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Commentary from George Colony - Forrester. He has been referring to xInternet for years, and thats been hijacked by Web 2.0.
Forrester Research: My View: The Google Future
Last year, I wrote that Google would fade. I said that search's lack of stickiness, combined with crushing competition from Microsoft and Yahoo! and a changing Internet, would mute the company's prospects.
I was wrong.
But not for the reasons that you think I'm wrong. You're reading in every business magazine on the planet right now about Google's lead in Internet advertising, the $100 billion valuation, all of the brilliant people joining the company, the company's strong financial performance, and how smart Sergey and Larry are.
All of that is true. But none of the conventional and obvious wisdom captures the real importance of Google. At the risk of sounding overly dramatic, I believe that Google will revolutionize the software business. It's a complex story, but I'll try to keep it simple . . .
Most of us use two types of computer software: 1) programs like Microsoft Word or Oracle Financials, and 2) Web files — like a corporate intranet or Amazon. You can perform many tasks with programs because they are executable; they contain millions of lines of computer code that enable you to underline words, calculate profit and loss, check spelling, etc. You pay for programs — ostensibly to defray the high cost of writing all of those lines of computer code.
In comparison, the Web files we use are like documents. When you click on a link for a site, the server at that site sends you pages of information. Web files are mostly static — they can't do much compared with programs. Their limited functions (buy buttons, search) don't execute on your computer — the server that you are connected to does most of the work.
So it's pretty simple: Programs can do things; Web pages are static documents. Here's where the plot thickens.
Forrester has predicted that Web pages will get replaced by programs — we call this executable Internet (X Internet). In the future, when you click on your bank's site, servers will download a program to your computer, not static pages. Once that program is installed, you will be able to "converse" with your bank, run financial models, analyze your net worth — do much more than you could have with old Web pages.
Google will be the company that leads this revolution. It is already writing programs like Google Toolbar and Google Desktop Search that run on your computer but blur the divide between your desktop and the Internet. And they are very powerful programs. Do a test. Search in Microsoft Outlook for an email from a friend — for me the search took 21 seconds. Then try the same search in Google Desktop Search: 5 seconds.
Google is also leading a pricing revolution. Google's programs are free, funded through advertising and syndication. This is a prescient move. I foresee a world in which even enterprise applications like financials, ERP, and supply chain software will be advertising-funded.
So here's Google's playbook: 1) have the best search; 2) have more of the world to search than anyone else through the digitization of university libraries, earth images, maps, etc.; 3) attract the most advertising and syndication; enabling the company to 4) give all of its software away for free; which enables it to 5) change the rules and economics of the software business and define the future through its pioneering work in X Internet.
What It Means No. 1: Large corporations should get Google executable Internet programs onto their corporate desktops. Google Desktop Search, Google Toolbar, and Google Maps will drive productivity. In addition, this move gets corporate IT ready for a world in which free executables will begin to proliferate. IT staffs will learn to incorporate Google's programs and application programming interfaces into corporate Web experiences.
What It Means No. 2: Google' stock price may not be insane. When you are restructuring an entire industry, your best years as a company typically lie ahead.
What It Means No. 3: Vista (formerly Longhorn) had better be fantastic, and Microsoft had better be able to re-spark its culture of derivative innovation. Bringing back stock options may be the first stop on that journey — as a way to re-attract the best and the brightest. I predict that Microsoft, under attack from advertising-funded software (and other factors like open source), will lose its monopoly-driven 25% net profits over the next several years, having to settle for 13%-15% nets (still astronomical compared with the average for most large corporations).
What It Means No. 4: The coming of executable Internet fundamentally changes the software and Internet landscape. Microsoft is an obvious loser. The closed, centralized architectures of Oracle and SAP will get a bunch of new salesforce.com-type challengers over the next five years. Amazon, AOL, eBay, and Yahoo! will be stuck with old Web-style experiences — not as easy, fast, and customizable as the executable Internet experience. That is why Google may be so dangerous for its Internet brethren — it knows programming and they don't.
In the past year, Google has proven to me that it is way more than just a great search company. It can jump into the program game — and play under a completely new set of rules: executable Internet and free. Unless Larry and Sergey lose focus and the company's charter devolves into esoteric pet projects, Google is going to change the world.
George
October 31, 2005 at 01:57 PM in Portals | Permalink | TrackBack (740) | Top of page | Blog Home
Wednesday October 26, 8:00 am ET
SAS, Peppers & Rogers Group study explores banks' use of customer value metrics
LAS VEGAS--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Oct. 26, 2005-- Retail banks today remain locked in measuring success by product lines rather than by customer value. Yet to reap true competitive advantage, they must refocus their strategies on customers rather than on products. That's the conclusion of a new research study announced today by SAS and Peppers & Rogers Group.
SAS, the leader in business intelligence, offers a host of powerful software solutions that help companies turn customer data into valuable customer intelligence. Peppers & Rogers Group is the recognized global leader in customer strategy consulting. The study, Measuring Customer Value in Retail Banking, also explored challenges and opportunities that retail banks experience in developing and integrating customer value metrics into their product-based business models.
The financial services industry has been widely recognized as a leader in customer intimacy. Retail banks in particular are often praised as pioneers in deploying best-in-class strategy and technology to develop profitable customer relationships. Much of this progress has been built on gaining insight into customer value and then using this insight for strategic and tactical decision making.
The SAS and Peppers & Rogers Group study surveyed 48 executives from 18 U.S. retail banks ranging in asset size from $12 billion to $1.3 trillion. It asked participants about the application of customer value metrics, the process for measuring customer value, and the impact of customer value metrics on their organization.
Measuring customer value is part of a broader approach to building lasting and profitable relationships called customer value management. This approach includes measuring and understanding the current and future value of a customer, across multiple products, and then acting on that knowledge, whether through out-bound sales and marketing efforts like marketing campaigns, or in-bound customer service interactions. The goal of customer value management is to align the entire organization to enhance the relationship between the bank and the customer across multiple products.
Survey Says ...
According to the study, retail banks reported a high degree of confidence in their customer value models - the average accuracy score was 7.6 on a 10-point scale. While customer value models are perceived to be accurate, their value to the organization has not been fully realized. Per the study, while more than half (52 percent) of respondents reported that using customer value metrics for decision making drives success at their organizations, 44 percent were undecided. And when asked if the use of customer value metrics provided a competitive advantage, only 34 percent said yes, while 33 percent said no and another 33 percent were uncertain.
"Many retail banks have yet to realize the full potential of integrating customer value metrics into their business models," said Jeff Gilleland, financial services strategist at SAS. "While banks have a good understanding of a customer's value across multiple products, they have yet to link this insight to 'customer potential' and then implement coordinated customer development plans across products and channels. Competitive advantage lies in a bank's ability to integrate customer knowledge, which only that bank has about the customer, and then to act on that knowledge in ways that create intimacy with the customers that matter most."
While all the retail bank executives surveyed recognize the potential importance to their organizations of measuring customer value, the way customer value measures are being used and the perceived benefit varies between institutions. On one hand, banks are actively calculating customer value: every single executive surveyed reported that their bank calculates customer value, and has been using this key metric for decision making for an average of nearly seven years. Senior executives at retail banks view -- and use -- customer value strategically. Two-thirds (67 percent) of those surveyed said that senior managers at their banks use customer value in decision making, and more than three-quarters (78 percent) use customer value in strategic planning.
Refocus strategy on customers
While retail banks have long known that growing customer loyalty, customer profitability and share-of-wallet are the keys to competitive advantage, the survey discovered that only 17 percent of retail banks are organized around customer value.
And even though most retail banks today use customer value to generate insight into customer opportunities, the vast majority of customer value applications tend to be tactical rather than strategic. Nearly three-quarters (72 percent) of the surveyed executives noted that their banks use customer value metrics to help measure the effectiveness of sales campaigns, while only 17 percent use them in measuring the overall success of the organization.
"Retail banks must refocus their strategy from product-out to customer-in," said Michael Lengel, principal with Peppers & Rogers Group. "Customers are the scarcest resource in business today, even scarcer than capital. A sound customer strategy helps banks to focus on not just any customers, but the right customers, i.e., those who offer the highest value today and tomorrow. In most cases, this involves divesting the customers that no longer fit within the strategic focus, allowing banks to align customer-facing activities around customers with the highest value and growth potential."
Perhaps the most significant reason that banks have not realized the full potential of tracking customer value is related to management accountability. According to the research, only 6 percent of the executives surveyed hold anyone responsible for changes in customer value. "This lack of ownership creates miscues at the organizational level," said Lengel. "For instance, most retail banks incent and reward employee performance based on selling as many products as possible. But why should a segment manager in credit cards care about increasing customer value if she's rewarded on the number of accounts opened per quarter? Ownership must happen at the management level and the customer-facing level."
What conclusions can one draw from the survey results? While customer value metrics are becoming imbedded in retail banking business models for decision making, banks remain locked in measuring organizational success by product lines of business.
"This study highlights the fact that retail banks must refocus their strategy on customers and customer value management rather than solely on products and product management," said Gilleland, the SAS industry strategist. "By doing so, banks can build strategies that increase profitability and result in a stronger customer franchise. But until they do so, competitive advantage will remain elusive and out of reach."
White paper on study available
For a free white paper exploring the findings of the joint SAS and Peppers & Rogers Group banking study and offering advice on ways to measure and analyze customer value to capture competitive advantage, visit http://www.sas.com/clv.
Today's announcement of survey results was made at the BetterManagement LIVE Worldwide Business Conference (http://www.BetterManagement.com/LIVE), which addresses critical business management issues from around the world. BetterManagement LIVE brings together more than 1,000 attendees from the public and private sectors to share insights and knowledge. More than 85 speakers in seven focused tracks represent a broad spectrum of executives, academics, consultants and financial experts.
About Peppers & Rogers Group
Peppers & Rogers Group (http://www.t1to1.com) is a management consulting firm recognized as the world's leading authority on customer-based business strategy. Founded in 1993 by Don Peppers and Martha Rogers, Ph.D., the firm is dedicated to helping companies compete and win by identifying differences within their customer base, and using that insight to maximize the value of each and every customer relationship. Peppers & Rogers Group is a division of Minneapolis-based Carlson Marketing Group. The firm maintains a global client list that includes AT&T Wireless, Bayer Corporation, Bentley Systems, BMW of North America, LLC, Boise Office Solutions, DuPont, Ford Motor Company, Hewlett-Packard, Jaguar Cars, Lincoln-Mercury, Lowe's, Merial, Microsoft Business Solutions, Roche, SAP, Scottish Power, Telesp, The United States Postal Service, Verizon, Visa International, Wolters Kluwer and Wyeth Nutrition.
About SAS
SAS (http://www.sas.com) is the market leader in providing a new generation of business intelligence software and services that create true enterprise intelligence. SAS solutions are used at 40,000 sites - including 96 of the top 100 companies on the FORTUNE Global 500® - to develop more profitable relationships with customers and suppliers; to enable better, more accurate and informed decisions; and to drive organizations forward. SAS is the only vendor that completely integrates leading data warehousing, analytics and traditional BI applications to create intelligence from massive amounts of data. For nearly three decades, SAS has been giving customers around the world The Power to Know®.
SAS and all other SAS Institute Inc. product or service names are registered trademarks or trademarks of SAS Institute Inc. in the USA and other countries. ® indicates USA registration. Other brand and product names are trademarks of their respective companies.
Copyright © 2005 SAS Institute Inc. Cary, NC, USA. All rights reserved.
Contact:
SAS Institute Inc.
Angela Lipscomb, 919-531-2525
Angela.Lipscomb@sas.com
www.sas.com/presscenter
or
Peppers & Rogers Group/Carlson Marketing Group
Steve Solmonson, 763-212-3215
ssolmonson@carlson.com
http://www.1to1.com
Source: SAS Institute Inc.
October 30, 2005 at 10:28 AM in Financial Services | Permalink | TrackBack (8) | Top of page | Blog Home
A market for ideas | Economist.com
Oct 20th 2005
From The Economist print edition
Intellectual-property protection can be good for the technology industry as well as for its customers, says Kenneth Cukier (interviewed here). But it requires careful handling
“The granting [of] patents ‘inflames cupidity’, excites fraud, stimulates men to run after schemes that may enable them to levy a tax on the public, begets disputes and quarrels betwixt inventors, provokes endless lawsuits...The principle of the law from which such consequences flow cannot be just.”
The Economist may have put it rather strongly in 1851, but its disapproval of patents represented conventional wisdom at the time. A century earlier, Adam Smith had described them as necessary evils, to be handed out sparingly, and many other economists have since echoed his reservations. Patents amount to temporary monopolies on useful new inventions.
In recent years intellectual property has received a lot more attention because ideas and innovations have become the most important resource, replacing land, energy and raw materials. As much as three-quarters of the value of publicly traded companies in America comes from intangible assets, up from around 40% in the early 1980s. “The economic product of the United States”, says Alan Greenspan, the chairman of America's Federal Reserve, has become “predominantly conceptual”. Intellectual property forms part of those conceptual assets.
In information technology and telecoms in particular, the role of intellectual property has changed radically. What used to be the preserve of corporate lawyers and engineers in R&D labs has been speedily embraced by the boardroom. “Intellectual-asset management” now figures as a strategic business issue. In America alone, technology licensing revenue accounts for an estimated $45 billion annually; worldwide, the figure is around $100 billion and growing fast.
Technology firms are seeking more patents, expanding their scope, licensing more, litigating more and overhauling their business models around intellectual property. Yet paradoxically, as some companies batten down the hatches, other firms have found ways of making money by opening up their treasure-chest of innovation and sharing it with others. The rise of open-source software is just one example. And a new breed of companies has appeared on the periphery of today's tech firms, acting as intellectual-property intermediaries and creating a market for ideas.
Mind the keep-out signs
At the same time, however, the legitimacy of many patents granted is in question as patent offices struggle with the huge increase in demand. Over the past decade the number of patent applications has nearly doubled and continues to climb. Much of that growth has been in the IT and telecoms field: in America alone, that sector's overall share of patents has increased from around 30% in 1990 to almost 40% today. Also climbing, alas, is the number of lawsuits over patent infringement, the cost of litigation, and the amount of money plaintiffs are winning.
Meanwhile, emerging technology powerhouses such as China and India are competing to move up from lower-end work such as hardware manufacturing and software coding to more sophisticated projects requiring their own innovation. This could pose serious challenges to today's incumbents. The number of patents granted at China's patent office has trebled in the past four years alone.
“Intellectual property has become more central to the industry,” says Greg Papadopoulos, chief technology officer of Sun Microsystems. “I don't know if that is a function of a mature industry, or simply a confused one.”
Licensed to make money
The facts and figures speak for themselves. IBM alone now earns over $1 billion annually from its intellectual-property portfolio. HP's revenue from licensing has quadrupled in less than three years, to over $200m this year. Microsoft is on course to file 3,000 patents this year, when in 1990 it received a mere five. Earlier this year it set up an entirely new corporate division to exchange its technology for cash or equity in start-up firms. Nokia has recently started licensing its technology to other firms and plans to do more. And some companies, such as ARM, a British firm that designs the blueprints for microchips used in wireless devices, do little other than create and sell intellectual property.
According to a survey of business executives last year by McKinsey, a consultancy, 54% of companies saw growth in licensing of 10-50% between 2000 and 2002. Almost 75% of executives say they expect to buy as well as sell more licences over the next two to five years, and 43% expect a dramatic increase in their licensing revenue. And they think the market is still embryonic. “Many companies generate a lot of intellectual property and do not capture the value from it,” says Jay Jubas of McKinsey.
The new predominance of intellectual property in technology industries is fed by a number of broader industry trends. First, IT and telecoms have become so complex that there is a greater willingness to accept the innovations of others. Gone are the days when vertically integrated firms handled every step of a product, from initial design to final sale. Now, a small army of specialist firms focus on narrow portions of technology, using intellectual-property rights to protect their inventions when they are licensed out.
Second, as many new technologies quickly turn into commodities, firms increasingly rely on innovation to remain competitive. Yet the return on investment in R&D is short-lived because more people innovate at a far faster pace than before. That means margins have shrivelled, explains Ragu Gurumurthy of Adventis, an IT and telecoms consultancy. “How to recoup the cost of innovation? By licensing the technology,” he says.
Third, customers are demanding “interoperability” and common standards rather than proprietary systems, which means different firms' technologies must work together smoothly. This often requires pooling patents or cross-licensing agreements.
Fourth, generating intellectual property is less capital-intensive than other aspects of the IT businesses because it relies mainly on people rather than bricks, mortar and machinery. That makes it attractive to many start-up firms. Venture capitalists often demand that firms patent technology, both to block rivals and to have assets to sell in case the firm flounders. This was particularly apparent during the internet boom in 2000. “In addition to the dotcom bubble, we had a patent bubble,” says Mark Webbink of Red Hat, a firm that sells Linux, an open-source operating system.
Companies cannot simply turn their back on what is happening in intellectual property. Even if they refuse to play the game, they may be unwittingly infringing someone else's patents because there are so many more of them around. Unless firms have patents of their own to assert so they can reach a cross-licensing agreement (often with money changing hands too), they will be in trouble. Thus many companies are acquiring large numbers of patents for purely defensive reasons, for use only to keep others' patent threats at bay.
Legally, the intellectual-property system covers four areas: copyrights (used to protect artistic, musical or literary works); trademarks (for things like brands); patents (for inventions); and an ill-defined category of “trade secrets”, for practices that are kept confidential. The system provides legal protection against counterfeiters and copiers and is vital to many fields, such as biotechnology and nanotechnology. And it matters not only to companies: universities, too, have recently become big patent holders and licensers.
In IT and telecoms, the area of intellectual property that is creating particular upheaval is patents (see article). This is because patents confer a “negative right” to exclude others from using the same technique; yet information technology and telecommunications rely on “network effects”, meaning that as more people use a system, it becomes that much more useful. To make the most of such network effects, interoperability between different technologies is essential. This can be achieved either by a single standard set by a dominant firm (which tends to generate resistance from customers and competitors), or by using a mixture of different technologies, with the patent system providing legal protection for inventions.
The more the merrier
As the system of intellectual property evolves, the ethos seems to be that if a little is good, then more is better. That is to say, if some property rights on inventions are beneficial, then increasing those rights—in scope, strength or duration—will increase the benefits. But that is a large assumption. There is even a body of evidence to suggest it is flatly wrong.
The technology industry faces the question of whether today's abundance of patents, rather than lubricating the gears of innovation, may be clogging them up. Already, businesses are having to negotiate with other firms in order to do basic things such as reading files from different proprietary formats; and the design of new technology products now involves lawyers as well as engineers. The proliferation of patents might prove a serious encumbrance to businesses, just as travellers along the Rhine in medieval Europe were slowed down by having to pay a toll at every castle.
James Boyle, a legal scholar at Duke Law School in North Carolina, claims that the current increase in intellectual-property rights represents nothing less than a second “enclosure movement”. In the first enclosures, in 18th- and 19th-century Britain, the commons—open fields used by many, belonging to all, owned by none—were fenced in, and nearly all land became private property. By analogy, the granting of property rights on ideas, to the extent it is happening today, is plundering the intellectual commons of our public domain.
Others see the expansion of intellectual-property rights as hugely beneficial, leading not only to more innovation but to more openness. The standard justification for the patent system is that it provides an incentive for innovation, allowing the inventor to reap rewards by protecting the work from imitators who would otherwise hitch a free ride on the investment. But that is a simplification. The initial intention was in fact to make inventions available to the public as well.
Before the 18th century, innovations were mainly kept secret through trade guilds. Sometimes monarchs capriciously granted indefinite exclusive rights to someone they favoured. Intellectual-property law was meant to remedy this by requiring the invention to be vetted by experts, limiting the right to a set period and making knowledge more widely accessible through public disclosure. Its development was part of the drive towards democracy and capitalism and the abolition of royal privileges and monopolies.
In principle, patents open up innovations in two ways. First, they confer only temporary rights; once patents expire or are abandoned, the intellectual property they are designed to protect passes into the public domain. Second, they require the details of the invention to be disclosed so they can be replicated. This permits follow-on innovation, which is essential for industrial progress.
More recently, as the patent system has evolved, it has been seen to provide other benefits. It leads to a degree of economic specialisation that makes business more efficient. Patents are transferable assets, and by the early 20th century they had made it possible to separate the person who makes an invention from the one who commercialises it. This recognised the fact that someone who is good at coming up with ideas is not necessarily the best person to bring those ideas to market.
Such specialisation is now so common that it is taken for granted. Semiconductors, the silicon chips that power digital devices, are typically designed by specialist firms that are good at engineering, but physically produced by other firms whose expertise lies in manufacturing. As the patent system has matured and licensing has become much more widespread, these transfers are turning business relationships on their head. Some economists argue that the growth of patent transactions is establishing a proper “market for technology”. The creation of any market takes time and trouble. When such an institution develops, those outside the system feel threatened by it and condemn it. Yet just as the banking system created a market for capital and the insurance industry created a market for risk, the growth of the patent system may be creating a market for innovation.
This provides a sort of “liquidity” to knowledge that did not previously exist, argue Ashish Arora, Andrea Fosfuri and Alfonso Gambardella in their 2001 book, “Markets for Technology, the Economics of Innovation and Corporate Strategy”. Seen that way, the evolution of the patent system in IT and telecoms is simply part of a broader movement to create an institutional mechanism for the transfer of ideas to fuel economic progress.
Mutually assured destruction
That is the context in which commercial battles are taking place in the technology industry today. The convergence of IT and telecoms is forcing companies to work together in new ways in order both to protect and exchange their technology. “How do you create a marketplace for ideas in that converged marketplace?” asks David Kaefer, director of intellectual-property licensing at Microsoft. “That is really the big question. In the past, two parties would haggle over a pound of wheat. Today, they haggle over the patent of the week.”
These markets for technology are expanding. For instance, 60% of technology and telecoms firms report an increase in licensing compared with the previous decade, and 70% report fewer obstacles to reaching such agreements, according to a survey by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development in 2004. “Intellectual property is the next asset class. Companies are creating a market,” says Eric Gillespie, the co-founder of ipIQ, one of the new crop of firms that are fuelling patent transactions.
But when talking to executives in the technology firms themselves, the language you hear most often is that of “the arms race” and “mutually assured destruction”. Companies amass patents as much to defend themselves against attacks by their competitors as to protect their inventions. Many technology companies have recently championed reform of the patent system to deal with spuriously awarded patents, licensing extortion and massive lawsuits. “There is a broad recognition in the US that the patent system, if not reformed, will...begin to impede American competitiveness around the world,” says Bruce Sewell, general counsel of Intel, the world's biggest chipmaker.
This survey will argue that, despite such adjustment problems, the huge changes in intellectual property currently taking place in the IT sector will in time produce more efficient markets. But what do the IT firms themselves make of it all?
October 29, 2005 at 10:29 PM in Business Models | Permalink | TrackBack (7) | Top of page | Blog Home
RED HERRING | Google Wallet May Debut Soon
An analyst says the search giant could roll out its online payment service for the holidays.
October 28, 2005
Google may launch its widely anticipated online payments system Google Wallet before the holidays, an analyst said Friday, giving the search giant yet another way to profit from its widening Web empire.
The service is expected to rival eBay’s PayPal, which allows web users to transfer money from, say, consumer to merchant without using a credit card. PayPal users have to credit their accounts using bank accounts or credit cards.
Google CEO Eric Schmidt has said Google Wallet will not be a PayPal clone. Unlike PayPal, analysts speculate that transactions would be limited to ones between businesses and consumers. The service would probably not allow more personal uses, such as a friend sending money to a friend. But like PayPal, it would likely be a stored value account.
Dan Schatt, an analyst with Celent, a research and consulting firm, predicts the search giant will release the service by the end of the first quarter, if not for the holidays. Google spokesperson Sonya Boralv said there was no announcement.
By launching this service, Google would likely control even a greater share of user activity on its site. With the pay-per-click model it popularized, the company collects a fee anytime a user clicks on an ad. With Google Wallet, a consumer that clicked on an ad for a product could purchase that product without leaving the site.
However, both the user and the merchant on the other end would have to sign up for the service in order for the transaction to take place, Mr. Schatt said. The money would move from the consumer’s account to the merchant’s, with Google pocketing a fee.
Google, which posted $1.05 billion in revenue in its most recent quarter, derives most of its revenue from ads, mainly pay-per-click ones (see Google Revenue Jumps 96%). With Google Wallet, the pay-per-click model could evolve into a pay-per-purchase model, suggesting that merchants would pay Google a fee for products purchased.
Big Payoff
The move would give Google a strong hold on its customers in more ways than one. The service would provide the company with an additional revenue stream. But it would also provide the search giant with information on customer purchase habits and patterns.
That information, in turn, could help the Mountain View, California, company with its targeted advertising service, AdWords. One possible sign that Google Wallet is imminent: A posting on the company-written Google AdWords blog asks users to transition from using an AdWords login to using a Google Accounts login before January 15.
There’s also potential for Google to blend the service with other enhancements it’s already made to its offerings. Mr. Schatt said Google could add its voice capabilities to the mix, allowing it to integrate pay-per-call ads, which are online ads that direct users who click on them to a call with a live person. eBay is planning a similar scheme with its recent acquisition of VoIP provider Skype.
Another big announcement expected from Google is a service that would take the search company into the world of classifieds and online selling (see Google May Take on eBay). That service, expected to be called Google Base, will marry well with any online payments service.
Google Wallet combined with Google Base could offer sites with voice buttons connecting buyers and sellers, making it a complete e-commerce platform. Google already runs Froogle, a shopping search engine, and offers a form-fill function on its toolbar that stores encrypted information.
The new offerings could end up making the firm a strong competitor to eBay, which boasts PayPal and Skype. It also means Google, the No. 1 search engine controlling more than one third of the search market, could become an entry point to a lot of e-commerce, something that no doubt would give rival portals much to worry about.
Users could search for a product on Google, discuss it with the seller, and buy it using Google wallet without leaving the site, or that’s the idea anyway.
October 29, 2005 at 10:18 PM in Portals | Permalink | TrackBack (17) | Top of page | Blog Home
Briliant quote from Forrester on success at eTrade.
Forrester Research: The Secret To E*TRADE's Cross-Sell Success"Our cross-sell secret? Set it up as functionality, not as a separate product." The single platform also enables E*TRADE to help customers manage their cash and credit holistically. The first tool is Cash Optimizer, which shows customers how they can reallocate cash held at E*TRADE to earn more interest. Loan Optimizer will launch by the end of 2005; and Total Optimizer will follow. "Additional products are part of the tool," said Lilien. "A user can choose to use it or not; it doesn't feel like a sale. It's not ‘cross-sell' — you're just using more of the functionality, using more tools."
October 29, 2005 at 10:07 PM in Financial Services | Permalink | TrackBack (13) | Top of page | Blog Home
IT News Online > N. America - Internet - Yahoo! Begins Beta Testing of New Yahoo! Mail
IT News Online Staff
2005-09-14
Yahoo! has begun beta testing a new version of Yahoo! Mail. The new Yahoo! Mail beta is said to provide a faster experience with enhanced functionality, such as drag-and-drop email organization and message preview.
Like the current Yahoo! Mail, the new version is browser-based, making it universally accessible from any computer connected to the Internet, without the need for a software download. The beta incorporates the technological expertise demonstrated by Oddpost, a company acquired by Yahoo! in July 2004.
The beta has been made available today to a limited group of Yahoo! Mail users in the U.S and will be broadened to include additional Yahoo! Mail users worldwide in the coming months. Yahoo! plans to make the new version available to all users after the completion of beta testing. Beta testers will be able to toggle between the different versions of Yahoo! Mail in order to try the new interface.
"This beta gives people a faster and more dynamic way to experience Yahoo! Mail, yet continues to offer the same features they rely upon today: great anti-spam and virus protection, tons of storage, it's all there," said Ethan Diamond, director, product development, Yahoo! Mail. "We're looking forward to receiving feedback on the beta as we continue the development process."
The beta version of the new Yahoo! Mail includes increased speed and features such as:
- Fast and easy-to-use interface that functions like a desktop client application
- Drag-and-drop message organization
- Reading pane to instantly view messages
- Comprehensive and speedy search of email headers, bodies and attachments
- Ability to view multiple emails at the same time
- Automatic check and delivery of new mail
- Keyboard shortcuts and right click menus
- Ability to scroll through all message headers in a folder, rather than page by page
- Address autocomplete
- Protection from spam and viruses
- Available on Firefox (Mac/Windows) and Internet Explorer (Windows only)
- Remains free, supported by advertisers.
Yahoo! said the enhanced speed and features are made possible by using technologies such as dynamic HTML (DHTML), XML and SOAP.
October 29, 2005 at 10:04 PM in Portals | Permalink | TrackBack (17) | Top of page | Blog Home
Google flight takes off - Yahoo! UK & Ireland News
By Elinor Mills, CNET News.com
Flight details are the latest example of Google's mission to bring together disparate sources of information
Google has launched a search feature that use Web services to let people quickly get airline flight information.
Users can type in two different cities, or airport codes, in the Google search box to bring up two boxes for entering departing and returning flight dates. Below those are links to the travel Web sites Expedia, Hotwire and Orbitz. Clicking on one of those links leads directly to flight options for their selected itinerary on that site.
"Google is testing a new search feature for specific flight inquiries between two points," Google said in an e-mailed statement.
The move comes one day after Yahoo debuted its new Trip Planner beta, which allows people to create, share and print personalised trip itineraries.
Earlier this week, Google quietly began testing a new service to enable people to post and make searchable any type of content, including used-car listings, which some speculated would put it in competition with online auctioneer eBay.
October 29, 2005 at 10:44 AM in Portals | Permalink | TrackBack (16) | Top of page | Blog Home
Security fears on Internet cause big cuts in US Web usage: survey - Yahoo! News UK
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WASHINGTON (AFP) - Nearly one-third of US Internet users are cutting back on Web usage and 25 percent say they have stopped buying online due to fears of identity theft and other threats, a survey showed.
The survey by Consumer Reports WebWatch, a joint effort of the consumer magazine Consumer Reports and other organizations, found Internet users are less trustful of websites and have been adjusting their behavior due to what they see as threats online.
Eighty percent said they were
<a href="http://uk.rd.yahoo.com/SIG=12tgf5dcj/M=200072422.201147272.202506313.200222684/D=ukie_news/S=96023039:LREC/Y=yahoo/EXP=1130683296/A=200492136/R=0/id=flashclicks/SIG=1485om13q/*http://ad.doubleclick.net/click;h=v2|35E7|0|0|%2a|n;22191200;0-0;0;12002713;31-1|1;12621827|12639723|1;;%3fhttp://www.vodafone.com/now"><img src="http://eur.a1.yimg.com/eur.yimg.com/a/eu/any/vodafone/vodafonemayfly300x250.gif" width=300 height=250 border=0></a>
at least "somewhat concerned" someone could steal their identity from personal information on the Internet, and 86 percent have made at least one change in their online behavior.
The survey found 30 percent say they have reduced their overall use of the Internet.
Some 53 percent said they have stopped giving out personal information on the Internet, and 25 percent say they have stopped buying things online.
Among those who continue to shop online, 29 percent said they have cut back on how often they buy on the Internet.
Additionally, 54 percent of those who shop online report they have become more likely to read a site's privacy policy or user agreement before buying.
The report confirmed other surveys that showed eroding confidence in the Internet for commerce due to concerns about identity theft, credit card fraud and security breaches that leaked personal information.
The latest survey of 1,501 Internet users was conducted by Princeton Survey Research Associates International.
The survey found Internet users were keenly aware of the questions about information security -- with 88 percent saying keeping personal information safe and secure is very important.
"We're gratified that over time, our guidelines for improving website credibility, and the general concerns of US Internet users, remain connected," said Beau Brendler, director of Consumer Reports WebWatch.
"The types of qualities users expect from credible websites are the same qualities found in WebWatch's guidelines."
Although fears have increased, overall interest in the Internet remains strong, the survey found.
The percentage of adults saying they get most of their news from the Internet has doubled from five percent in a similar survey in 2002 to 11 percent in this poll.
Some 27 percent say they have visited a blog in the past several months, but just one in eight users (12 percent) say they believe the information on blogs is accurate at least most of the time.
Nearly half the poll's respondents -- 47 percent -- say they have come across manipulated digital images on the Web. However, two-thirds said they trust online news sites a lot or somewhat to use photographs that are genuine and have not been altered to change their meaning.
October 29, 2005 at 10:42 AM in Internet evolution | Permalink | TrackBack (23) | Top of page | Blog Home
Internet Use Up, but So Is User Concern - Yahoo! News
By STEPHEN OHLEMACHER, Associated Press Writer Fri Oct 28, 9:14 PM ET
WASHINGTON - Computer and Internet use is up, but so are concerns about identity theft and other online dangers. Fifty-five percent of American households had access to the Internet at home in 2003, more than triple the percentage in 1997, according to a report released Thursday by the
Census Bureau.
Internet usage increased with education, income and the presence of school-age children at home, the report found. It was lowest among adults who have not graduated from high school.
School-age children are most likely to use home computers to play games or do school work. Adults are most likely to use home computers for e-mail, to search for information about products and services, and to read news, weather and sports information.
The report is based on data from the bureau's October 2003 Current Population Survey, the country's primary source of labor statistics. It is the bureau's latest information on computer and Internet use, though it is two years old and experts say Americans' computer habits are quickly evolving.
"We actually think the (Internet) penetration in households is higher," said Greg Stuart, president and CEO of the Internet Advertising Bureau, which helps online companies increase revenue.
A report this year by the Pew Internet and American Life Project found that 68 percent of adults use the Internet, up from 63 percent last year. It found that 22 percent of American adults have never used the Internet.
Susannah Fox, who worked on the Pew report, said age and education were the strongest predictors of whether someone uses the Internet. Young adults were the most likely to use the Internet, with a big drop-off among people 70 and older.
Advertisers are taking advantage of increased Internet use, said Stuart, who expects Internet advertising revenue to reach nearly $12 billion this year, more than double the amount from five years ago.
But even as Internet access increases, computer users are being more careful about sharing personal information online.
A survey released this week by Consumer Reports Webwatch found that 86 percent of computer users have changed their online behavior in some way because of concerns about identity theft. A little more than half stopped giving out personal information on the Web, while 25 percent said they stopped making online purchases.
The Consumer Reports survey of 1,501 adult Internet users was done in May and June and has a margin of sampling error of 3 percentage points.
"The consumers are becoming more educated," said Clint Kreitner, president and CEO of the Center for Internet Security. "At the same time, the nature of the criminal activity on the Internet is increasing."
The Census report found that 32 percent of adult Internet users purchased products or services online, up from 2 percent in 1997.
Kreitner said it is safe for online shoppers to provide companies with their credit card numbers, as long as the site is protected by encryption software.
"Putting your credit card number on an encrypted site is much safer than giving it to a waiter and letting it out of your sight," Kreitner said.
Among the Census Bureau's findings on computer and Internet use:
_Since 2000, rates of computer use have become more uniform across the country. Computers are most prevalent in the West, where 59 percent of households have them. They are least prevalent in the South, where 52 percent of households have them.
_Alaska, New Hampshire and Colorado have the highest rates of Internet use; Mississippi, Arkansas and Louisiana have the lowest.
_Women are slightly more likely than men to use a computer at home, reversing a historical trend.
_Fifty-six percent of working adults used a computer at work, and 42 percent used the Internet on the job.
_Among those without access to the Internet, 39 percent said they don't need it or are not interested, while 23 percent said the costs are too high.
On The Net:
U.S. Census Bureau: http://www.census.gov/population/www/socdemo/computer.html
Consumer Reports Webwatch: http://www.consumerwebwatch.org/
October 29, 2005 at 10:41 AM in Internet evolution | Permalink | TrackBack (11) | Top of page | Blog Home
IBM to use Google desktop search deep inside firms - Yahoo! News
By Eric Auchard Fri Oct 28, 9:39 PM ET
SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - IBM and Google Inc. are collaborating to make it easier for office workers not only to search for local documents and personal e-mail but to delve deep into corporate databases, the companies said on Friday.
IBM is linking up its OmniFind corporate search system with Google's free desktop search for business to make it easier for users to locate information throughout an organization that is often locked up in many separate systems.
"Getting these two products together makes sense for both of us," David Girouard, general manager of Google's enterprise business unit. "If you want to have a good corporate search product, you have to have desktop search," he said.
In the collaboration, Google wins IBM's endorsement among corporate technical managers for its desktop search product and IBM gives corporate information workers an already popular entry point into back-office databases through Google's search.
Searchable data ranges from e-mail to computer files to blog postings to corporate repositories of data, images, audio or video. Much of this is not available using public Web search tools. Typically, it is hard to reach inside a company except by trawling through many different programs.
"There is a lot of information that passively sits inside an enterprise," said Jon Prial, IBM's vice president of content management. "Our intention is to provide more of an active service that gives a single view of all that information."
No money is changing hands in this partnership by the world's biggest computer company and the leader in Web search.
But coming just weeks after a software and research pact by Google and Sun Microsystems Inc., the IBM deal enlists yet another potential ally as Google increasingly faces off with rival Microsoft Corp. on PC desktops.
Prial downplayed any grand strategy in IBM's dealings with Google, but said it was part of a broader push IBM calls "information as a service," which the computer company plans to make more explicit over the coming months.
This move draws on 14 acquisitions IBM has made since 2001 through which it is seeking to give corporate users a single view of product or customer information or to find "non-obvious" ties between people or products.
NEEDLE IN THE HAYSTACK
Users of IBM's WebSphere integration software would have access to information stored inside rival business databases and content management systems, not just those from IBM.
"There's a lot of raw data inside an organization -- as much as 80 percent is unstructured and something has to happen to make it into information," Forrester analyst Barry Murphy said of data forgotten on employee hard disks or other places.
IBM customers can use the Google-IBM search combination by buying IBM products and services and building their own in-house system or rely on IBM to create a pre-packaged system, tailored to the company's industry, the company said.
Its first custom-built system, called IBM Crime Information Warehouse, aims to give government and police agencies fast access to crime statistics, incident and arrest reports in a single view that can help discern crime patterns, IBM said.
Mountain View, California-based Google eschews big, formal alliances with corporate technology suppliers like IBM. That's been the traditional route less-established software suppliers have used to win corporate acceptance of their products.
Google's strategy is rather to use its popularity with consumers at home to slip into offices by relying on the actions of millions of employees to each download its tools.
"Information technology used at work has been evolving much more slowly than among consumers," Girouard said. "We think there is a great opportunity (for our consumer users) to bring products to the workplace that are Google-like," he said.
Google shares set a new record in Nasdaq trading on Friday, closing at $358.17, up about 1.5 percent. IBM shares closed down about 1.1 percent at $81.42 on the
New York Stock Exchange.
October 29, 2005 at 10:37 AM in Portals | Permalink | TrackBack (12) | Top of page | Blog Home
In general, there is a consumer movement well underway that is being largely ignored by many traditional industries, including Marketing.
Of course they will deny this, stating that they always include internet in their discussions, but thats not the point. It should be the first discussion!
Joel Cere on Reputation Protection And Brand Promotion In The Blog EraHere is the situation, figures may vary from studies to studies but it gives a general trend: the Internet is getting only 5% of ad spend while it has a nearly 35% media consumption. TV is getting 40% of ad spend for an equivalent media consumption. Newspapers are getting nearly 35% of ad spent too but for a 10% media consumption.
October 28, 2005 at 03:17 PM in Online Marketing | Permalink | TrackBack (12) | Top of page | Blog Home
BusinessWeek Online: Top 100 Global Brands Interactive Table
The table that follows ranks 100 global brands that have a value greater than $1 billion. The brands were selected according to two criteria. They had to be global in nature, deriving 20% or more of sales from outside their home country. There also had to be publicly available marketing and financial data on which to base the valuation.
Click column heading once to reorder from highest to lowest. Click twice to reorder from lowest to highest.
2005
Brand
Rank
2004
Brand
Rank
2003
Brand
Rank
2002
Brand
Rank
2001
Brand
Rank
Brand Name
Parent Company
Country
2005
Brand
Value
($Mil)
2004
Brand Value
($Mil)
Change in
Brand Value
(%)
1 1 1 1 1 Coca-Cola Coca-Cola U.S. 67,525 67,394 0
2 2 2 2 2 Microsoft Microsoft U.S. 59,941 61,372 -2
3 3 3 3 3 IBM International Business Machines Corporation U.S. 53,376 53,791 -1
4 4 4 4 4 GE GE U.S. 46,996 44,111 7
5 5 5 5 6 Intel Intel U.S. 35,588 33,499 6
6 8 6 6 5 Nokia Nokia Finland 26,452 24,041 10
7 6 7 7 7 Disney Walt Disney Company U.S. 26,441 27,113 -2
8 7 8 8 9 McDonald's McDonald's Corporation U.S. 26,014 25,001 4
9 9 11 12 14 Toyota Toyota Motor Corporation Japan 24,837 22,673 10
10 10 9 9 11 Marlboro Altria Group U.S. 21,189 22,128 -4
11 11 10 10 12 Mercedes-Benz DaimlerChrysler AG Germany 20,006 21,331 -6
12 13 NR NR NR Citi Citigroup U.S. 19,967 19,971 0
13 12 12 14 15 Hewlett-Packard Hewlett-Packard U.S. 18,866 20,978 -10
14 14 15 15 17 American Express American Express U.S. 18,559 17,683 5
15 15 16 19 18 Gillette Gillette U.S. 17,534 16,723 5
16 17 19 20 22 BMW Bayerische Motoren Werke AG Germany 17,126 15,886 8
17 16 17 16 NR Cisco Cisco U.S. 16,592 15,948 4
18 44 45 41 38 Louis Vuitton LVMH Mo・ Hennessy Louis Vuitton France 16,077 NA NA
19 18 18 18 21 Honda Honda Japan 15,788 14,874 6
20 21 NR 34 42 Samsung Samsung S. Korea 14,956 12,553 19
21 25 29 31 32 Dell Dell U.S. 13,231 11,500 15
22 19 14 11 8 Ford Ford U.S. 13,159 14,475 -9
23 22 23 45 44 Pepsi Pepsi U.S. 12,399 12,066 3
24 23 21 22 23 Nescaf・/TD> Nestl・/TD> Switzerland 12,241 11,891 3
25 26 27 25 19 Merrill Lynch Merrill Lynch U.S. 12,018 11,499 5
26 24 22 24 26 Budweiser Anheuser-Busch U.S. 11,878 11,846 0
27 28 24 23 25 Oracle Oracle U.S. 10,887 10,935 0
28 20 20 21 20 Sony Sony Japan 10,754 12,759 -16
29 33 37 NR NR HSBC HSBC Britain 10,429 8,671 20
30 31 33 35 34 Nike Nike U.S. 10,114 9,260 9
31 29 28 28 30 Pfizer Pfizer U.S. 9,981 10,635 -6
32 NR NR NR NR UPS UPS U.S. 9,923 New New
33 27 26 26 NR Morgan Stanley Morgan Stanley U.S. 9,777 11,498 -15
34 30 NR NR NR JPMorgan JP Morgan Chase U.S. 9,455 9,781 -3
35 35 39 43 41 Canon Canon Japan 9,044 8,055 12
36 34 35 42 43 SAP SAP Aktiengesellschaft Germany 9,006 8,323 8
37 37 41 39 33 Goldman Sachs Goldman Sachs U.S. 8,495 7,954 7
38 NR NR NR NR Google Google U.S. 8,461 New New
39 36 38 40 39 Kellogg's Kellogg's U.S. 8,306 8,029 3
40 38 36 36 31 Gap Gap U.S. 8,195 7,873 4
41 43 50 50 49 Apple Apple U.S. 7,985 6,871 16
42 40 43 44 46 Ikea Ikea Sweden 7,817 7,182 9
43 NR NR NR NR Novartis Novartis Switzerland 7,746 New New
44 45 NR NR NR UBS UBS Switzerland 7,565 6,526 16
45 39 NR NR 98 Siemens Siemens Germany 7,507 7,470 1
46 41 44 NR NR Harley-Davidson Harley-Davidson U.S. 7,346 7,057 4
47 42 40 37 37 Heinz H. J. Heinz Company U.S. 6,932 7,026 -1
48 47 46 47 40 MTV Viacom U.S. 6,647 6,456 3
49 59 53 52 50 Gucci Gucci Group N.V. Italy 6,619 NA NA
50 46 32 32 29 Nintendo Nintendo Co., Ltd. Japan 6,470 6,479 0
51 50 52 53 NR Accenture Accenture Ltd. U.S. 6,142 5,772 6
52 49 47 54 NR L'Oreal L'Or饌l SA France 6,005 5,902 2
53 65 59 60 55 Philips Philips Netherlands 5,901 NA NA
54 51 48 51 45 Xerox Xerox Corporation U.S. 5,705 5,696 0
55 60 NR NR NR eBay eBay Inc. U.S. 5,701 4,700 21
56 48 42 38 35 Volkswagen Volkswagen Germany 5,617 6,410 -12
57 52 55 57 57 Wrigley's Wm. Wrigley Jr. Company U.S. 5,543 5,424 2
58 61 65 67 59 Yahoo! Yahoo! Inc. U.S. 5,256 4,545 16
59 58 57 62 60 Avon Avon Products, Inc. U.S. 5,213 4,849 8
60 56 56 59 56 Colgate Colgate-Palmolive Company U.S. 5,186 4,929 5
61 54 49 49 51 KFC YUM! Brands, Inc. U.S. 5,112 5,118 0
62 53 34 30 27 Kodak Eastman Kodak Company U.S. 4,979 5,231 -5
63 55 51 48 47 Pizza Hut YUM! Brands, Inc. U.S. 4,963 5,050 -2
64 57 54 55 54 Kleenex Kimberly-Clark Corporation U.S. 4,922 4,881 1
65 64 61 64 61 Chanel Chanel S.A. France 4,778 4,416 8
66 62 60 61 NR Nestl・/TD> Nestl・S.A. Switzerland 4,744 4,529 5
67 63 62 66 NR Danone Groupe Danone France 4,513 4,488 1
68 66 74 80 76 Amazon.com Amazon.com, Inc. U.S. 4,248 4,156 2
69 67 63 65 65 Kraft Kraft Foods Inc. U.S. 4,238 4,112 3
70 68 75 79 NR Caterpillar Caterpillar Inc. U.S. 4,085 3,801 7
71 69 67 68 70 adidas adidas-Salomon AG Germany 4,033 3,740 8
72 70 68 69 69 Rolex Montres Rolex S.A. Switzerland 3,906 3,720 5
73 76 81 74 66 Motorola Motorola, Inc. U.S. 3,877 3,483 11
74 71 76 58 52 Reuters Reuters Group PLC Britain 3,866 3,691 5
75 72 69 76 74 BP BP p.l.c. Britain 3,802 3,662 4
76 74 NR NR NR Porsche Dr. Ing. H.c. F. Porsche AG Germany 3,777 3,646 4
77 NR NR NR NR Zara Industria de Diseno Textil, S.A. Spain 3,730 New New
78 77 79 81 72 Panasonic Matsushita Electric Industrial Co., Ltd Japan 3,714 3,480 7
79 81 NR NR NR Audi Volkswagen AG Germany 3,686 3,288 12
80 80 71 75 62 Duracell The Gillette Company U.S. 3,679 3,362 9
81 75 NR 72 NR Tiffany & Co. Tiffany & Co. U.S. 3,618 3,637 -1
82 79 73 NR NR Hermes Hermes International France 3,540 3,376 5
83 78 78 77 71 Hertz Ford Motor Company U.S. 3,521 3,411 3
84 NR NR NR NR Hyundai Hyundai Corporation S. Korea 3,480 New New
85 90 89 NR NR Nissan Nissan Motor Co., Litd. Japan 3,203 2,833 13
86 83 82 NR NR Hennessy LVMH Mo・ Hennessy Louis Vuitton France 3,201 3,084 4
87 88 NR NR NR ING ING Groep N.V. Netherlands 3,177 2,864 11
88 86 85 84 78 Smirnoff Diageo plc Britain 3,097 2,975 4
89 91 NR NR NR Cartier Compagnie Financiere Richemont SA France 3,050 2,749 11
90 84 83 83 77 Shell Royal Dutch Petroleum Company Brit./Neth. 3,048 2,985 2
91 87 86 85 NR Johnson & Johnson Johnson & Johnson U.S. 3,040 2,952 3
92 89 88 87 79 Mo・ & Chandon LVMH Mo・ Hennessy Louis Vuitton France 2,991 2,861 5
93 95 87 86 NR Prada I Pellettieri d'Italia S.p.A. Italy 2,760 2,568 7
94 NR NR NR NR Bulgari Bulgari S.p.A. Italy 2,715 New New
95 93 NR 100 91 Armani Giorgio Armani S.p.A. Italy 2,677 2,613 2
96 85 77 73 67 Levi's Levi Srauss & Co. U.S. 2,655 2,979 -11
97 NR NR NR NR LG LG Electronoics Inc. S. Korea 2,645 New New
98 97 92 91 87 Nivea Beiersdorf AG Germany 2,576 2,409 7
99 98 93 93 88 Starbucks Starbucks Corporation U.S. 2,576 2,400 7
100 99 90 88 82 Heineken Heineken N.V. Netherlands 2,357 2,380 -1
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October 27, 2005 at 02:04 AM in Business Models | Permalink | TrackBack (17) | Top of page | Blog Home
Once again, it's Microsoft vs. Google | News.blog | CNET News.com
Is it just us, or is Microsoft vs. Google starting to resemble Yankees vs. Red Sox these days?
The two are increasingly competitive-- at least when it comes to Web search, mapping, instant messaging and other areas. And money is no object.
No coincidence then that latest face off between the two rivals comes in the suddenly lively area of book search.
On Tuesday, Microsoft announced that it will join a library book digitization project sponsored by Yahoo and Internet Archive.
Microsoft is likely hoping for a less litigious experience than Google, however. Google faces two lawsuits alleging that the search giant is violating copyright law by scanning and digitizing all or parts of the collections at the libraries at universities such as Harvard, Stanford, Oxford and Michigan, plus The New York Public Library.
The Yahoo-Internet Archive project will digitize only texts in the public domain, except where the copyright holder has expressly given permission. The project also will make the index of digitized works searchable by any Web search engine, unlike Google, which will be the only search engine for the books it digitizes.
Cash always helps pave the way. Microsoft has committed to paying for the digitization of 150,000 books in the first year, which will cost about $5 million.
October 26, 2005 at 04:14 PM in Portals | Permalink | TrackBack (9) | Top of page | Blog Home
Google tests tool that could post classified ads - Oct. 25, 2005
Analysts say new service could help search firm compete with eBay, Amazon for online shopping biz.
October 25, 2005: 6:24 PM EDT
SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Google Inc. said Tuesday it was testing a new service that lets Web users publish information online, but it would not confirm whether the move was part of a broader push into online shopping to compete with the likes of eBay or Amazon.com.
Analysts and blog commentators have been abuzz this week over purported Web page screenshots showing a new service called "Google Base." Another related service could offer online payments and would put Google head-to-head with eBay Inc.'s (Research) PayPal payments service.
"Google Base," as depicted in screenshots on Google-watching sites, encourages users to post details of their small business enterprises, articles on current events, automobile listings and even scientific research.
"We are testing new ways for content owners to easily send their content to Google," Google spokeswoman Eileen Rodriguez said in a statement.
"We're continually exploring new opportunities to expand our offerings, but we don't have anything to announce at this time," Rodriguez added.
Analysts said that if Google combines the publishing system with its Froogle shopping service and other offerings it could compete with local classified advertising on sites such as eBay, Craig's List or online shopping at Amazon.com (Research).
The site, "Search Engine Roundtable", links to a posting, http://www.seroundtable.com/archives/002705.html, attributed to Google in which the company is said to be introducing a tool at a closed meeting it calls 'Google Zeitgeist'05 Partner Forum' being held on Google's Mountain View campus.
October 25, 2005 at 10:00 PM in Portals | Permalink | TrackBack (25) | Top of page | Blog Home
TORONTO, Oct. 25 /CNW/ - In the month of September 2005, 13,362,000 Canadians, or 68.9 percent of all Internet users, visited sites in the Banking category. The visitors to the online Banking category now represent over forty percent of the total Canadian population. Furthermore, the average Banking visitor spends almost 55 minutes a month banking, and looks at an average of 141 pages of content.
"The growth in online banking is a reflection of Canadians' confidence in
the online medium. The Banks have taken major strides to make online banking
easier for consumers, and a safe place to do day to day banking. We are all
time starved. Taking the inconvenience out of banking and allowing Canadians
to do it when and where they want has proven hugely successful." said Brent
Lowe-Bernie, president of comScore Media Metrix Canada. "The ease of use and
access that the online medium provides has allowed a growing number of
Canadians to use the Internet for their banking needs."
An analysis of growth in the Banking category since last year found
significant increases among many of the key banking institutions in Canada.
The increased traffic is a strong sign of consumer confidence and usage of the
online banking tools. In addition, this underlines that the banks have had
good success at delivering their product suite to their customers in a digital
environment.
<<
------------------------------------------------------------
Growth at selected Banking Entities
% Change in Unique Visitors
September 2004 vs. September 2005
Canadian Internet Users
Source: comScore Media Metrix
------------------------------------------------------------
Unique Visitor %
Change Sept'04 -
Sept'05
------------------------------------------------------------
Banking Category 12.7%
------------------------------------------------------------
TD Financial Group 58.0%
------------------------------------------------------------
Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce 37.7%
------------------------------------------------------------
Scotiabank Group 34.5%
------------------------------------------------------------
Bank of Montreal Sites 34.2%
------------------------------------------------------------
PCFINANCIAL.CA 18.7%
------------------------------------------------------------
BNC.CA 20.5%
------------------------------------------------------------
HSBC 128.7%
------------------------------------------------------------
"There is no line online. We see that year over year the Banking category
has grown by almost 13% or more than 1.5 million Canadians. They have
increased the amount of time they spend, the amount of pages they view, and
the frequency of visitation. Overall this points to the success of Online
banking in Canada, and the potential for growth in the future." continued Mr.
Lowe-Bernie.
From an International perspective Canada is a leader in Online Banking.
In an analysis of some major International countries Canadians are the leaders
in the percentage of the online population that did banking online, the
frequency of visitation, and the time that was spent doing online banking.
From the chart below it is clear that 68.9% of all Canadians visited a Banking
entity in September 2005, which is significantly higher than the penetration
in the US, UK, France, and Germany.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Average Average
Total Unique Usage Days Minutes per
Visitors (000) % Reach per Visitor Visitor
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Canada 13,362 68.9 7.7 55.2
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
United States 70,384 41.6 7.3 49.4
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
United Kingdom 16,973 59.5 5.8 46.2
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
France 11,864 59.1 6.6 44.6
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Germany 17,448 49.8 5.7 41
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Source: comScore Media Metrix, September 2005, All Locations
Brent Lowe-Bernie said in conclusion "Online is just another channel to
reach the consumer. As it grows in size and importance it is imperative that
Canadian banks understand how consumers use this channel versus others. In
addition, it is even more important for the banks to understand how consumers
use multiple banking channels simultaneously and how online can complement
phone or in branch service. This is a challenging job, but to remain on the
leading edge they have no choice. The consumer has taken control and they will
not relinquish it."
About comScore Media Metrix Canada
comScore Media Metrix Canada, a division of comScore Networks, provides
Canada's only Internet audience measurement services that report - with
unmatched accuracy - details of Web site usage, visitor demographics and
online buying power. comScore Media Metrix Canada services are recognized as
the currency in online media measurement among financial analysts, advertising
agencies, publishers and marketers.
About comScore Networks
comScore Networks provides unparalleled insight into consumer behavior
and attitudes. This capability is based on a massive, global cross-section of
more than 2 million consumers who have given comScore explicit permission to
confidentially capture their browsing and transaction behavior, including
online and offline purchasing. comScore panelists also participate in survey
research that captures and integrates their attitudes and intentions. Through
its patent-pending technology, comScore measures what matters across a broad
spectrum of behavior and attitudes. comScore consultants apply this deep
knowledge of customers and competitors to help clients design powerful
marketing strategies and tactics that deliver superior ROI. comScore services
are used by global leaders such as Microsoft, Verizon, Best Buy, The Newspaper
Association of America, Knight Ridder Digital, Nestlé, Wells Fargo & Company,
GlaxoSmithKline, and Orbitz. For more information, please visit
www.comscore.com.
October 25, 2005 at 09:39 AM in Financial Services | Permalink | TrackBack (7) | Top of page | Blog Home
Finextra: UK Web banking customers still want the personal touch
Despite the growth in Internet banking, many UK consumers still want to contact their bank by phone, according to research published by The Henley Centre and BT which estimates that £4.6 million may be lost each year as a result of customers failing to get through when calling to enquire about new accounts, credit cards or loans.
The research found that 42% of those surveyed now use Internet banking services, compared to just 12% in 2001. But almost half - 45% - still want a phone agent available to talk to them whilst they complete a transaction on a Web site.
Slow responses to phone calls are not tolerated by consumers either - when faced with an engaged tone nearly a quarter (24%) give up altogether, while almost a third (31%) will try another company.
Commenting on the research, Gary Bullard, MD, UK, BT Global Services, says: "Customers want instant access to the best products, advice and information. A big challenge for banks is to replicate this quality of service and innovation across all channels, including the Web and the phone."
The research also revealed that one in four UK adults knows someone who has had their identity taken or misused, or has experienced this for themselves, but only a third of consumers are taking adequate measures - such as using different passwords and shredding old documents - to avoid becoming a victim of identity fraud.
October 21, 2005 at 06:33 PM in Financial Services | Permalink | TrackBack (11) | Top of page | Blog Home
TIME.com Print Page: TIME Magazine -- The Road Ahead
We assembled some of the smartest people we know to identify the trends that are most likely to affect our future. What we got was a fascinating discussion about religion, technology and politics and why no one's golf scores seem to be getting any better.
TECHNOLOGY AND US
TIME: WHAT INNOVATION WILL MOST ALTER HOW WE LIVE IN THE NEXT FEW YEARS?
TIM O'REILLY, publisher and technology advocate: Collective intelligence. Think of how Wikipedia works, how Amazon harnesses user annotation on its site, the way photo-sharing sites like Flickr are bleeding out into other applications. I think we're at the first stages of something that will be profoundly different from anything we have seen before, in terms of the ability of connected computers to deliver results. We're entering an era in which software learns from its users and all of the users are connected.
DON'T WE ALSO RUN THE RISK OF HARNESSING OUR COLLECTIVE IDIOCY? EVERYONE WHO HAS BEEN ON THE WEB KNOWS THAT THE RATIO OF SIGNAL TO NOISE IS NOT ALWAYS OPTIMAL.
O'REILLY: Right, but remember what Google did. They basically said, let's look at what all the millions of individual users are linking to, and let's use that information to get the good stuff to float to the top. That turned out to be a very powerful idea, the ramifications of which we're exploring in other areas, such as with tagging on Flickr or blogs. People are finding more ways to have the wisdom of crowds filter that signal-to-noise.
MARK DERY, author and cultural critic: I find the fetishization of the wisdom of crowds fascinating. It has a whiff of '90s cyberhype about it. I'm fascinated by the way in which it contrasts with individual subjectivity. A lot of technologies, such as Flickr, blogging, the iPod, seem to turn the psyche inside out, to extrude the private self into the public sphere. You have people walking down the street listening to iPods, seemingly oblivious to the world, singing. More and more, we're alone in public.
SO IS THE INTERNET TRULY CREATING CONNECTIONS AMONG PEOPLE? OR DIVIDING US AS WE HIDE INSIDE OUR PRIVATE SHELLS?
MOBY, pioneering electronic musician: I have a friend whose Swedish mother--she's in her mid-60s--goes online to meet men. I was with my friend as he drove her to the Hilton to meet a Canadian doctor she'd encountered online, and I thought, How disconcerting. Because it was 10 at night and most likely she was going to meet this guy and stay in his hotel room. Go back 50 years, and she would have been in her Swedish village, depressed, a bit lonely and sad. Instead she's in midtown Manhattan, preparing to spend the night with a doctor, and her son is driving her to the hotel!
O'REILLY: There's also more communication even in apparent isolation. Think about the private bubble people live in. Kids spend a lot of time alone in front of their phone, their TV, their computer. But they are also communicating in new ways, and I suspect most of us in this room maintain communication with a group that is far larger, far more geographically diverse than we ever would have known without technology.
ESTHER DYSON, editor of technology newsletter Release 1.0 for CNET Networks: The Internet is like alcohol in some sense. It accentuates what you would do anyway. If you want to be a loner, you can be more alone. If you want to connect, it makes it easier to connect. In my own experience, it has drawn my family closer, as we post pictures on Flickr. It has done more than tap into something latent; it has actually created something that wasn't there with the younger family members. We couldn't do that before because we were all geographically separated.
DAVID BROOKS, author and New York Times columnist: Is it possible that as the Internet creates more geographic diversity, it creates less demographic diversity? There once were millions of people in Elks Clubs, and Elks Clubs were incredibly diverse. These days, with, say, online dating, you can screen people who aren't demographically like yourself.
CLAY SHIRKY, writer and technology consultant: But look at Meetup.com The most active users are stay-at-home moms. In the suburbanized, two-career U.S., social capital has moved away from the neighborhood and toward work. The stay-at-home moms are actually now remarkably disadvantaged in terms of social capital. We're used to thinking everything is going to get more and more virtual until we're these big floaty video heads, but actually there is a return of the real, as we figure out how to use this stuff to have real-world encounters.
ISN'T THERE A RISK THAT DESPITE ITS PROMISE OF DEMOCRATIZING SOCIETY, TECHNOLOGY WILL LOCK US INTO HOMOGENEOUS CLUSTERS?
BROOKS: As the information age matures, you're getting social stratification based on education. If you come from a family earning over $96,000 a year, your odds of getting a bachelor's degree by age 24 are 1 in 2. If you come from a family earning under $36,000, it's 1 in 17. People at the top of the income scale pass down the skills one needs to thrive in this economy to their kids who get into Harvard--where the median student comes from a family making $150,000 a year--and they go on to an affluent suburb. And they pass it down, so you get really good public high schools, and people there are more likely to marry people like themselves.
O'REILLY: Is this really new?
BROOKS: It's increasing more quickly than before. Look at the relationship between a father's income and a son's. Until the '70s, there was a loose relationship. Since then, it has become much tighter.
DERY: But there's also an upside to sociological clustering, at least online. In the 1950s, if you had the hapless happenstance of being born gay in Oklahoma, you might have spent many a lonely night biting your pillow and cursing the heavens for making you the only gay on earth. Now any 18-year-old with a modem is just a click away from a universe of fellow travelers, and to me, that's a good thing.
MALCOLM GLADWELL, author and New Yorker writer: Yes, there is homogenization in clustering, but there are many different clusters being created all at once, and the overall effect can be to increase diversity. It may be that in each of those groups, I'm finding people who are precisely like me, but there are 10 me's. There's Malcolm the football fan, Malcolm the psychology nerd ...
WHO ARE WE, REALLY?
GLADWELL: One of the most striking things in observing the evolution of American society is the rise of travel. If I had to name a single thing that has transformed our life, I would say the rise of JetBlue and Southwest Airlines. They have allowed us all to construct new geographical identities for ourselves. Many working people today travel who never could have in the past, for meetings and conferences and all kinds of things, and this is creating another identity for them.
DYSON: And once you travel, you come back and use other technologies to stay in touch. It used to be if you traveled somewhere for an interesting week, you come home and nothing has changed. Now you can stay in touch with the people you meet. I think cheap telephone service has made a huge difference in how people think. When I went to college as a kid, it was long distance, so I never called home. Now I'm on the phone to London before breakfast.
GLADWELL: I just went on JetBlue's website, looking at JFK to Oakland, and it's $149. At that price, is there a class cutoff, an income cutoff? Sure, but it's really low, about where the class cutoff is for an Xbox. So we're talking about a fairly radical transformation of American society.
BROOKS: I know people who fly to see a football game, but I don't see why this is transformational.
GLADWELL: It is because it allows us to construct new realities and identities for ourselves that break out of our old sense of place.
DERY: I'm fascinated by this idea that JetBlue could be transformative. Weren't we supposed to be celebrating the death of geography right about now? According to the last wave of techno-hype, in the newtopian '90s, we were supposed to be swirling clouds of data bits, teleporting from one point to another through fiber-optic cables.
GLADWELL: Some interesting things come out of all of this travel. I would expect an acceleration of the declining importance of nationality. The rise of transnationalism is already an important recent trend. There are pockets in Queens [N.Y.] that maintain active ties with home in Mexico. If you extrapolate, I don't think foreign policy or any kind of politics can be practiced the way it is now in a country where enormous numbers of people genuinely have dual identities and reinforce them by flying back and forth to their adoptive countries for nothing.
DYSON: I'd like to argue strenuously with that. It may be happening in the U.S., but it's not happening in China, which is extremely nationalist. In Russia, I don't know any Russians who feel anything other than Russian. A brand does not replace a nationality.
GLADWELL: We're not talking about the end of those identities. We're talking about the multiplication of identities so that in addition to the strong national identities, you start to construct new ones. FedEx now has direct flights from interior Chinese cities to cities in North America. So start playing that forward. You're allowing a class of people in China to layer on a new identity to their existing identity of Chinese businessmen as member of some kind of international business élite.
POLITICAL SHIFTS
IS THE AMERICAN LANDSCAPE READY FOR CHANGE?
BROOKS: In the United States, we've seen the intense power of partisanship. I think it may have crested, but we're left with this intense polarization--think Red Sox vs. Yankees--where team spirit supplants philosophy. I really don't know what a conservative or liberal is. But I do know what a Republican or Democrat is. Still, I think this phase of intense polarization is ebbing. If you look at the polls over the past year, you see people flaking off from the Republican side--not going over to the Democratic side but being dislodged and just sitting there in the middle.
ARE WE TRULY PAST PARTISANSHIP?
BROOKS: I think there's a level of exhaustion. Plus you have to remind yourself that the partisanship of the parties was never reflective of the country. I've never met a political scientist who thinks public opinion in the country is polarized. There's a big middle on abortion, gay marriage, every single issue, and it really hasn't changed in 30 years.
DERY: Is it possible that a new age of extreme weather--superstorms and such--will create some sort of galvanizing environmental movement that will bring people together?
BROOKS: All I can say is when you ask politicians what subjects come up at town-hall meetings--which is something I do a lot--issues like global warming and environmentalism never come up.
O'REILLY: But it's clear that Hurricane Katrina put global warming on the radar of a lot of people in a way we haven't seen before, and it certainly changes the political dialogue profoundly.
BROOKS: But in surveys too, when you ask people for the 10 issues that matter most to them, it's always health care, jobs, education, gas prices. Environment is never there.
WILL THE AFTERMATH OF KATRINA AFFECT NEXT YEAR'S MIDTERM ELECTIONS?
BROOKS: If the elections were held now, the Republicans would lose. But I think the major effect of Katrina will be to cause people to lose faith in all institutions.
AND THAT HURTS THE INCUMBENT PARTY MOST?
BROOKS: Not necessarily. In the 1970s, the loss of faith in government caused by Vietnam and Watergate actually ended up helping the right because Ronald Reagan came in saying, "Don't trust government." That doesn't mean it'll happen again that way, but there's an opportunity for a party to assert authority and order and say, "I'm going to end the chaos." The hunger for order in society is very strong.
WHO RULES?
O'REILLY: The generation now growing up is going to expect access to information in a way us fuddy-duddies don't take for granted. Some say the Net will lead to a radical democratization--power to the people--but I don't think so. When you harness collective intelligence and the power of blogging, it doesn't mean power to individuals. It means power to the people best able to aggregate those individuals. Google is a profoundly powerful company because it has figured out algorithmically how to learn from millions of people at once.
DYSON: It's much harder to maintain power when everything is transparent, when there's always someone, some outlier coming in, when the discussion is never closed. I don't even think that Google has that much power because its hold on it is tentative. It can easily be eroded.
SHIRKY: We're seeing lots of places where value is being created outside of institutional frameworks, in ways that institutions can't touch. When you look at the way Linux has developed, it's not a model that can be emulated by any organization that wants to pay programmers because if someone has one good idea, it will be added to Linux. You would never hire an employee who only has one good idea. That would be a bad hire.
THE MYTH OF PROGRESS?
GLADWELL: I'd like to make a distinction between change and progress. A lot of what we've been talking about falls in the category of change, not progress. To use a prosaic example, technology related to golf has improved and will continue to improve dramatically. Golf clubs are way better today than they were 10 years ago, and will be way better 10 years from now. Golf scores, however, have remained absolutely stable. This is an important distinction because historically when we talked about the future, we always talked about the possibilities for progress. Today when we talk about the future, we talk about the possibilities for change, which says that either we have deliberately lowered expectations or we're playing a game where we're pretending what we're talking about is progress when all we're doing is talking about change.
DYSON: The fundamental change is that most individuals have more choice. They also have more responsibility: if they don't like the way things are, they can't complain as much--at least not with moral justification. And not everybody likes that. It can be comfortable just to follow orders. But if you consider that most people have a better chance of getting what they want because they have more choices, then by and large, there's progress. People have more choice: they have more power "to," even though they don't have more power "over."
GLADWELL: But most of this falls into the category of giving me more of things that I don't need. The explosion of choices on the Internet--the fact that I can get 100,000 songs on iTunes as opposed to 1,000 songs--is that progress?
DYSON: No. But if I have a choice about whether or not I go to college or where I'm going to work or what job I have, that's a valuable choice.
DERY: Maybe I'm channeling my inner Marxist here--which I'm sure will give David a fit of vapors ...
BROOKS: You'd be surprised.
DERY: ... but I feel that in discussions like this, there's a phenomenon where technopundits wear Global Business Network blinkers. The democratization of available avenues of possibility is always phrased in market-friendly terms. It's about purchasing power--the cornucopia of options available to those who can stuff their shopping carts and proceed to checkout. How many options were available to those who were marooned in New Orleans? The ragtag who are rotting in what used to be quaintly called the real world, somewhere off-line, are left behind.
SHIRKY: That may be true. But the "cloud dwellers" now are far and away the majority of the country. It's not some privileged élite who have access to things like JetBlue flights and the Internet. It's the bulk of America.
CULTURE CLASH
IN MOVIES, MUSIC, I'M SURPRISED PEOPLE HAVEN'T BEEN MORE EFFECTIVE CIRCUMVENTING THE STUDIOS TO GET THINGS MADE.
DYSON: I think the new avenues are effective. You don't notice them because there are more of them. Do you have to be the Beatles to be realized as a creative artist? Do you have to be Bill Gates to be a business success? The whole point of the new market is that it's much more distributed. People find tighter but smaller audiences, what we call "the long tail." It's better than having these fundamentally fictitious hits created by marketing.
MOBY: I know a guy in Barcelona who has started a company to develop algorithms to determine whether a song is going to be a hit. It analyzes music to figure it out--and they're selling it to the record companies, and it's quite effective. If you expand on that, there's no reason you couldn't have your own personal search engine that understands your taste and can instantly analyze music based on a whole bunch of different, very subjective criteria to determine whether you might like it.
BROOKS: My frustration is that as we talk about things today, we end up gravitating toward its informational structure. If you were sitting around in 15th century England and wanted to learn about what Shakespeare was about to write, the economics of the theater might enter your discussion, but it wouldn't dominate it. The structure is kind of important, but it doesn't determine.
MOBY: O.K., but cultural production always goes hand in hand with technological development. Like with the records I make. I wouldn't have been able to make them 20 years ago. It would have cost half a million dollars to make a record instead of $20,000. Now it's just me with a laptop.
GETTING RELIGION
GLADWELL: One of the big trends in American society is the transformation of the evangelical movement and the rise of a more mature, sophisticated, culturally open evangelical church. Ten years from now, I don't think we're going to have the kinds of arguments about religion that we have today. Even the fight over intelligent design, to me, is a harbinger of a trend, which is that the religious world is increasingly willing to put its issues on the table and discuss them in the context of the secular world. Let's argue about evolution vs. creation, using the framework that secular science has given us.
SHIRKY: That's wrong. Intelligent design is a stalking horse for creationism against a particular enemy, evolution.
GLADWELL: I disagree. This is part of an ongoing transformation. We will not continue to have this kind of divide between Evangelicals and the rest of society. I just went to an interesting evangelical conference, and throughout, rock bands were playing. The rock-'n'-roll culture within the evangelical world is indistinguishable in terms of the sound of the music from the rock culture that came out of a very different, irreligious secular tradition, except that the words are about Jesus--love and all that. They're not resisting outside culture, they're embracing it and kind of making it their own. I think intelligent design and Christian rock are similar. It's about taking up form from the outside and trying to Christianize it. Does the debate over evolution matter? Isn't it really a nondebate?
SHIRKY: No. It matters a lot because medicine is starting to become evolutionary, and we want to continue to have doctors who understand that.
GLADWELL: But that's not being threatened. The intelligent-design debate is about what you teach 7-year-olds.
DYSON: What you teach 7-year-olds matters because they grow up.
GLADWELL: But we've already been talking about how great Google is. They can just Google evolution.
BROOKS: I think the debate is unimportant for a different reason, which is that 40% of people in the country don't believe in the theory of evolution, and yet we seem to march on regardless.
GLADWELL: None of this affects the way science is conducted in this century. Does it change you as a software salesman whether you believe in evolution or not? No--no more than it changes you whether you believe in Einstein physics.
DYSON: You can't limit your concern to short-term economic impact. This attitude closes off inquiry. It creates an approach to science that I think is dangerous.
GLADWELL: But keep in mind the idea we've discussed of the multiplication of identity. We will have more debates and disputes, like the one over creationism. When you're having 100 arguments at once, no one of them matters the way it used to. It's important not to use a 19th century moral lens to evaluate the kind of debates we're going to have in the 21st century. We have to accept that the general noise level will increase, but that doesn't matter. You can be a creationist at night and go to work in the morning as a pediatrician and save lives.
DYSON: The real challenge is going to be for the next generation of pediatricians who have to design your baby. It's in the field of genetics and genetic engineering where faith and morality questions will play out. Is it immoral now to abort a Down syndrome baby? In the future, should you use technology to create a perfect baby, finding the right genes? And then you'll be responsible for what you have created in a way that you never were before. No more "will of God ..."
THE CASE FOR OPTIMISM
BROOKS: Abortion rates are down a third, divorce rates are down, crime rates are down some 70%, school violence is down, suicide rates, drug addiction--all of the social indicators that were going the wrong way in the '70s and '80s turned around in the early '90s or so, and are still going in the right direction. So to me, we've changed the way we raise kids, and we probably made them a little more boring, but it is a remarkable generation of wholesomeness. If you don't like wholesomeness, then you're a pessimist, but if you sort of like it, then it's one reason to be fairly optimistic for the next 50 years.
GLADWELL: I'm generally optimistic because I feel that with the pace of development in China and India and other parts of the developing world, we're just adding to the available brainpower and unlocking these large populations of people and their ingenuity and giving them an education. How much easier will it be to solve the problems of the world when we've got 10 times as many brains working on them.
O'REILLY: I guess I'm an optimist too because, on the one hand, many of the technological innovations of the past few decades now are in the payoff stage. On the other, even a serious disruption-- global warming, a pandemic--could serve as a wake-up call, harnessing our ingenuity to make things better.
DYSON: That's true optimism!
MOBY: I find it comforting to bask in the glow of a bunch of erudite optimists. But I think the world is so complicated that I can't be so presumptuous as to justify pessimism or optimism, so I'll stay agnostic. But I like waking up every day, and I think breakfast is a fantastic thing.
Copyright © 2005 Time Inc. All rights reserved.
October 19, 2005 at 10:50 PM in Internet evolution | Permalink | TrackBack (9) | Top of page | Blog Home
By Susan Kuchinskas
Business blogging is taking off. Companies are using blogs for both internal and external communications, to improve customer relations and improve business processes, according to a survey released on Monday.
Results of the BlogOn 2005 Social Media Adoption Survey were released at BlogOn 2005, taking place in New York this week. The conference is organized by Guidewire Group, a research firm focused on emerging technologies. The survey was co-sponsored by Guidewire and corporate blogging software provider iUpload.
The poll of corporate marketing and communications professionals found that 55 percent of corporations are blogging, with 91.4 percent of those using them for internal communications and 96.6 percent for external outreach. More than half had launched their blogs within the last year.
"It's a recent phenomenon," said Mike Sigal, CEO of Guidewire. "We thought we were still waiting for the turn in the hockey stick of adoption, but we're already on the steep part of the curve."
Of those not blogging, 70 percent felt positive about the idea, with 7 percent intending to start a blog immediately and 13 percent intending to start a blog within a year. Only 11 percent of the total respondents were are blogging today and had no plans to do so.
Four out of five of the companies with internal blogs used them to improve intra-company communications, with one in three replacing e-mail-based processes with blogs. One is six is using blogs to replace other software.
"There's a mad dash for attention in the e-mail box," Sigal said. "The move to a centralized, streamlined, searchable vehicle is what people like best about blogs inside the fir