Cloud, SaaS, ASP, Web Services – Microsoft Live Services, Windows Azure, Live Mesh Adds to Confusion

Ed: Do we need more confusion? Here it comes – more jargon from Microsoft. 

IBM offers hosted or outsourced services. Google Apps offers free, hosted, outsourced services. Microsoft leverages it’s many products and intellectual property into a new service – sold for an undisclosed rental fee over the web. Let the new war begin.

I prefer simplicity for consumers, customers, and partners.

Ray Ozzie Has His Head In the Clouds

Microsoft wants in on cloud computing. At the company’s Professional Developer’s Conference today, Microsoft’s chief software architect Ray Ozzie announced Windows Azure, its “internet-scale cloud services platform hosted in Microsoft data centers.” Windows Azure will only be open as a technology preview to a very limited number of developers for now, and no pricing details have been revealed that I can find. But this is basically Microsoft’s answer to Amazon’s Web Services and cloud computing initiatives from other enterprise IT players, including everyone from IBM to RackSpace. Azure will run Windows servers and the .Net framework in the cloud as a hosted, pay-as-you go service. It will be part of what Microsoft is calling Live Services, and it will run Live apps, .Net apps, SQL server, Sharepoint servers, and Microsoft’s Dynamics CRM…

Microsoft PDC2008: Ozzie Introduces Azure

Microsoft Chief Software Architect Ray Ozzie started off the company’s 2008 Professional Developer Conference With a discussion of the back-end , server parts of the company’s “software plus services strategy.” This doesn’t get the attention that goes to client solutions – like Windows, which I expect we’ll hear more about tomorrow – but it is crucial for developers and corporate users.

Ozzie said that Microsoft’s big advantage in writing platforms comes from three items: It builds its own apps on the platform, which makes sure the platform works. Because of the size of Microsoft, its platforms are likely to reach critical mass. Microsoft has always understood that ISVs need to be successful for the company to be successful.

There’s a lot of truth in that – there are many companies and developers who have grown using Microsoft’s tools. But Microsoft has been a very aggressive competitor to some of its ISVs, a point Ozzie didn’t make. Perhaps as a result, is seeing more competition than it has in years – particularly from open source software on the server and tools side…

Ray Ozzie Announces Windows Azure – “Windows in the Cloud”

Ray Ozzie opened the Microsoft PDC ‘08 this morning with a keynote speech. In it he announced Windows Azure, Microsoft’s “Windows in the cloud”. It is a new service based operating environment. He described it as a massive highly scalable service platform. What is being released today is just a fraction of what it will become. It will be Microsoft’s highest scalable system enabling people and companies to create services on the Web.

On the new webpage for Windows Azure, it is described as follows:

Windows® Azure is a cloud services operating system that serves as the development, service hosting and service management environment for the Azure Services Platform. Windows Azure provides developers with on-demand compute and storage to host, scale, and manage Web applications on the Internet through Microsoft® data centers.

To build these applications and services, developers can use their existing Microsoft® Visual Studio® 2008 expertise. In addition, Windows Azure supports popular standards and protocols including SOAP, REST, and XML. Windows Azure is an open platform that will support both Microsoft and non-Microsoft languages and environments.

Use Windows Azure to:

* Add Web service capabilities to existing packaged applications.
* Build, modify, and distribute applications to the Web with minimal on-premises resources.
* Perform services (large-volume storage, batch processing, intense or large-volume computations, etc.) off premises.
* Create, test, debug, and distribute Web services quickly and inexpensively.
* Reduce costs of building and extending on-premises resources.
* Reduce the effort and costs of IT management.

Two Ways Google Is Trying To Juice AdSense: Ad-Only Search Boxes And Syndication Pages

Ed: Confusion between efforts to increase the supply of ad pages versus click demand. 

Turning on ad units on maps, flash, video suggests shortage of supply where ad demand exists to increase revenues.

Using inventory to run generic Google search and link syndication suggests shortage of clicks. Getting more people to click increases revenues. 

In the recent quarterly report, the Google CFO claimed that we can sell every click. Thus, it’s likely that these actions suggest shortage and possibly falling clicks – as reported.

Google turned in healthy third-quarter earnings largely thanks to the fact that Google is finally getting serious about cost containment. But that is only half the story. Going into the expected economic downturn, Google is now turning on every additional source of advertising revenues it can. For instance, so far earlier month it began offering AdSense in Flash games, new AdSense links at the bottom of Google Maps, and introduced click-to-buy buttons on YouTube videos. Now, it looks like it may be testing two more ways to juice those AdSense revenues: an AdSense search box and AdSense ads that link to syndication pages filled with . . . more AdSense ads!

Google might just be testing these, but these efforts are starting to get noticed. One reader who runs a site about Google Chrome, for instance, runs AdSense. But instead of a regular text ad, Google served up the search box at left, inviting people to search for specific ads. In effect, Google is saying, “We are not 100% sure what ads you’d like to see, so why don’t you just tell us?” An ad-only search box is a departure from Google’s past policy of showing the most relevant results, with ads on the side. Although it is clearly labeled, some people might still confuse the AdSense search box with a regular Web search box. Others might find it more helpful than the regular text ad links.

More troublesome is Google Syndication. Another reader, Michael Oxley, noticed that the AdSense text links on his golf site are directing readers not to a product page with information about a “Tiger Woods Caddy” or “Golf Wear,” but rather to a Google Syndication landing page filled with more AdSense ads (see screenshot below). These landing pages are run by Google (they take you to a googlesyndication.com URL). These pages basically syndicate a bunch of other AdSense ads triggered by the keywords in the original ad that was clicked on.

If Google starts using its Google Syndication pages more widely (they’ve actually been around for a while, it seems, and look similar to what are known as Link Units), it could become controversial. That is because they seem to run counter to Google’s own stated policy for landing page quality, a factor that goes into how Google scores each ad. As this NYT article explains:

Google now takes into account the “landing page” that the ad links to, and, for example, gives low grades to pages whose sole purpose is to show more ads…

Yahoo and Google Moving on Social Media; Microsoft Stalks to Buy

Ed: Yahoo and Google moving with small changes to integrate social media features. Microsoft talks about Windows 7 and buying Yahoo. 

Yahoo Profile is another effort by Yahoo to create circle’s of friends. Past efforts include 360, myBlogLog, FlickR, and others. Too little, too late.

Google has integrated gReader and iGoogle. Past efforts to share these personal pages with friends have not received much buzz. 

Go Get Yer Shiny New Yahoo Profile…And Make Some Connections!

by Michael Arrington on October 16, 2008

Yahoo begins the rollout of its new user profile today, which marks the first tangible product release for the social part of the Yahoo Open Strategy, or YOS. The profile is one of the anchors (mail is the other) to Yahoo’s strategy of turning the site into one big social network.

It’s been a long haul for the company, which first talked about the new strategy almost a year ago. More details, and a few conceptual screenshots, were announced at CES in January. A newcomer to Yahoo, VP Communities Jim Stoneham (he joined six weeks ago), is leading the team that’s creating new social features.

So here’s exactly what Yahoo is launching today: 

Google Updates iGoogle: Better Integration with Google Reader, Gmail, and Google Finance

Google today updated its iGoogle homepage by improving its integration Google Reader, Gmail, and Google Finance. These gadgets can now make use of iGoogle’s canvas feature, which allows a gadget to take up the whole screen. This is especially useful for the Google Reader and Gmail gadgets, which now bring almost all of the features of the actual services to iGoogle.

iGoogle Goes Wide, Introduces Canvas Pages.

by Erick Schonfeld on October 16, 2008

Google’s startpage, iGoogle, is spreading its wings. Today it is rolling out a new design that shifts tabs to a column on the left so that more Google gadgets and sources of content can be accommodated. But the biggest change is the ability for content partners and developers to expand each gadget to take up nearly the whole page.

Partners that are launching with expanded gadgets include the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, TV Guide, iLike, CurrentTV, and Go Comics. Google itself has created extra-wide gadgets for Google Reader, Gmail, Google Finance, and YouTube. If you have an iGoogle page in the U.S., you should see the new design rolled out by the end of the day.

In effect, Google is stealing a page from Facebook here and giving Gadget developers their own canvas pages. Within these iFrames, an entire Website can be exposed, with ads and all. Any money from ads on the canvas page go 100 percent to the content partner…

Yahoo SearchMonkey gets Zagat, CitySearch

from CNET News.com | Tech news blog

Trying to reclaim a lead lost to Google, Yahoo is repackaging some search results with extra information. New business review Web sites have joined the effort.

Google’s Schmidt: Brands to clean up Internet ‘cesspool’ – Or is it low eCPM?

Ed: Cesspool? Is the cup half empty or half full? 

Publishers have the brand advantage, not because of good writing, but the credibility of paper. Like the early days of ecommerce, brick-and-mortal had the branding advantage, but carried with a huge opex.

Google cannot solve the low eCPM problem. That’s the challenge for online publishing.

Google’s Schmidt: Brands to clean up Internet ‘cesspool’

Google CEO Eric Schmidt

(Credit: Dan Farber)

According to Google CEO Eric Schmidt, the Internet is a “cesspool” where false information thrives. As reported by AdAge, Schmidt was addressing his remarks to magazine executives who were on a pilgrimage to the Googleplex.

The cesspool is one of the byproducts of the Internet. With no barriers to entry and nearly frictionless production and distribution, it’s easy for false information, lies, doctored images, and other forms of deception to infiltrate the Internet. Web crawlers aren’t particularly good at making judgments about the truthiness of digital matter, and the wisdom of the crowd can’t keep up with the river of data streaming online.

Schmidt gave the magazine publishers hope for their future. Brands, he said, are the way to rise above the cesspool, and of course he is right. The corollary is that advertising via Google and its brethren is an essential way to build and sustain a brand.

But brands, even those with long, venerable histories and massive ad budgets, can be decimated as we have seen over the last decade and in the current economic nuclear winter, with banks, automakers, publishers, and retailers fading away.

Offline revenues, especially for newspapers, have been in steady decline, and online revenues are not making up the difference. As a result, there is less editorial investment from so-called mainstream media in the primary and investigative reporting that is often fodder for blogger refactoring. But the blogosphere and newer online publishing entities, such as GigaOm, Politico, TechCrunch, Huffington Post, and VentureBeat, are bringing new, or at least alternative, voices into the mix, contributing far more to the good side than to the cesspool.

Schmidt and the magazine publishers reportedly expressed concern about the cost and quantity of what high-value (exemplary journalism) content. “Narrative sustains the [media] business…but the future of high-quality journalism is a huge problem. A reasonable prediction is that there will be fewer voices. More money is needed to fund high-quality work,” Schmidt said as reported by the Huffington Post. With a major economic contraction underway, funding high-quality work will become even more difficult.

Relying solely on advertising revenues hasn’t proven to be a winning strategy for most publishers. Unfortunately, Web users come from a place in which paying for content is not part of the culture. If people are willing to pay $4.99 for six hamburger buns or $3.50 for a simple cup of coffee, why aren’t they willing to pay for content they value? One can only assume that people are willing to settle for content of generally less value that is free of charge–or that hamburger buns are more essential to life than a good, well-researched story.

» Read full article on[Outside the Lines]

Does Google Need To Spend More On Traditional Brand Advertising?

Google has always been more an adversary to traditional Madison Avenue advertisers than a friend. But with economic woes looming, there aren’t too many companies with growing advertising budgets. Google is on track to spend nearly $2 billion this year on sales and marketing, yet it’s offline advertising budget is estimated to be only $20 million a year. A story in today’s Wall Street Journal suggests that Google might be overcoming its distaste for traditional forms of advertising as it grows into a global brand. Excerpt:

But there are signs that the internal debate is causing Google to shake-off of its reluctance to advertise. The search giant has recently held discussions with several Madison Avenue agencies, including Wieden + Kennedy and the boutique firm Taxi New York, about new efforts to promote some products, according to people familiar with the matter.

But does it really need to do that? Google’s success is predicated on the fact that traditional forms of advertising are less effective than paid search, contextual, and other, more measurable, online ads. Google is already considered to be the 10th most valuable brand in the world, and it got there without spending money on TV, print, or radio advertising. It got there by weaving itself into the daily habits of nearly anyone who uses the Web. Google markets itself through its products…

Google’s Growth So Slow It’s Considering Advertising

Henry Blodget | October 2, 2008 9:38 PM

Now we know Google’s big growth days are over:

WSJ: [I]n recent months some of the Internet company’s executives have been pushing for the company to overcome its aversion to paid advertising. That has created some conflict within Google, which is maturing and looking to reinvigorate its slowing growth…