quotation, and I'd really like to see
that change."

Google made a move in this direction by switching its player
technology to Flash in the fall of 2005. While encoding options
for flash (FLV) are still relatively limited, the capabilities
to make flash movies more "link-friendly" are much better than
the other mainstream alternatives (Quicktime, Windows Media,
and Real).

In other words, it is much easier to build hot links and other
types of scripting into video and audio using Flash, making it
a much better fit with the traditional "interactive" features
we expect from the web.

This also gives it more potential for the integration of
advertising into pre-existing videos.


About The Author: Rick Hendershot publishes Linknet News ==>
http://www.linknet-news.com | For online promotion see Linknet
Promotions ==> http://www.linknet-promotions.com | For online
video ideas see ==> http://www.videoinabox.com