Big companies act differently than startups. It’s just a truth, no matter how hard managers may fight against it. Late last week Google got the ultimate big company attribute: A serious US antitrust complaint. My finger-in-the-air analysis of this move is that Google will be fine, for the reasons the company itself has laid out. Watch out Facebook, in five or so years, it’ll be your turn – right after Apple.
Supporting choice, ensuring economic opportunity (Google) The company’s response to the FTC action announced last week. In short: “We’re open, we’re transparent, and we’ve forced no one to use our products.”
Google’s SOE (Strategy of Everything) (MondayNote) I do not agree that Google’s main driving focus is to “sell Internet advertising.” I’m quite certain that is not what gets Larry Page up in the morning. But sometimes companies act in one way, even as leadership drives another. This analysis assumes Google is, fundamentally, out of control.
The Verbalizer: A Fun Hack on Top of Google Voice Search (RWW) Why did I link to this? To remind us of how important speech is going to be in our lives soon. Sounds funny just writing that, but there you have it.
Facebook To Launch Crowdsourced Ad Format Next Week (FC) How the Facebook “Comment” ad came to be. We did this with Dice about four years ago at FM. Then again, we’re not Facebook.
INFOGRAPHIC: Top 200 U.S. Brands Ranked by 2010 Ad Spend (AdAge) This is one of the many “keep on scrollin’ down” format infographics that seem to be in vogue.
How The Food Network Suddenly Spiked In Popularity & Why comScore Isn’t Buying It (SEL) Gray hat approaches to winning in publishing aren’t going to win long term. A long, long time ago I wrote a piece about “traffic of good intent.” It’s still valid, even more so today. As SEL writes: “It’s about publishers potentially buying unqualified traffic to deliver ad views to their advertisers when those advertisers are specifically buying access to that publisher’s audience.”
11 Tools To Track Customer Use On Your Website (OPENForum) Every so often, you remember that this game is hard, and it’s nice to have a How To.
Slow Down To Speed Up (Feld) Amen, Brad. It’s so hard to do, though. Especially when you have to write Signal Sunday night.
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