THE BATTLE TO CONTROL ONLINE PRICES

The struggle to control prices of digital content sold online continues, with producers and distributors battling over prices for downloads of books and music.

In the latest skirmish, Amazon removed Macmillan books from its website after the company protested that online retail was using monopoly power to force publishers to accept prices no higher than $9.99. Macmillan and other publishers have now signed distribution deals with Apple that allows them to price downloads at $12.99 and $14.99.

Producers, of course, want higher prices because they produce higher revenue and better profits.

The struggle to control prices is not unique to the online environment. In the offline world, producers of books, magazines, CDs, and DVDs have long struggled to gain limited shelf space because there is a large oversupply of products and retailers’ have selection preferences for popular, rapidly selling products.

Large national and retailers have also used their bargaining power to push wholesale and manufacturer suggested retail prices downwards. Wal-Mart, now the number one music retailer in the World, uses its purchasing and sales power to sell large quantities of music at the lowest price possible—the basic price/quantity model for all the products it carries.

What is new in the offline world is that the conflict does not merely involve struggles over the price and quantity strategies of retailers, but that the retailers are using the media content as a joint product with their proprietary digital hardware.

Amazon wants content prices low not merely to sell more books, but because it helps it sell Kindle, its e-book reader. To date, it has been able to do so because it was the leading seller of both products—something it learned from Apple’s strategy with i-Tunes and i-Pod.

Competition in distributing content, even just a little competition, helps shift some of the power away from the retailer and back to the producer. Apple was forced to back away from its enforced price of 89 cents for a download when recording companies made deals with other download providers and threatened to end the rights for Apple to see their popular music. Apple is now playing spoiler to Amazon in the book downloads and Amazon has agreed to carry Macmillan books again.

Newspaper publishers are now seriously testing and considering a variety of e-readers as ways to reduce production and distribution costs. As part of their strategies, however, they would do well to learn from the experience of the music and book business. They need to remember that a basic rule of business is that if you don’t control price, you don’t control your business.

MEDIA, INNOVATION, AND THE STATE

There is a growing chorus for governments to help established media transform themselves in the digital age. From the U.S. to the Netherlands, from the U.K. to France, governments are being asked to help both print and broadcast media innovate their products and services to help make them sustainable.

State support for innovation is not a new concept. Support of cooperate research initiatives involving the state, higher education institutions, and industries has been part of national science and industrial policies for many decades. There has been significant state support for innovation of agriculture/food products, electronics, advanced military equipment, information technology, and biomedical technology and products.

State support tends to work best in developing new technologies and industries and tends to focus support on advanced basic scholarly research through science and research funding organizations, creation and support for research parks and industrial development zones for applied research, and incentives and subsidies for commercial research and development.

Many governments also support efforts to transform established industries. These are typically designed to promote productivity and competitiveness as a means of preserving employment and the tax base. In the past there has been some support for technology transfer from electronics and information technology to existing industries and for retraining, facilities reconstruction, and entering new markets.

Trying to apply those kinds of research and transformation policies in media is challenging, however, because much of media activities tend to be non-industrial and are dependent on relatively rigid organizational structures and processes that are difficult to change. These factors are complicated by the facts that media engage in negligible research and development activities, have limited experience with product change and new product development, and tend to have limited links to higher education institutions.

It is clear that a growing number of managers in media industries understand the need for innovation because of the declining sustainability of current operations and because Internet, mobile, e-reader, and on-demand technologies are providing new opportunities. The real innovation challenges in established media, however, are not perceiving the need for change or being able to get needed technology, but organizational structures, processes, culture, and ways of thinking that limit willingness and ability to innovate. This is compounded because many managers are confused by the opportunities and don’t know what to do or how pursue innovation.

Today, the innovation challenge facing media—especially newspapers--is not mere modernization, but fundamentally reestablishing their media functions and forms. What is needed is a complete rethinking of what content is offered, where, when and how it is provided, what new products and services should be provided and what existing ones dropped, how content will differ and be superior to that of other providers, how to establish new and better relationships with consumers, how the activities are organized and what processes will be employed, what relationships need to be established with partners and intermediaries, and ultimately how the activities are funded.

The state’s ability to influence media innovation of this type is highly constrained. Governments worldwide have proven themselves ineffectual in running business enterprises and they have limited abilities to affect organizational structures, processes, culture, and thinking in existing firms. What governments can do, however, is to fund research that identifies threats, opportunities and best practices, provide education and training to promote innovation and help implement change, offer incentives or subsidies to cover transformation costs and support new initiatives, and help coordinate activities across industries.

These kinds of support will be helpful, but they will not be a panacea because the greatest impetus for and implementation of change and innovation must come from within companies. The support will only be helpful if companies are actually willing to innovate and change to support that innovation. The extent they are willing to do so remains to be seen.

Why the Internet?

Of course, many opportunities to make money everywhere. Some of them in the real estate property, stock exchanges, initial public offerings, foreign exchange, speculation, multi-level marketing type of Amway, or become insurance agent or agency bonds
But however, I point out below my reasons why I want you to consider the Internet as ONE OF THE BEST and ONLY way to make money quickly, easily and without high risk:

1. Internet Growing fast
Based on actual Alexa statistics, we can see more and more people use the Internet worldwide. Appropriate use of the Internet's growing, as well as all forms of opportunities on the Internet growing exponentially. Your Market IS VERY BIG.

2. Easy, Fast and Much More Safe
Nahk, here are a few reasons why you better concentrate on the Internet. Which you certainly do not have to have a large capital to start a business on the Internet. And you can immediately return on investment.

3. No Need of Capital
You do not need a large venture capital as you often see in other business sectors. Maybe you need a computer or the money to lease computers in Internet cafes that do not have their own computer. Capital is very small compared to the effort to open a restaurant instead?

4. Small Risk
Almost no risk at all. At the very least, you will only lose a little money to buy the Book-E or the cost for Google Adwords, you certainly will not lose money, to be in debt to repay.
STYLE SECRET INTERNET BILLIONAIRE INDONESIA

5. Can Do Part-Time & From Home
You can try your Internet business from home while you still have a steady job. Therefore, even if you do not get any benefits from these efforts, at least you still have a steady income from your job. Not like having a restaurant business, where you have to quit your job and work full to start. If you want, you can do anything about this business from home, or can take a coffee at Starbucks that provides Internet connection at the end of the week!

JOURNALISM AS CHARITY AND ENTREPRENEURSHIP

Many journalists pursuing new online initiatives are learning that good intentions are not enough for providing news.

The latest group to do so is former Rocky Mountain News reporters who started rockymountainindependent.com this past summer using a membership payment and advertising model. The effort collapsed Oct. 4 with them telling readers, “We put everything into producing content and supporting our independent partners, but we can no longer afford to produce enough content to justify the membership.”

There problem is hardly unique. The conundrum facing many journalists is whether to pursue the noble work of journalism as unpaid charitable work or to become engaged as journalistic entrepreneurs with a serious attitude toward its business issues—something many despised in their former employers.

If journalists want pay for their work, if they want to provide for their families, and if they want to pay mortgages, they need to spend more time figuring out how to provide value that will extract payments from readers and advertisers. To do that they have to construct organizational structures and activities that support the journalism; they will have to ensure that startups have sufficient capital; and they will have to engage staffs in marketing and advertising activities, not merely news provision.

One of the most difficult issue for these new journalism providers—as well as existing print and broadcast providers—is that journalists tend to overestimate the value of news for the public. What the public actually wants is less, not more, news.

It is not that the public doesn’t want to be informed, however. It is just that journalists spend so much time, space, and effort conveying commodity news that provides little new and helpful information for readers and cannot generate sufficient financial support. By commodity news I mean the simplistic who, what, and where stories about what happened yesterday. Those kinds of stories are readily available from many sources and provides readers little for which they will pay.

Instead, in a world of ubiquitous commodity journalism, successful journalists need to be spending time exploring the how and why of events and issues and helping readers understand and cope with what is expected next. Effective journalism in the new environment needs to focus more on today and tomorrow than on yesterday.

Success in the contemporary journalism environment it is not merely about providing news, but about providing helpful and advisory news explanation based on solid values and identity to which readers can relate. It must be part of entrepreneurial journalism or new ventures will fail.

To get there, however, journalists starting up new enterprises will need to develop resources and entrepreneurial motivation to sustain their efforts more than a few months. Most new commercial and noncommercial enterprises require 18 to 36 months of operation before they develop a loyal audience and achieve a stable financial situation. Unless journalists are willing to work for free during that time, they will have to raise capital to survive; and if they want their new organizations to thrive and develop they will have to provide a different kind of news than most are used to creating. It will need to be unique and better than what is already available.

4 STRATEGIC PRINCIPLES FOR EVERY DIGITAL PUBLISHER

As publishers move more and more content to the Internet, mobile services, and e-readers, these digital activities change the structures and processes of underlying business operations. Many publishers, however, pay insufficient attention to the implications of these changes and thus miss out on many benefits possible with digital operations.

This occurs because publishers become focused on issues of content delivery and uncritically accept the fundamental elements of the processes involving platforms and intermediaries. In order to gain the fullest future benefits from the digital environment, however, publishers needs to strategically consider and direct activities involving the users, advertisers, prices, and purposes of their new platforms.

In creating business arrangements with platform and service providers and intermediaries, 4 fundamental strategic principles should guide your actions:

1. Control your customer lists. The most important thing you do as a publisher is to create relationships with and experiences for your customers. It is crucial to ensure that your content distribution and retail systems do not separate you from those who read, view, or listen to your content. If you do not operate your distribution or pay systems, or don’t have strong influence over their operations, this important part of the customer experience falls outside your control and— worse—you never establish direct relationships with customers that allow you to get to know them better, to create stronger bonds, to use them to improve your products, or to up-sell services. If you must use intermediaries, ensure that you have full access and rights to use e-mail, mobile, and other addresses for all your content customers and that you have some influence over the look, feel, and content of the contacts that your service providers have with your customers.

2. Control advertising in your digital space. Users see advertising placed on your website, your mobile messages, and your e-reader content as part of your product and it affects the experience you deliver to them. It is not enough to control the size and placement of ads; you also need to control the dynamic functionality, types, and content of ads. The experience your product delivers is of little interest to outside providers of digitally delivered advertising, but it must be to you. You should control your own advertising inventory and maintain approval rights and—as with audiences—you should have the ability to make direct contact with advertising customers so you can add value by working with them to achieve greater effectiveness and provide better benefits across your content platforms.

3. Control your own pricing. Do not put yourself in the position of merely accepting the ad suppliers’ price and payment for advertising appearing in your digital product. The digital space and audience contact that you provide is the product and service being purchased and some contact is more valuable than others. Know how your value compares to that of competitors and set your prices according. Don’t be a price taker, be a price maker. Digital advertising will not grow to become an important part of your business if you let the most important decision of the revenue model reside in someone who does not care about your business.

4. Drive customers to platforms most beneficial to you. Digital media give you the opportunities to serve customers where and when they want to be served, but you need to use those opportunities to drive them to your financially most important product. Internet sites, e-readers, mobile applications, and social media are highly useful for contact and interaction, but not yet very effective for revenue generation. The best effects typically result from increasing use of your offline product or driving traffic to your most finally effective digital location. Make sure that all the distribution platforms you use are configured for easy movement to other digital platforms that benefit you most, even if they don’t directly benefit your service provider.

Digital publishing can only become successful if you get the business fundamentals correct by controlling the most important commercial aspects of the operation. The value configuration created by customer interfaces and partner networks must be arranged to work in your favor and strategic thinking needs to guide how you organize and direct those activities.

How to Find Easy Money on the Internet

How to Find Easy Money on the Internet more much alone, but know true religion or not, the problem is not with money from the internet, but how easy it was, did you think of business people, with a new die hard he could reach the result, the stone can get money, new can produce. they did before the sweat and toil to achieve success. There is now a mere cooed promising by providing easy ways earn money on the internet. ga there all easy to get, if you have a business proposition that offers easy ways earn money you should consider some important aspects, of course, to prevent harm to yourself because it cheated: D things to note are as follows:

First, when you encounter a business that gives offers promises to be making money on the internet with your easy to notice and think with logic, what yes so can result in money or money? how it works and what system they use, do not be tempted by the appearance of mutations proof, evidence or bank transfer members also testimonials from others, it could be only lie and fabrication.

second, positive thinking and never brought passion, whether you are able to do procedures they provide to make money on the internet? person's ability to berbeda2 business. internet business for money also need perseverance and skill of the personnel themselves, so before you take the easy way to think is a good idea if you are able to do it? because there is no easy way to earn money from the internet with instant, easy is relative, if you are able to then it's easy, and if not could mean that difficult: D

Third, there is no secret to getting money from the internet, so the effort and perseverance that dominate. if you are dark eyes and eventually buy the product that you can not be at it for what? there's only regret it, they promised the secret tricks and tips is that we can get search engine, so you do not easily tempted by the promise or offer you can not be run.

conclusion to find out how to easily earn money on the internet is to learn, thorough, analysis, practice. if you have learned and understood more thoroughly if you are right it can produce? deeper analysis to you later to ensure according your practice abilities. if successful could mean that you have or know how to easily earn money on the internet.

THE TRANSACTION COST PROBLEM OF NEWSPAPER MICROPAYMENTS

The desire to monetize online news is leading some to enthusiastically promote micropayment systems. A number of the leading newspaper sites are leaning toward a cooperative payment system that will allow readers to use a single account to access material at the leading papers. Such a system will not be technically difficult to implement, but getting the price right will be a significant challenge because of transaction costs and significant differences in the economic value of articles.

To create the best industry wide effects, a micropayment payment system would need to include as many papers as possible (see "The Challenges of Online News Micropayments and Subscriptions" http://themediabusiness.blogspot.com/2009/05/challenges-of-online-news-micropayments.html). The fact that a consortium is currently being sought only among the major players illustrates, however, that such a system would be cost inefficient because content from smaller papers would attract fewer transactions and be more expensive to service.

A widely inclusive system would encounter the problems of small payouts that have plagued collecting rights societies for authors, composers, and performers. Those systems have found that the costs of managing transactions, accounting and auditing, and conveying funds to rights holders incur higher expenses than the payments due many rights holders and that such a system is possible only when the rights holders and content that generate the most transactions subsidize those that generate the least.

This occurs because each right must have a separate account, uses of all rights must be monitored and recorded, funds must be collected, expenses for accounting, auditing and other administrative costs paid, and funds must be transferred to recipients. These activities incur significant transaction costs.

Even a cooperative system limited to newspapers that attract the largest number of customers will encounter transaction cost challenges.

In single content sales systems, for example, the cost of making transactions takes up the bulk of the price. In the sale of mobile telephone ringtones, for example, the composer, arranger, and performer get only about 20% of the price. For digital song downloads everyone associated with the content--songwriter, arranger performers, and record company--receive less than half. This occurs because merchant and financial transaction costs are very high. The cost for using a credit card adds 5 to 7 percent to merchant costs and the expense for bank processing of each transaction is a minimum of about 25 cents. Even electronic fund transfers between bank accounts incurs about 30 cents in transaction costs.

These realities will affect the structure and pricing of newspaper article micropayment purchases. The most efficient system for users and firms will require the use of prepaid customer accounts to reduce the number of bank system transactions. This will allow users to transfer funds to their accounts and then purchase articles at pennies a piece. Funds collected would be then periodically transferred to papers. Such a system could also include the option for occasional users to make credit cards purchases of articles, but the price would have to be $2 to $10 per article to make it worth the effort.

The biggest pricing challenge, however, is that some articles will be more valuable than others and will be most sought after by consumers. This means newspapers will have to figure out BEFOREHAND which stories fall into those categories and they will have to decide what prices to charge for them. Papers will have to hire personnel to try to figure out before publication which are the most economically valuable stories--something that will be extremely hard to do--or they will have to set prices based on the costs invested in creating each story (something current newspaper accounting systems do not support). In either case, increased costs will result. The only other reasonable option is to set prices per article based on the overall average cost of producing an article or a column inch of editorial copy. This, of course, over and under prices content simultaneously.

Moving to a micropayment system is not merely a matter of starting to charge for content online, but involves changing the fundamental business model of papers. Newspapers have historically bundled all content into one product available at a single price. In retailing, bundling has always worked best for getting consumers to buy more of the product at a lower price than if bought individually. With this tactic the producer gains profit because the costs of distribution and sales are collectively lower. A second tactic involves bundling products of unequal or uneven value that are sold together to achieve a joint price that is higher than would have been obtained individually.

Newspapers have historically benefited from such bundling by filling pages with relatively inexpensive news agency and syndicated content and by including huge amounts of information culled from public sources that did not require significant investment of resources or added value. Unbundling and selling individual articles with a micropayment system will produce little consumer willingness to pay for this type of content--a significant problem because it is the bulk of editorial content in most newspapers today. Unbundling will also increase transaction costs, thus reducing profitability. This will force higher prices on consumers that will affect demand.

Disaggregating the newspaper and making more money off some individual articles will also create pressure for additional payments from journalists who write the most valuable articles. This will also increase costs of the micropayment system.

Making money from online journalism is, thus, not just a matter of saying "Let's all start charging." It will require fundamental rethinking of the value chain, what content is offered, and how it is produced. It will also require significant thought about what's in it for consumers--something that is glaringly missing from current discussions of starting online payments. The consumer challenge is especially salient because most online news readers do not currently buy newspapers. If they are not willing to pay for news in print, why will they suddenly be willing to pay for that same news online? If papers can't figure that out, no decision to implement micropayments will end happily.

ONLINE AGGREGATORS AND NEWSPAPER STRATEGY

Google, MSN, and Yahoo and other aggregators are cited by newspaper executives are harming newspapers. But what have they actually done? It is important to have a realistic understanding of their effects if one is to fashion strategies for the future of newspapers and news organizations.

Aggregators carry news stories from major news services and thus make international and national public affairs, entertainment and sports news widely available. The headline news on the aggregators’ home pages is becoming the primary news provider for those less interested in news and the online sections are well-used by news consumers who want more news or more timely news than appears in their daily newspaper.

Aggregators and others sites carrying content from news services are now contributing about 20 percent of the revenue of Associated Press, for example, taking some financial pressure off newspapers to fund the cooperative on their own. Other news services are also gaining income from online operators, thus helping them keep prices lower for newspapers as well.

So how do aggregators news harm newspapers? They harms papers to the extent that some less committed newspaper readers are willing to substitute their local paper with a news sources that don’t cover their cities. Some are willing to do so and this is taking some subscribers and single copy purchasers away from newspapers. U.S. newspapers have lost approximately 6 million circulation since 2000, but about half of that was circulation of the 70 competing newspapers or second editions papers that have been closed since the millennium. So one can thus say that at least 3 million people have decided to use other news sources.

Aggregators are also accused of STEALING value through their search functions and links to newspaper sites. Certainly the aggregators are CREATING value with the technique but are they taking value in violation of copyright or norms of content use? The answer is “no” because they do not represent the material as their own and direct those searching to the newspapers own sites, where they are exposed to advertising sold by the online newspapers.

Newspapers are now getting between 7-10 readers online for every reader they have in print. This plays an important role in making their sites attractive to advertisers, a development that generated the $3.2 billion in online advertising revenue that newspapers received in 2008.

Newspapers, of course, could stop the aggregators from linking to their content by putting it behind walls and charging for its use. If they did so, the aggregators could not link to it legally or technically without users encountering a pay or registration wall. So why haven’t newspapers done this until now? Frankly, because they get more readers and more advertising income by offering the material free.

Publishers are increasingly arguing that they should turn newspaper sites into paying sites and they have been holding joint discussion about how that might happen and whether it would be beneficial to do so simultaneously. This has raised some antitrust concern, but it raises real and significant questions of what such a strategy would accomplish.

In my estimation it is not as easy answer to the challenges newspapers face and has some elements that put its effectiveness in doubt. This is primarily because it is uncertain what existing readers will do. Will they subscribe to print AND online? Will they stay with print only? Or will they drop print?

The first option would be financially beneficial, but is likely to attract a limited number of readers unless the joint pricing is so attractive that it produces little new income for the newspaper firm. If that is the case the benefit of the strategy is reduced. The latter option would be very damaging to papers because print advertising creates more value than online advertising and prices for print ads would decline more than would be gained online.

It also needs to be recognized that people who do not currently buying newspapers are unlikely to buy subscriptions to online news sites. Thus, creating a paid model will likely reduce the boosted audience that free online news currently provides. This would have a negative effect on online audience and the increasing revenue that is being obtained from online advertising.

But what of heavy news users? As I have written in other entries in this blog, heavy users tend to be promiscuous and move between many online news sites. A commonly used system for micropayments would be necessary or these heavy users will reduce their use of multiple sites if each requires separate payment registration. Even with such a system in place, it is unlikely that more than 5-10 percent of the newspaper purchasing population would regularly use such a system.

Moving to a paid online model will not be as easy as agreeing that everyone should switch to paid on January 1 next year. It will require considerable strategic thinking and providing new types of value for consumers if it is to be successful. Even then, the benefits for newspapers will vary significantly depending upon the size, location, and competitive situation of individual newspapers.

SALARIES RISE BUT JOURNALISTS DON'T BENEFIT

Salary data from the annual newspaper compensation study done by the Inland Press Association underscores the points I made in a lecture at Oxford University recently on why journalists deserve low pay.

According to the salary study, average newspaper wages in the U.S. increased 2.1% between 2008 and 2009, but that result was skewed because hefty increases went to producers of interactive (online) content and editorial personnel involved in new business development. Journalists on the average received no or marginal increases depending upon their category.

My lecture, which was carried in a significantly reduced form in the Christian Science Monitor , and redistributed by multiple online sites and blogs, produced shock, anger, and invective by many journalists who missed its point. The text of the full lecture can be found at the website: http://www.robertpicard.net/files/Why_journalists_deserve_low_pay.pdf

Journalists today create very little economic value and are having a difficult time getting people to pay for the social value they create. The fact that newspapers are rewarding those who help create new businesses and revenue streams far above traditional journalists accentuates this point.

I admit that the title of my speech was deliberately provocative. It was meant as a wakeup call from a former journalist who loves the news industry. The reality is that no one deserves either high or low pay. The level of pay is EARNED. Journalists deserve pay based on the economic value they create (evidenced by what the public is willing to pay for news) or on the willingness of the public to support social purposes contributing funds to foundations or non-profit news operations.

In today’s world—in which the mass audience for newspapers and its business model are disappearing—continuing to provide the same types of coverage and content in the past will not create economic value and earn good pay. I do not believe that Internet news aggregators, community journalism, and blogging will ever replace the functions of good journalism and it will not replace the functions of most newspapers in the short to mid-term. There is hope for journalism.

If journalists want to promote good journalism and value creation that makes them earn more pay, they will have to take more responsibility for coverage decisions and content choices so that journalism becomes more valuable. Journalists have shown unusual willingness to leave those decisions to publishers and editors who have stopped acting like journalists. But it need not be that way.

Seeing through the Haze Surrounding Websites, Blogs and Social Media

Communicating regularly is hard work. It takes skill; it takes a voice; it takes having something to say; it takes time. Making money from it is even harder.

The functions provided by websites, blogs, and social media clearly make it possible for people to express themselves in ways never before imagined, to share their opinions, to express their hopes and dreams, and to share the details of their lives. Media companies are watching these developments and many are rushing to provide content on any communication technology or application the public uses.

Although large numbers of people are trying the new technologies, they are reacting to them in different ways. Some find them highly useful and satisfying; some find them worthless and disappointing; some find them a worthy pastime; others find them a waste of time. What this means is that—like all technologies—they are more important to some people than to others. Consequently, managers need to be realistic in assessing their potential, the extent to which they are being used by the public, and the extent to which they provide opportunities that media companies should pursue.

Because those promoting the technologies are self interested, uptake figures are easy to come by. Finding out who has tried the technologies, but decided they were undesirable is harder. However, research is showing some interesting results in that regard. We now know that 60 percent of the people who try Twitter stop using it within a month, that only about 5% of blogs are regularly updated, that more than 200 million blogs have been abandoned, and that about 37 million web domain names are deleted every year.

Most people and organizations who try these new communication opportunities make limited use of them or give up on them altogether because of boredom or because the opportunities don't provide sufficient results. This is not to say they are not unimportant, however. A good number of individuals and companies are using them to create new abilities and opportunities to communicate with friends, colleagues, and customers and to establish new businesses and revenue streams. Doing so, however, takes commitment that most people and firms are unwilling to make.

From the business standpoint one has to be realistic when evaluating the opportunities presented. Media executives need to ask hard questions: Do all media companies need to provide content across every available platform regardless of the cost and effort? Are all types of news and information appropriately carried on all platforms? In what ways is branding and marketing for the company actually served by these engagements? How are these monetized? What are the returns on the investments? What are the risks of not engaging these technologies?

Success is not easy in this technological environment. It requires investment, effort, regular activity, and provision of content that people want. Media managers choosing to use these new technologies must be clear-headed in their decisions and pursue well-founded strategies or they will be lost in the maze of competing and alternative opportunities.

DOES ONLINE NEWS STILL NEED OFFLINE TIES?

When the Seattle Post-Intelligencer ceased publication in mid-March it continued www.seattlepi.com as a web-only publication. It employs 20 persons, making it one of the largest online staffs of any local Internet news organization.

Although it has a much smaller staff than the print edition did, the site continues to cover local news and sports, provides national and international feeds, and features local bloggers. In many ways it is what many observers have called the future of post-print journalism. It is well recognized that print is an expensive way to convey news, information, and commentary so observers argue that the Internet is the answer for community informational needs because the public is increasingly getting their news there anyway.

It is still early days for forming a definitive view of how dropping print may affect online demand, but the P-I’s situation gives a unique opportunity to observe effects. In February—before the print edition closed—the website had 1.8 million unique visitors. In March, that number dropped to 1.4 million unique visitors. If these initial results hold true over time, it would indicate that print still provides some important reputational and marketing benefits to online activities.

Those interested in the online future of journalism should be watching the Seattle situation with interest in the coming year.

THE WILD AND WOOLLY WORLD OF CABLE, SATELLITE AND BROADBAND MARKETING

Increasing competition among cable, satellite, and broadband suppliers, combined with slower growth in consumer uptake because the industries have reached maturity, is leading to aggressive marketing efforts to wrestle market share from other companies.

If the leading companies followed classic marketing strategies, they would be offering consumers better arrays of networks and services, better customer service, and/or better prices in efforts to attract more customers.

Instead, many of the largest competitors have been engaging in acts that harm customers and consumers by using illegal and deceptive marketing practices and strategies designed to unwittingly wring greater revenue from their customers. Although the companies apparently think there are benefits in behaving badly, their marketing practices are increasingly getting them into trouble.

Aggressive telemarketing—which has always offended consumers—has landed a number of leading firms in hot water. Comcast and Direct TV have just admitted charges and are paying fines to the Federal Trade Commission for violating telemarketing rules by ignoring the federal do-not-call list. The FTC has also filed a suit against Dish Networks for similar violations.

Companies tend to advertise heavily when competition is high and ads for cable, satellite, and broadband services have helped the revenues of thousands of television stations, newspapers, and magazines across the U.S. Unfortunately, the veracity of advertising claims in cable, satellite, and broadband services has been widely questioned by consumer groups, governments, and other competitors. In recent months Bright House Networks filed a complaint with the Federal Communications Commission about the practices of AT&T, the National Advertising Division of the Council of Better Business Bureau chastised Cablevision for advertising claims after complaints from Verizon, and Verizon itself has been sued for misleading claims by NJ Division of Consumer Affairs.

The industry also sought to market different levels of broadband Internet services to customers and planned to charge different rates for users—a strategy that would allow them to advertise a low price even when many customers would have to pay a higher price based on usage. Plans by Time Warner, Comcast, Frontier Communications and other firms to offer tiered service plans have now been dropped after complaints by customers and legislators.

Cable and satellite firms have traditionally been mavericks and rogues in the media industries and many Internet service firms followed their example. Even though the industries have matured and the number of players has been significantly reduced through mergers and acquisitions, the wild and woolly world they created is still evident in their marketing practices.

We can only hope they will learn to become good corporate citizens—or at least firms concerned about their own reputations.

TECHNOLOGY RESTORES COLLECTIVE CONTEMPLATION

Humans are social and tribal animals and we have always collectively contemplated the meaning and potential responses to issues and events. In the past tribes gathered around fires and villagers gathered in taverns, cafes, and community halls to consider contemporary developments.

Individual engagement and participation in discussion were the norm, with some reliance on leaders and those who held the history and wisdom of the community.

Lifestyle changes in the 19th and 20th century society created mass society and reduced time and opportunities for collective contemplation. It was replaced by a form of representative contemplation and a greater reliance on expert and professional commentators. The effect was primarily to produce communications telling members of communities what to think and do.

Contemporary communication technologies are dramatically altering that situation and supporting a return to collective contemplation. While not producing face-to-face discussion, blogs and technology-assisted social networking have increased opportunities for discussion and interaction. Individuals are gaining greater opportunities to share their opinions and views, to inform each other, and to respond to and engage in conversation that has been impossible for many years.

Concurrently, technologies are beginning to allow effective meta analyses of buzz, blogs and social networking that gather topics and some sense of opinions being expressed. These information technologies allow us to aggregate the views of millions in ways not previously possible.

Where such technologies will take us in unclear, but the contemporary engagement and contemplation by millions of people online is far better for society than the disenfranchisement that mass society previously encouraged.

Media organizations will have to wrestle with how this collective contemplation is altering the roles and functions of editorial writers, op-ed authors, and columnists. They will have to increasingly engage with the public and see their roles as provoking conversation, not merely telling people what to think.

THE DEAD AND THE DYING

Judging from the continuing panicked commentary by big media journalists and commentators, newspapers are dead and dying. They are comatose, the family is gathering at the bedside, and quiet discussions are taking place about whether to disconnect them from life support.

Walter Isaacson writing in Time Magazine last week told us that “the crisis in journalism has reached meltdown proportions” and that we can save newspapers by starting to make micropayments for articles we read online.
http://www.time.com/time/business/article/0,8599,1877191-4,00.html

David Carr, writing in New York Times, this week tells us that a “digitally enabled free fall in ads and audience now has burly guys circling major daily newspapers with plywood and nail guns.” We need to start charging for news, forcing aggregators to pay, turn away from ad support, and start thinking about new ways of collaboration even if they require a new antitrust exemption.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/09/business/media/09carr.html?emc=eta1

Jonathan Zimmermann writing in Christian Science Monitors tells us “The American newspaper is dead.” And that we can save its functions by having professors write for the public.
(http://news.yahoo.com/s/csm/20090309/cm_csm/yzimmerman)

Nickle and dime-ing readers like the airlines? Special treatment from the government? Relying on professors to tell us what's going on? Have journalists gone mad?

It some ways they have. They are panicking at problems in big city media and ignoring the fact that most newspapers are relatively stable and reasonably healthy. The only newspapers experiencing serious competitive difficulties are those in the top 25 markets (about 1 percent of the total) and these are joined in suffering by corporate newspaper companies whose executives have made serious managerial mistakes.

Journalists are sometimes their own worst enemies, and this is one such time. Through overly pessimistic outlooks and sweeping generalization, they may be hastening the obituaries of some weak papers by making readers and advertisers think their serve no purpose today.

Discussion of the newspaper industry’s situation is confused because many observers do not separate its short-term problems with the economy from the challenges of long-term trends. Then they compound that problem by using papers as examples of industry developments that are unrepresentative because of their market situations and managerial errors.

Most newspapers continued making profits up to the current financial crisis and many papers whose parents went into bankruptcy were doing likewise. They will make profits again when the recession ends as they have done in the past.

The Rocky Mountain News did not die because the newspaper industry is in trouble, but because it was the secondary paper in the market and the joint operating agreement was not enough to save it. Several other JOA papers are on their way to oblivion for the same reasons. The Journal Register Co. and Tribune Co. went into bankruptcy not because its newspapers were unable to survive but because its management took on far too much corporate debt.

Clearly, large metro papers are suffering from the effects of competition from television, cable, and Internet. But that same pain is not being felt by most of the nation’s papers that operate in small and mid-sized towns and are the primary or only significant provider of news in their communities. They will continue to survive for many years because their content is unique and because their local advertisers are not well served by other media options.

What we need is a dose of realism in the discussion of the journalistic situation today. Most papers are NOT in the hospital, let alone comatose. The dead and the dying may be there and if so it is because they can't figure out how to give readers something worth paying for.

MEDIA FIRMS INCREASINGLY CHARGED WITH COPYRIGHT VIOLATIONS

First it was record companies suing Napster and peer-to-peer file sharers, and then it was media companies such as Viacom, Universal Music Group, and Agence France Presse suiting Google, YouTube, and Facebook for distributing content whose rights they owned. Now GateHouse Media has filed suit against another newspaper firm, the New York Times Co., for publishing content from its websites and papers on Boston.com.

That media companies are suing each other is a sure sign of the maturation of online distribution and that money is starting to flow—albeit slowly and at levels far below that of traditional media, which still account for more than two-thirds of all consumer and advertiser expenditures

But the lawsuits really point out the weakness of revenue distribution for use of intellectual property online. In publishing, well-developed systems for trading rights and collecting payments exist. In radio, systems for tracking songs played and ensuring artists, composers, arrangers, and music publishers are compensated are in place and working well. The trading of rights for television broadcasts and mechanisms for payments to owners of the IPRs are well established.

However, effective systems are absent in online distribution and the industry needs to move rapidly to establish them. If the industry can not create such a system on their own, more money will go to lawyers and the rules and systems for online payments will ultimately be imposed by courts or legislators who tire of the governmental costs for solving disputes and enforcing the rights.

Organizations representing print and audio-visual media need to sit down with their major counterparts in online distribution to create a reasonable mechanism by which rights are traded and revenues shared, otherwise they risk imposition of a government imposed compulsory license scheme that will be less desirable to the industry.

Companies that continually argue there should be less government regulation of media operations can’t increasingly go to government to solve their disputes without expecting it to produce more regulation.

COMCAST FORGETS THE BUSINESS IT IS IN

Sometimes companies forget what businesses they are in and Comcast seems to be the latest media and communication company to do so.

The problem evidenced in the dispute between the FCC and Comcast over its traffic management policies blocking or slowing BitTorret and other files in violation of FCC network neutrality rules requiring open access. Without addressing whether regulators or Comcast are right in the dispute, it is clear from the company’s response that it has lost sight of it core business.

Comcast argues it was engaging in reasonable business practices by limiting the flow of BitTorrent files (often used to download large video, audio, and text files) because they push up the flow of traffic and slow the system. In Comcast’s view, the system and its integrity are its raison d’etre and represent the business it is in. It is easy to understand why the company and its executives might think so.

Comcast spends the majority of its effort and personnel creating and maintaining its system and infrastructure, tackling issues of system capacity and capabilities, and working to ensure system reliability and speed. It provides video, Internet, and voice services via 575,000 miles of wires serving 15 million cable subscribers, 13 million Internet users, and 4 million digital home providers. In the last three years Comcast has spent $13.6 billion in capital expenditures on the system.

Unfortunately, the extraordinary network it operates and maintains—the lines, switches, head-ins, Internet and telephone connections—are not the business of Comcast, they are just the requirements for conducting the business. Its real business is providing customers access to the video, audio, text, and voice communications they desire.

Its central purpose is serving the needs of the end users, including those who want to acquire capacity-eating BitTorrent files. It is the purpose that its executives seem to have forgotten when they decided their network management practices were more important than the wishes and desires of their customers. Their absent mindedness is not completely surprising, however, because the company has long had one of the poorest records of customer service among media firms. Lots of problems develop rapidly if you think it would be a good business if you just didn't have to deal with bothersome customers.

THE INTERNET, MOBILE MEDIA, AND YOUTH ARE NOT TO BLAME

Traditional media industries and companies are overwhelmed with an atmosphere of consternation and fear today.

Trade publications and industry association meetings are filled with news of diminished budgets, reorganizations, consolidations, and layoffs. People say traditonal media are declining and will soon disappear. Potential employees are wondering if there is a future for them in the industries and senior employees are hoping their jobs will last until they reach retirement. Everyone is pointing the finger,but most of the blame for killing traditional media is laid on the Internet, mobile media, and young people.

There is just one problem with their scenario. IT’S NOT TRUE. We have deluded ourselves into thinking that well established media are dying and that young people are uninterested in traditional text and audiovisual media.

Although new distributors of information and entertainment abound and video on demand and consumer-created content are increasing daily, consumers’ greatest time allocation and advertisers’ greatest expenditures remain with traditional media. Although young people have adopted newer media technologies more rapidly than other population groups, most of their media use still involves film, television, magazines, and non-traditional newspapers.

If the death knell for traditional media is not ringing, why do industry personnel keep hearing bells in their ears?

The reason is that significant changes are underway and most people don’t understand them. We have reached a era when the collective weight of expanded offerings of traditional media and the appearance of new types of media are ending the relatively undemanding operating conditions that existed due to lack of media choice and are removing the effortless profits that traditional commercial media enjoyed for a half century.

Suddenly there is competition. Suddenly there are financial losses. Suddenly there are company failures. Suddenly audiences are no longer satisfied with the “take content on our terms when we want to deliver it” approach that traditional media have offered. Only it wasn’t really sudden. Those factors have been growing incrementally for at least three decades. The problems were certainly compounded by the arrival of Internet and mobile content distribution, but they were not caused by them.

Let’s look at the case of the newspaper industry in the U.S. Readership problems have been evident for half a century. Although actual circulation rose continually throughout the twentieth century, reaching a height of 62.6 million in 1993, penetration has declined steadily at 1 to 2 percent each year since 1950. The pace has been steady despite the appearance of additional types of media. The expansion of network television didn’t increase the loss, the arrival of cable channels didn’t amplify the decline, and the arrival of the Internet didn’t boost the pace.

Today, the Internet is having an affect on advertising, but even that is not disastrous despite the wailing and gnashing of teeth. Total U.S. newspaper advertising was $46.6 billion in 1999 and $49.3 billion in 2006. In financial terms newspaper advertising is rising, but when accounting for inflation it has basically plateaued so one can not say the Internet is killing papers. If we look at classified where the biggest substitution exists, classified advertising in newspapers reached a height of $19.6 billion in 1999 and it was $16.9 billion in 2006. Clearly a decline occurred but it was offset by the fact that newspaper online advertising produced $2.6 billion in 2006. Overall, the business has stopped growing and investors are unhappy, but the industry isn't dying.

Certainly, the Internet is having many effects on established media. Research shows that print media business models have been least disrupted, unlike audiovisual media, but that print media work processes are changing most among media. However, Internet, mobile and other new form of distribution are providing all types of traditional media new opportunities.

Similar things have happened in the television business. The change from a limited number of television channels to hundreds of television, cable and satellite channels spread the audience, reduced the viewers of dominant stations, and made advertisers unwilling to continue paying previous prices. The big 3 networks could count on ratings in the 20s to 30s in the 1970s, but today they achieve ratings in the teens and are fighting to stay among the big 3. Nevertheless, viewers want network programming--on TV, as DVD, as syndicated programming, as downloads. There is no sign that demand for interesting programs is diminishing even if the basic television ratings are falling and new ways of monetizing the content are being developed.

We all need to recognize that changes in traditional operations are painful for industries, companies, and their personnel and that the contemporary changes are placing a lot of stress on management and employees. Everyone would prefer to continue doing things in the old ways they know well, but because of the new conditions those business models, processes, and market techniques aren't working as effectively as in the past.

The biggest challenges facing people in traditional media today are pessimism and lack of vision. Morale in publications and stations continues to drop, and doom and gloom are everywhere. That negativism makes things worse internally, reduces confidence of advertisers and investors, and makes it difficult to think about trying new things or even trying old things in new ways. The first step out of this condition is to stop lamenting the passing of the past. Things will never be the way they were. So get over it. Move on. Discover and embrace new ways of operating and new opportunities to prosper and grow.

ONLINE AND MOBILE REVENUE POTENTIAL DRIVE COMPENSATION DISPUTES

The issues in the Hollywood writer’s strike, which began Nov. 5, are symptomatic of a broader challenges that online and mobile media pose for all content creators. The fundamental issues for all media involve how to obtain revenue for content distributed by digital media and how to share revenue from those downloads.

In the Hollywood case, the central issues revolve around new media residuals for advertising supported video downloads of content prepared for TV and motion pictures, made for Internet content, and other streaming video. Screen writers, who did not foresee the success of VCR and DVD sales of motion pictures and television programs in past negotiations, are determined to receive greater compensation for the growing business in digital downloads.

The Alliance of Motion Picture & Television Producers argues that business potential of new media is uncertain and does not wish stipulate a monetary value for it. The Writer's Guild of America has asked for a $250 residual for one year of unlimited streaming of an hour-long show and 3-cents-per-download—the rate writer’s receive for DVD sales.

The rhetoric of the dispute has involved standard finger pointing with the producers’ group accusing writers of “quixotic pursuit of radical demands” and the writers accusing the producers of “corporate greed.”

Whatever the truth of those claims and the outcome of the work stoppage, there will be more disagreements in the coming years among those who actually produce content and those who employ creators or ultimately own the content because the issues are far broader and deeper than the screen writers challenging program and film producers. The underlying issue of what compensation creators deserve is growing in all media industries and digital downloads increasingly play important roles in their businesses.

In the past 20 years, at the behest of large commercial media firms, Congress past more copyright legislation than in all the years of the previous century combined. It extended the length of copyright, gave copyright protection to performers, games, and broadcasts, provided more protection and stronger penalties for digital than analogue content, and criminalized copyright violations.

The rhetoric of the media industry throughout the debates was consistent: If creators of content aren’t protected and compensated, no one will create articles, books, music, scripts, etc. However, the effect of the copyright legislation did not effectively strengthen the position of authors, composer, performers, or artists, but reinforced the power of copyright owners--essentially film, television, and recording companies, newspaper, magazine, and book publishers. Today, creators of content are now beginning to use the rhetoric that media firms used in copyright debates in their attempts to gain more compensation because of the growing revenue streams in digital media.

Although the full financial future of digital media is uncertain—as in any emerging industry, media firms are investing billions based on an upbeat assessment of its business opportunities. Twentieth Century Fox just announced a deal to rent its movies through digital downloads from the iTunes Store, which sold more than 200 million video downloads in 2007. Viacom signed a $500 million online advertising and content distribution deal with Microsoft covering the websites they both operate such as MTV, Comedy Central, MSN, and Xbox Live. You Tube was purchased by Google for $1.65 million and subsequently acquired the ad-serving firm DoubleClick for $3.1 billion in order to improve its ability to earn ad revenue on You Tube and other sites.

Although there is business risk involved in these ventures, digital media are clearly growing and are expected to produce handsome rewards. Downloads of movies and TV produced only $250 million in 2007, but are forecasted to reach nearly $2 billion in just 2 years. Digital downloads of music have already surpassed that mark and U.S. newspapers had online advertising revenue of $2.6 billion in 2006. There is money to be made in digital media and the amount is rising rapidly.

The growing value of digital downloads is one of the reasons why Viacom sued You Tube in 2007 for $1 billion in damages when 160,000 clips of its programs that were found on the online site. When media companies sue each other, you know that real money is at stake.

Arguments made by Hollywood producers that they are uncertain if there is money to be made in downloads are hollow given their own investments. It appears they are trying to reduce their business risk and to increase their profits by keeping writers’ compensation low and stropping them from gaining a stake in the growth of downloads.

The issues of compensation that led screenwriters to strike are confronting writers and photographers for newspapers, magazines, and books, independent video producers posting material on social media sites, and citizen journalists whose articles, photos, and videos are being use by commercial media and their digital sites--sometimes replacing paid content of professionals.

Now that online services are beginning to generate significant revenue streams for print media, journalists’ and writers’ desires to gaining more compensation for those uses of their work are rising. Although some papers and magazines agreed to provide nominal payments or salary increases for secondary uses of print content online, most have not yet come to terms over the growing revenue stream and how its benefits should be shared.

One can expect issues of compensation for digital materials to gain greater significance as negotiating points for the Newspaper Guild and the National Writer’s Union in the years to come. Both have lent their support to the Writer’s Guild of America and their members are increasingly aware of the effects of the new revenue streams on the companies that employ them.

MONETIZATION CHALLENGES IN DIGITAL VIDEO MEDIA

The real challenges facing media companies today are not technology or opportunities, but how to monetize activities in digital video media. The popularity of video downloads and streaming video on internet and mobile devices is growing exponentially and motion picture and television production companies are rushing to create deals to participate in the phenomenon.

The biggest challenge is finding workable business models. A combination of technology and capricious consumers are altering existing media business models and making success with new models difficult. The traditional business models of media are eroding as audiences and advertisers respond to changing media markets and today both legacy and new media are struggling to find effective new business models for their existing operations and new products and services.

It is complicated because a fundamental shift in financing media is underway and many companies are finding it difficult to adjust their business perspective. During the period of industrial society consumers made relatively few direct payments for media and business models worldwide were based primarily on advertising expenditures, license fees, and tax payments. In post-industrial society, the rise of new social and economic arrangements and the proliferation of types of media and media content, business models are shifting toward a consumer model. Today, for every dollar spent in the U.S. on media by advertisers, consumers now spend 7 dollars. Media have shifted from a supply driven market to a demand driven market.

This means that companies must spend a good deal of effort ensuring they are creating value for customers. However, it is not enough to create value for customers. At the end of the day, economic value must be created for the company or it is not running a business.

Although media firms are rapidly entering digital video provision, there are significant business problems with contemporary deals involving new forms of digital video media. Companies are not buying return on investment, but are buying market share in hopes that income will follow. The trend is especially evident in social media, where companies are pinning their hopes on Internet advertising growth and increased abilities to better target advertising. It is a big gamble because social media users have been ad averse and click through rates are less than one-tenth of those on other internet sites.

You Tube was purchased by Google for $1.65 billion but has advertising revenues of about $250 million and My Space, which was acquired by News Corp. for $580 million, receives about $450 million in advertising revenue. On the face of those numbers these do not appear to be rationale business investments, but what the firms are actually doing is buying large audiences in hopes of positioning themselves as leaders in online advertising.

They are doing so because Internet advertising expenditures are heavily concentrated and the top 10 sites in the U.S. account for 70 percent of the total advertising expenditures. The high prices for social media are part of a fight for the top because of the ad revenue concentration. The companies are taking a business risk that may or may not pay off depending on the willingness of the users of those social media to accept advertising and monitoring of their activities.

Across digital video media we are now seeing a variety of company strategies. Some firms are pursuing ad-supported free media business models, whereas other firms are taking the road toward conditional access as part of subscriptions to Internet and mobile services. Still others are mixing income streams from both conditional access and advertising. The industry is not yet mature enough and consumer preferences are not yet clear enough to determine which will be the most successful revenue model. As a result, firms need to be agile, flexible, and able to change rapidly in their approach to digital video media.

Introducing Google Innovation Blog

Check out my new Blog dedicated to Innovations at Google:

http://googleinnovation.blogspot.com

Google Innovation

Google Innovation Blog contains the latest:

News, Reviews, Articles, Case studies, Best practices, Insights, Ideas, Success stories, Blogs and more about Innovations at Google Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG)

I am planning to incorporate the latest technology, business model, partnerships and software advances at Google as they are announced, and provide my review and analysis on the same. What insights can be gained from these new innovations? How successful will these innovations be in the marketplace? The Blog articles and posts will be as I see it, my opinion, my analysis, my thoughts on how Google is shaping new innovations and bringing them to the marketplace. There will be the occasional interviews with the innovators and product champions at Google. I also plan to include some of the best materials found on the web and the blogosphere on everything to do with Google innovations. Some of the pertinent blog posts on Google Innovation will find their way to the Creativity and Innovation Driving Business Blog.

For instance, in my latest blog post:

Google Trends: Everything Out in the Open, Move Over Zeitgeist

Bottomline:

Google Trends and Hot Trends are definitely Hot! It not only gives you a pulse on the latest happenings online as seen by Google Search, but also gives you comparisons on two or more trends over the time frame of your choice: today, yesterday, or any given day. Now if only Google can tell us what will be Hot tomorrow!! Move over Zeitgeist.

Google's New Search - Step in the right direction - Still some ways to go

Bottomline:

Google's new search technology is an early effort towards making searching for information better. Google has the right vision of integrating the search across various dimensions of Web, Images, Video, Products, etc. and providing comprehensive results. However, implementing this algorithm for new search, producing the results in parallel, and showing the results in a visually appealing and contextually easy-to-understand manner is going to be key as Google moves forward. Google may also be faced with the problem of what a majority of the user population may be seeking: a simpler answer to their search query. The more sophisticated users may appreciate the comprehensive answer that Google will provide. How would Google know whether the user is a layman user or a sophisticated user? One thing is certain though: Google has the ability to mine the world's information and present it in a contextual setting that is relevant to the user. Google just needs to make sure that in creating a new search, it does not make it confusing for the end user, as this would be huge step backward.

Google to create new R&D Center in South India

Bottomline:

Google is poised to expand its base in India with this new R & D center that can house up to 4,000 engineers. Hyderabad, Andhra Pradesh in South India wins the nod from Google, partly because Google has already a 1,000 person engineering and services operation for the online sales running quite smoothly; however, when you have the chief minister of Andhra and his team wooing you to do more with all the incentives, it would have been very hard for Google to say no. Timing is everything. Don't be surprised if by the end of 2010, Google has a four thousand people strong R & D center in South India with plans to make it a ten thousand employee organization across all of India based on the kind of growth Google is seeing and its position as one of the top innovators of the world.

I invite you to explore the Google Innovation Blog, and provide me your valuable comments and feedback.

Here's to blogging on Google Innovation.

References:

Google Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG) is one of the top 20 Innovators of The Innovation Index.