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Why the iPhone will not fail

John C. Dvorak's been saying he fears Apple's iPhone rollout may fail because its sales partner drops the ball.  On several episodes of Leo Laporte's "This Week in TWIT", the Cranky Geek has said he thinks Cingular's marketing and retail units coulds sink the iPhone by inept sales and advertising efforts.

Not to worry, Dvorak.org.blog.  It won't happen.  The evidence is all around us.  In the some-100 Apple Stores. The customer experience is excellent.  The result of Steve Jobs' laser focus on service has led those stores to account for 50% of the company's sales. Sales in the outlets exceed the industry average for jewelry stores, greater than $325/foot.

Cingular "won" the iPhone deal by giving into Jobs on a number of points, which others, like Verizon, refused to do.  There can be no question that one of them was the in-store sales effort.  Verizon reportedly didn't want to cut its retail partners, like Best Buy and Circuit City, out of iPhone sales.  But that's what Apple wanted. ZDNet's Russsell Shaw explains.

Jobs always wants control.  He wants this new product to be well showcased, well demonstrated, and well merchandised.  Jobs will make sure of it. MacRumors reports the company is already at work preparing for debut day.

Google's talks

Google (GOOG) announced a speaker series at its new Manhattan office.  Technology leaders "will share their unique perspectives in our offices, with beer and wine provided," according to the Google Blog.  "Topics ranging from the history of software development to the future of the Internet" will be on the agenda.  First up will be Adam Bosworth, VP of engineering, on Jan. 29th.

Talk about a great HR move.  Can you think of a better way for a company, voraciously hiring great talent, to cast a net (no pun intended) to find new staffers? 

Google may "do no evil," but they sure can be sneaky.

Disclaimer: I own shares of Google.

What's next to be unplugged at Google?

The new guy at Valleywag is continuing to impress and entertain with his energy. Hearing that Google Answers is shutting down ("The first time search company has ever shuttered a service.) the Wag implies there must be other shoes to drop. Nick Denton points out Wikipedia lists the company's 85 specialized search engines, Web apps and other products, and fewer of five of which, he says, produce real money. "Maybe, belatedly, Google's management is imposing a little discipline on the search company's wayward staff," he writes. More "betas" to burst?

Disclaimer: I own shares of Google.

Google radio ads ready to roll

Google's next move to sell advertising off line may be just weeks away, according to Donna Bogatin, a blogger at ZDNet.  She posted that Google "is actively pitching Google Audio Ads and is claiming that it will be able to give advertisers access "to thousands of stations through Google's digital, automated platform." Google says its system talks to radio stations' traffic operations "to search for inventory that fits advertiser criteria," and will deliver information as ads are broadcast.

According to a slide from a presentation, posted by Bogatin, Google (GOOG) has deals in place with 800 stations, with coverage in 19 of the top 25 markets.  The slide identifies almost 700 outlets as "live."

One strength of the Google radio ad sales effort is how clean and automated it is.  Place an order for X  number of listeners in Y number of markets, the computers ping the stations and find the spots available, and you're done.  No messy details like having lunch with clients, leaving behind logoed coffee cups, or even shaking hands with a human.  Which, by the way, should be the strength of the local radio station.  But as consolidation has slashed staffs, and salespeople have become de facto program directors selling block time for weekend talk shows, Google's system, which appears super efficient, is more than a little attractive.

Mark Cuban could be expected to argue just the opposite, as he does in a posting about the state of newspapers.  If there is one advantage the print people have over the Net people, he says, it is a sales force that goes out into the business community and sells them on the benefits of advertising on your properties. "Google isn't going to send a sales rep to visit, or have an inside sales rep call on the local 5 store pizza, dress, toy, laser surgery, dentist, whatever chain of stores," Cuban wrote, "You are."

Cuban goes on to suggest that print sales people and even publishers even work with local advertisers to help them exploit the Internet, too. "There is very little chance the local Pizza chain or Body Repair shop knows how to use SEM correctly," Cuban said. "Those that try more often than not waste a ton of money trying to figure it out. Why not offer it up as a service?"

It may just be that Cuban's found a way to identify the dying media managers from the survivors.  Those who are in touch with the customers, and those who are not.

Disclaimer: I own shares of Google.

Google Co-Op shares the wealth

There is so much interest in search, that Google's offering everybody a way to cash in.

Google Co-Op lets you put search on your Web site or blog and define its sources.  After all, if you know a lot about Pez, presumably visitors to your site want to know more, and you - as the Pez expert - can help them find information in all the right places.  So, you define your own Pez search engine.  Visitors use it and stay on your site longer because they now have less need to do their own Google searches.  You’ve become their search editor. Google serves Pez links along with ads, and you get deposits into your AdSense account.  Everybody wins.

Especially Google, of course.  By encouraging more people to do more searches, Google (GOOG) creates more places for advertisers to put their messages.  That may, or may not, be a good thing. Stewart Barry, a media and Internet analyst at San Francisco-based ThinkEquity Partners told the Wall Street Journal that marketers are looking to spend 15% to 20% of their budgets on digital media, but right now are spending less than 5%.  There aren't enough online/new media-savvy marketing people to place the business.

Web sites win, too.  Rex Hammock, a Nashville-based old- and new-media publisher, spent several thousand dollars about a year ago to buy a Google mini to give his readers the same sort of customized intelligent-searches.  Is he upset that, a year later, Google's making this a free service?  Not in the least.  "We've garnered a vast amount of insight from analyzing the search patterns of our users," he blogged.  Now every Web publisher using Google Co-Op can gather this data, too.

Disclaimer: I own shares of Google (GOOG).

Google's Mac blog

If you've ever had a Mac, you know every announcement of new software seemed to have as its final words, "A Macintosh version will be introduced later this year."  Google has heard your cry, and is making a move suggesting Mac-users will get some respect.  It's launched the Mac Blog at http://googlemac.blogspot.com/. "Insights into product and technology news and our culture."

Disclaimer: I own shares of Google.  I used to have Macs (and Apples).

GoogTube: More than exploding Mentos

The blogosphere is choking on analysis of the Google-YouTube deal.  I will not add to the noise.  But I will suggest you stop reading everybody else's opinion and see for yourself at least one element that may have persuaded Google that $1.65 billion was somehow reasonable.

Start with the understanding that, as Andy Kessler blogged, Google (GOOG) is an advertising shark.  It needs to keep moving forward, growing its audience, to deliver nourishment to its advertisers.  Kessler seems to believe, by the way, the YouTube deal is a sign of trouble in the Googleplex.  You can read his thoughts after you finish mine.)

So, if You Tube can give Google 100 million more page views a day, Google will fill them with ads.  For instance, you want to search for video that spoofs the Von age TV ads, chances are, in a Google-ized You Tube world, you'll also see text ads pitching Vonage (VG), Packet8 and Sun Rocket.  Further, what's to prevent Von age or Packet8 from uploading their own TV commercials?  So far as I can tell, nothing.  IBM already did it.

Now take it a million steps farther. Television continues to be the number one advertising medium.  But small businesses (which Google and every other search engine keeps trying to reach) can't afford it.  But they can afford video.  It's already happening.

Kristine Partridge, an associate real estate broker in Utah, is uploading her own video commercials, to YouTube.  So are members of her team.  The spots look like they're produced in a conference room, with the camera balanced on a few books, and pointed at Kristine.

"Bungletronics" used YouTube to market his six-year-old car. Home video equipment, a little software, and he's on TV, sort of.

In other words, YouTube.com is already being used for marketing and advertising.  Millions of advertisers, already using Ad Words for text ads, now will get the option to run on You Tube pages where they can increase the impact with their own clips. Video is a powerful marketing medium.  Google has an incredible number of advertiser clients.  You Tube has 72 million users a month.

Now, say after me:  YouTube is more than videos of exploding Mentos.

Disclaimer: I own shares of Google.

Google News does "olds"

Searching for the oldies is Google's latest offering. 

A new link at Google News (GOOG) gives instant access to 200 years of news archives from newspapers including The New York Times and Wall Street Journal, magazines including Time, and citations from Lexis Nexis and other news aggregators.  Links can be displayed in a timeline format.

Chris Sherman at SearchEngineWatch quotes Anurag Acharya, Google distinguished engineer, who worked on the project, saying, "The goal of this service is to allow people to search and explore how history unfolded."  Some stories are available through subscription services such as Factiva, and will require payment for access. “We're not focusing on monetization yet,” Acharya, also told The New York Times.

Allen Weiner, an analyst at Gartner Group expects Google will begin collecting payments for the archival sellers.  He believes Google Checkout will be the vehicle and that video archives will be added. “They have to convince CBS News to make Edward R. Murrow available,” he told The Times.

Disclaimer: I own shares of Google.

"Saddest days" at AOL

Ted Leonsis says these are tough, dark times at AOL, thanks to the stupid posting of hundreds of thousands of search tracks. Less than a week after detailing plans for yet another "new" AOL, the company gets another black eye. 

The vice chairman of AOL blogged, "I personally feel just awful about it. After we have worked so hard to build our users' trust and protect their privacy for so many years, a single mistake can put it all at risk." More.

The furor has cooled.  At least it's no longer the lead at TechMeme.  Google's Eric Schmidt says the "data spill" has not caused his company to stop storing such information. "We are reasonably satisfied ... that this sort of thing would not happen at Google (GOOG), although you can never say never."  Schmidt also said he hadn't discussed the incident with AOL (TWX) execs, "but questioned his business partner's judgment," an Associated Press report added.

Disclaimer: I own shares of both AOL and Google.

Google covers its sandbox

Now you can Google (GOOG) it, now you can't. A blogger in the United Kingdom says he wormed his way into Googe's "sandbox" and discovered what could be a dozen or more new services in development.  Tony Ruscoe said they had names like "Google Real Estate Search," "Mobile Marketplace," and "Google Online Assessment." Here's a screenshot of Ruscoe's finds.
 

He also found "New Service (AKA 'Workplace') and speculated, "Maybe this is the big one people have been waiting for; the one that will really kill Microsoft Office.  All I know is that it’s got something to do with OpenOffice.org – so that’s why it could be the killer..."

Since Ruscoe posted about his find at sandbox.google.com, which now takes you to the new "Google Checkout."

Predictably, Ruscoe's item was Digged by thousands of people. In good humor, Ruscoe reported his "test" account at Google has been closed. He blogged, "I guess that’s fair enough."

It really is amazing how much speculation and interest there is about Google.  Perhaps it's because the company is so secretive.  Truth is that, like Microsoft, Google rolls out new products which are not killers initially, (like Google Spreadsheet), but then over time the products are tuned.

Does the media pay too much attention of Google's "next big things"? Post your answer here.

Disclaimer: I own shares of Google.