Selling Your House Via Google Maps

So you select an area you would like to live in on Google maps. You can look at street level, review where all the local schools, doctors, shops, restaurants are. You can take an ariel view and look at the landscape from the sky. Now you can even look at what properties are available in the area and probably zoom in to take an even closer view. When you find what you want you click to the agent and see the details and maybe even have a virtual tour. You may also like to see local planning consents and email the details to your partner. All this and more can now be achieved without to leave your laptop or mobile app, or even making a phone call!

Today’s Guardian reports that Google UK has launched a new feature of Google Maps with new house-hunting services. Today they have decided to work with real estate agents Countrywide, Zoopla and Trinity Mirror. This new service will allow both buyers and renters to search location and further qualify by specifics such as price, type and numbers of bedrooms and bathrooms. It is an obvious extension for Google services and one that must be a no-brainer for every agent and everyone wanting to sell or let a house.

Google will today make money from running ads above and below search results with estate agents and online property companies not being charged to be partners. However, the interesting question is whether in this new world the agent becomes stronger, or Google effectively cuts them out, or takes a further cut. Remember when Google said it wasn’t going to be a bookseller?

Does Adwords Infringe Trademarks?

An interesting trademark case goes before the Court of Justice of the European Union next on Tuesday which will rule on Google’s use trade marks to trigger online ads that are claimed to infringe trademarks and brand-protection. The issue is whether a company can buy the right for its ads to be displayed when a rival's trade marks is searched. Should someone searching Louis Vuitton (LVMH) be shown ads paid for by its competitors. A case referred to the same courts centres on whether Marks and Spencer should be allowed to use the term ‘Interflora’ in AdWords.

The Google’s AdWords system allows anyone to have their paid advertisement appear when a certain search term is entered by a user, irrespective of whether that search term is a trade mark or not. Google gives the highest spots to the highest payers and the advert's relevance and it makes significant amount of its money through AdWords.

To read more OUTLAW.com

UPDATE
The European Court of Justice has ruled in favour of Google. This means that people searching for branded products could also be shown rival brands or even counterfeit goods.

The ruling states that "Google has not infringed trademark law by allowing advertisers to purchase keywords corresponding to their competitors' trademarks."

Stop Making AdSense?

When they first appeared we tried AdSense and AdWords but found that although it may work in specific markets or genre, it didn’t work across a wide and deep range of book titles. In fact the experience was a likened by our accountant to putting money on the horses - except you knew when you won on the horses – here you know you been at the races, you know you have spent money placing your bets but you are not sure what the odds were and won. He would look at the money being spent ,the reports generated and ask ‘Where’s the money? Show me the sales?’ We pulled out.

We have just tried the latest internet ad route Facebook ads. The experience is even worse than tha of Google and it was clear that it was easy to take our money and generate stats but site activity was somewhat short of expectation and sales almost non-existent. Another one tried but found wanting.

We always have placed ads with marketing codes, we have swopped mail lists, done inserts, bought lists and as always the safest return is always on customer references and when you can achieve it column inches.

The register reports this week on the latest update to AdSense that will be focused on the better browsing capabilities of smartphones and could lead to ads as you go being pushed to mobiles. Google now has introduced a new JavaScript snippet that is optimized for high-end mobiles. No longer restricted to small text and reduced ad images, smartphone mobiles such as; the iPhone, Pre, Blackberry and Androids could be targeted.

All advertising has to be accountable. Some may build brand, others promote a specific offer but at the end of the day they have to deliver value not just empty stats. We would be interested to hear others thoughts on whether some ads do make sense.

GoogleWorld Is One Big Onion

So Google is now officially going to be the biggest digital bookseller on the planet. The New York Times reports on the latest layer to be peeled back on the Google onion as it plans for media and content domination.

They certainly know the buttons to press and the words to say. Imagine you could paint a picture of a big bad wolf, blame them squarely for screwing up digital pricing, blame them for the audacity of dictating terms, point at them and deride them for creating a digital silo ereading offer that only worked in their world, with their content and on their devices. Then calmly turn around and claim that you (and only you) can save the world from this single state monopoly, give pricing back to the publishers, make digital content available anywhere, anytime and secure and delivered from a single digital warehouse. Not difficult to see the appeal of such a white knight.

The NYT claim that the Google white knight appears to be throwing down the gauntlet in the e-book market. Some would be more sceptical and suggest that they are merely herding sheep. Some would suggest that many can only see Grandma in bed and are unable to see the big bad wolf in Grandma’s clothing.

Mr. Turvey, Director of Strategic Partnerships at Google, is reported saying that Google’s program would allow consumers to read books on any device with Internet access, “We don’t believe that having a silo or a proprietary system is the way that e-books will go.” He also said that Google would reserve the right to adjust prices that it deemed “exorbitant.”

If we step back and look at the potential scenarios that could evolve:

1. Google’s Book Settlement goes backwards but Google is seen to be ‘nice’ and a settlement is sweetened by their books position with publishers and ‘free’ subscription deals with libraries.
2. Google’s Book Settlement goes through and you now have the biggest retailer, custodian, whatever, single source of new, old, and everything ever written. Who will dictate terms then? What alternatives are there to it?
3. As Google shift the model online they effectively kill off the lame ereaders and exposing their greatest weakness – the old ownership/ download model. The move creates a single source repository for all - Google Book World.
4. Google enters the print on demand world and render these through affiliated printers.
5. Google roll Audio into You Tube, or ‘You Play’ or ‘You whatever’ but do so on a streamed ad model (a la Spotify)
6. Google becomes the bibliographic source of reference and holder of all secondary material.
7. Google Book Search becomes the physical book search and discovery source using physical sources as affiliates for supply.

Forget the discounting battles of today what Google can even afford to do is shift the price up and maintain or even grow margin. This sounds like the answer to everyone’s prayers, or those still left standing after the digital Tsunami.

Google Ads and Mobile Apps News

Google is developing technology to connect its TV-ad brokering business to the video world and would allow advertisers to buy adverts across Google TV, which sells on-air commercials; YouTube; and video on other Web sites all through the same interface. Google TV Ads Online, is being tested with a small group of advertisers and is likely to be introduced in the coming months.

Google's vision is obviously aimed at tethering the various platforms to advertisers enabling them to manage and measure their spending across all media. Youtube is trying to increase revenues and their recent spat with the PRS in the UK demonstrates that they need to pay their way.

Some TV ads may not be suited to run before or alongside online video, but there are big strategic opportunities at stake as more consumers watch TV online. YouTube has been looking at making ads through Internet-content on television, such as Apple Inc.'s Apple TV. Traditional TV-ad sellers are now also looking at creating their own online services and ad-selling platforms that compete with YouTube and Google TV.
This week Google also released its Google Mobile Application on RIM's Blackberry smartphones and added voice control on all but the Storm model. Inclyded are al the usual suspects; Google Maps, Gmail, RSS reader etc and all should work on Blackberry's 40 million smartphones.

Google already has Google Mobile Apps for the iPhone, Symbian and for the Android Plaform.

Google Take Two Steps Forward and One Step Back

Google like all major brands spreads its services at an alarming rate.
Today we hear about ‘Google 411’ a free business telephone directory enquiry service in the US. Google 411 uses voice-recognition software, completely eliminating the need for human operators.

Users access the service by calling 1-800-GOOG-411 (1-800-466-4411), and stating the desired state and city, or zip code. The system then asks the user to state the business being sought, and offers a list of results which can be dialed automatically. Users can also have results sent via SMS, or displayed as a point on Google maps on smartphones.

With respect to its ever controversial Google Book Search it appears that they have retreated from plans to include magazines with an ISSN number within the service. Technical difficulties with digitizing magazines due to poor paper quality, a lack of existing archives were cited and that book information was of a higher value to searchers were cited as the main reasons.

It shared to understand some of the logic as magazines are increasingly digitized and serials certainly have been for some time. The question of archive also appears a bit woolly given the efforts of many the digitize their archives. Perhaps the real clues lie in the fragmented nature of the content but again that’s the Internet also. Its hard to see the logic or perhaps it’s down to control, re-usage and revenue opportunities. You may believe that but we couldn’t possibly comment.

However, as one door closes another opens. Google now plan to dominate advertising on the television as well as on the Internet. It has announced a partnership with the Nielsen Company, the authority in measuring television audiences that aims to give advertisers more accurate figures of how many people are viewing commercials on a second-by-second basis and who those people are.

At a time when digital broadcasting is changing and many are viewing ‘offline’ and even bypassing the ads, advertisers are hungry for any data they can get about who is watching, who is bypassing them and where to invest.

Google has been selling ads on EchoStarCommunication’s 125 national satellite channel netwoprk. Google analyzes the data from set-top boxes to determine exactly which ads were watched or skipped, with a second-by-second breakdown. With Nielsen’s help, Google will be able to overlay sampling-based ratings and add a rich demographic layer to EchoStar’s information.

Google TV Ads and Google AdWords both give advertisers the ability to buy, sell and deliver advertisements across media and to evaluate the reach of each ad adding the demographic information from Nielson can then tell them who is watching it.