NEW YORK--Web pioneer and conference honcho Tim O'Reilly warned the audience at the Web 2.0 Expo here on Tuesday afternoon that he thinks "we're headed into another ugly time." Namely, everybody is just being really nasty to each other. And it makes his hippie soul hurt.
For example, Rupert "Dr. Evil" Murdoch keeps threatening to pull News Corp.'s pay wall-guarded content from Google, perhaps offering an exclusive deal to another search engine for one hundred billion dollars (give or take a few bucks).
Those ubiquitous URL-shortening toolbars are throwing Web addresses behind a cloak of invisibility, O'Reilly said, and they "don't let you navigate freely like the Web used to work." With Google's Chrome hurling itself into the mix, the browser and operating-system wars are starting to look less "Mean Girls" and more "Aliens vs. Predator."
But O'Reilly's attitude isn't "bring it on, and get me a large popcorn with extra butter, while you're at it." Rather, he hinted that at least in some cases, he's willing to embrace Google as a big, cuddly, benevolent dictator in the midst of it all. It's "a monopoly that's a service of value to users," he said, adding that generally, when Google makes a product with the primary goal of one-upping the competition--Knol vs. Wikipedia, Checkout vs. PayPal--it's not a success.
That's probably because, at least right now, among all the giant robots stomping about the series of tubes, Google is the one that most resembles O'Reilly's vision of the "open Web." In a blog post prior to his speech, he predicted that Microsoft could take over this role. Or not. Either way, he insisted that "it's time for developers to take a stand."
Setting off this kind of electric shock in the Web's punditocracy is a great way to drum up attention and newsworthiness that doesn't have anything to do with philosophizing about the recession, extolling the possibilities of the real-time streaming Web, or predicting which dot-com figurehead is going to be the most plastered at South by Southwest this year. Thank goodness! That stuff was getting so boring!
And O'Reilly's rallying cry has already gathered reactions. Barbarian Group executive Rick Webb, for one, posted a colorful retaliatory blog post, in which he said that "setting aside the 'boo hoo, the Internet is becoming a bunch of walled gardens' arguments, when rational people have conversations about how to make the Web actually usable and not 95 percent piracy, spam, and fraud, almost every discussion starts with the proposition that there is no other realistic option but to chuck the whole thing and start over."
Of course, the Web should be in a state of "war." When have things been any different? It's a hub of innovation, competition, and constant change, and I think we all knew that already. The barrier to entry is low enough so that if there's a glaring problem with something, users will flock to whoever can create a better alternative. In fact, O'Reilly brought that up on Tuesday, when he talked about expensive in-car GPS navigation systems.
"The turn-by-turn directions from TeleAtlas cost $99 [on the iPhone], but Google is giving it away for free. This is a natural kind of extension for Google. I don't think Google is being evil here by being disruptive," O'Reilly said. "That's a massive user win, even though it is incredibly damaging to some existing companies and some existing business models. When Google offers free speech recognition, [that would be] an amazing win."
Is that legitimate innovation? Yes. But let's hope the "win" doesn't stop there. If Google manages to throw a sucker punch to Apple, Microsoft, or whoever else by offering something once-pricey for free, I should hope that the rest of the industry makes sure that it doesn't grow too complacent.
So let's get this straight: monopolies are bad, unless they're "nice" ones on behalf of companies that extol the virtues of Razor scooters, wheatgrass smoothies, and lava lamps. Competition is great, as long as everybody's nice to each other.
Doesn't quite make sense to me. But, hey, it's his show.
SAN FRANCISCO--Google continued to lay the groundwork Wednesday for an antitrust defense in the event that the federal government decides to take a formal look at its core business.
U.S. regulators have been scrutinized parts of the company in recent months, probing topics such as Google CEO Eric Schmidt's role on Apple's board of directors and Google's proposed settlement with book publishers on Google Books. In that vein, the company one month ago kicked off an effort to burnish its image, calling on the press, members of Congress, ad agencies, and publishers to convince them that when it comes to its overall business, Google is a not a threat.
Inside a conference room in Google's San Francisco office, executives ran through essentially the same presentation leaked last month by the consumer activist group Consumer Watchdog, focusing most of their efforts on trying to paint a picture of Google as just one part of a large Internet ecosystem, as opposed to a dominant search giant.
"We do have to win users back on a regular basis," said Dana Wagner, senior competition counsel at Google. "We want to be the next Google; we're not done with search."
Even though its name is widely used as a verb to describe "Internet search," Google argued that it faces competition from places like Amazon and eBay, where potential customers also search for information about a product. It likewise compared its earnings data--revenues, profits, and lobbying budget--to some of America's largest technology companies, such as Microsoft, AT&T, Verizon, and IBM, with far more resources than Google.
Executives also noted that Google competes for advertising dollars against essentially the entire world. Television, newspapers, magazines, billboards, and other Internet companies all want advertising dollars too, and Google's share of the total ad revenue market is just 3 percent, said Peter Greenberger, industry relations manager. Its share of the total Internet ad revenue is 30 percent, the largest single piece of that pie.
These are all clear signs that Google would attempt to paint the relevant market in any antitrust case it may face in the future as extremely broad. That's one of the first battlegrounds in which lawyers for Google and the Justice Department would face off, and really a key part of any antitrust case.
Several years ago, enterprise software-maker Oracle successfully made a similar argument in an antitrust fight over the eventual acquisition of rival PeopleSoft. While Justice lawyers attempted to narrowly define the market for software suites intended for multinational corporations, Oracle argued that the Web and upstart competitors made such a narrow definition impossible.
There's little question of Google's dominance in search. Its share of the search market is around 64 percent, and its revenue share of search advertising is higher, in the high 60s or low 70s, a Google representative estimated. Microsoft is making a renewed commitment to competing against Google in search that might have already paid off in the form of a point or two of market share gain, but that only gives it 11.1 percent.
So there's a question how tough the competition really is. Some wonder if Yahoo, the distant second in search, is willing to take on Google in its back yard under new CEO Carol Bartz.
Another point made by Google is that competitive search providers on the Internet "are just a click away," a phrase that has been repeated ad nauseum by Google executives since its goodwill tour began in May. It resonates because it's true: anyone dissatisfied with their search results can easily type yahoo.com or bing.com into their browsers, something Microsoft is counting on with its huge ad campaign around Bing. Unlike desktop software or corporate applications, there's little "lock-in" on a search engine.
However, any scrutiny on this score is likely to center around competition in search advertising, not search queries, as was the case last year when Yahoo and Google got within hours of finalizing a deal to let Google's AdSense technology place ads on Yahoo's sites before Google backed out over concern the Justice Department would scuttle the deal.
Wagner insisted that the potential Yahoo deal "had nothing to do with search. It was an advertising partnership." Google backed out of the deal because it realized it would have to take on a very public fight with a government agency to make the deal happen, and it was worried about the effect on its brand should it go down that road, he said.
That comes to one of the core parts of Google's argument: the company is trying to make the case that because of its principles and philosophies, it can be trusted to do the right thing despite its position in the market.
"If there was ever a situation in which Google had a legal fight with an agency, it's because we were doing something that was good for our users and good for the economy," Wagner said. "There's a lot of companies for which I wouldn't do this job. I would not be doing this at Halliburton."
The Justice Department may not buy that line of thinking. The new assistant attorney general for antitrust, Christine Varney, was quoted last year as saying, "I think we're going to continually to see a problem, potentially, with Google, who I think so far has acquired a monopoly in Internet online advertising lawfully."
Now, in the very next sentence, Varney was careful to note: "I do not think they have done anything other than be a spectacular, innovative company." Nonetheless, there's a reason why Google is on a charm offensive.
Google is working with a titan of traditional journalism to help promote citizen journalism.
YouTube announced Monday that it has partnered with the Pulitzer Center to create a journalism contest designed to unearth the best news videographers.
Contestants have until October 5 to submit news clips three-minutes long or less that must focus on stories largely overlooked or ignored by traditional media. The Pulitzer Center will judge the competition and plans to trim the contestants down to 10 finalists following the initial round.
YouTube viewers will eventually choose the winner.
The winner will receive a $10,000 grant for travel abroad and the opportunity to work with the Pulitzer Center. When the field of contestants gets down to five, they will be given Sony cameras to work with.
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