According to the NY Times, Google is testing in a new ad idea where the advertiser only pays Google when the ad spurs a consumer to take an action, be it purchasing a product, subscribing to a newsletter or even ask for more details about a product or a service.
The pay per click method has proven it’s value but it still has many flaws that Google seem not to overcome. Click farming still plagues the Ad business and has become very frustrating for advertises that spend thousands or even millions of dollars in Google Ads. With this new ad idea, Google seems to introduce a more fair ad system, still they say that that cost-per-action program won’t replace Ad Words, instead it will figure in publishers’ Web sites and essentially creating its own affiliate marketing network. Though this isn’t a new market, Google’s entering might bring more advertisers into it.
Rumor addicts really need their daily fix. Now that the mother of all rumors has been out (aka the iPhone), a new substitute was in demand. Presenting the Google Phone.
First we get some guy on a forum that even posts a photo of the device (probably photoshoped) along with the some specs.
“The Google Phone brings the power of the internet in your pocket, in a simple and intuitive device. It combines the traditional voice and SMS capabilities of phones with all the exciting Google services from the PC such as Search, Gmail, Maps, Blogger…
The Google Phone, designed by Samsung, is a very thing and stylish handset with a large screen and a QWERTY keypad so that it provides a real internet experience.”
Yesterday Engadget came up with sort of a confirmation from a Google exec (which by the way is on Spainish division), saying that actually it exists and it’s just another product among another 17 R&D projects… I can hear the rumor mongers starting their photoshops…
No longer in beta. Go get it!
I’m a big Google fan. I use Gmail, Gtalk, Picasa, Google Earth / Maps… the works, but as a user, using all this “free” Google software, made me think about the companies and developers who base their work and products on Google platforms like Google Maps and Adsense. These companies and developers are not just a few, actually it’s a growing group each passing day. Tags like “geo” / “map” / “planet” are beginning to crowd the names of applications and websites, all them depending on Google Maps. When surfing the web, the majority of blogs present us with Google Ads, and the so called “pro-blogers” depend ultimately on web site ads, being most of them from Google. Millions of users have a Gmail account and use it as their main email account, I’m one of them and I’ve been deprived of my Gmail account once so I can say it’s not a nice experience.
My question is: what if something bad happens to Google? Or, let’s not be so drastic and more realistic, what if Google starts to charge money for their products? Would Google Maps be so famous and so broadly used if it was a paid product? Would Gmail had so many users even offering 2Gb of mail storage if it was paid? I guess not.
Google dependency is one of the effects of the Web 2.0, a very dangerous dependency not because of Google as a company, but because of the amount of people depending on one single entity.
Is this the first step into Google Office?
I asked myself this question every day “Why Google didn’t came up with Flickr?”
Today I got an invitation to Picasa Web Albums, a Flickr like site to use solo or with Picasa. The free account comes with 250MB of free storage space. For $25.00 per year, you can get a more 6GB of storage. Will it be better than Flickr? Flickr has a HUGE user base, lets see if Google can top Yahoo on this one.
Google Earth for Linux is next inline after the Picasa port.
Picasa, founded in 2001, was purchased by Google in July of 2004, and the photo management tool has seen some extensive use, albeit from Windows users. DiBona indicated that Google made a public committment to begin porting two applications to Linux about a year ago. The other application in this project is Google Earth. Picasa for Linux was announced first simply because it was finished first.
When asked if the additions to WINE would bootstrap Google Earth’s porting progress, DiBona answered in the negative, explaining that Google Earth relied on Qt and GL libraries and code, so additional WINE support would not help. No timeline for that application’s release was revealed at this time.
More info here.
My Google Talk just updated itself 
It’s looking good… Time to explore!
Microsoft’s Virtual Earth blows Google Earth with this new feature…
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