About a year ago when I went to last year's TechCrunch Disrupt, my main take-away was that apps and app search outside the ambit of Google were going to pose a real challenge to Google. It seemed so obvious to me that all the searches people were doing and all the data being harvested were not on Google's servers and were not therefore part of Big Ad. I even had a brief encounter with Google VP Marissa Mayer about this question, asking her if it would be a problem for Google.
She dismissed the challenge because she said the apps were only searching for other apps and people would still have to go to a web site for content. I said that they wouldn't, they would live in the apps. She said "Someone will do this well," in a way that suggested either Google would, or somebody was working on it now that Google would buy -- that it, she sounded very imperious and assured.
Few seemed to be focused on this challenge to Google, but surely Google itself had to be, which is why it produced the Android and bought other things or did other things related to apps. But the Android just hasn't done as well -- people don't like open source products and prefer the polish of Apple. There is more innovation at Apple and gravitating to Apple; the Android hasn't attracted as many interesting apps. This is the fact that dispels the open source myth -- open source as some big, free commons where the innovators will always come and excel. It doesn't happen.
This year, it was even more clear just how much data all these apps harvest and keep on their servers, not on Google's servers (or Amazon's servers, but I don't think that means Amazon gets to look at the data or mine and use it.)
So it was interesting to finally hear one of the official experts of the tech world say this: Robert Scoble, on the Gilmore Gang (which I seldom listen to because it is so ingroupy, long and boring), put it very starkly and urgently. And the others strangely didn't seem to get it.
"Google does not have the relationship with Foodspotting, and Runkeeping and Spotify and Ways. Google does not have the API to study the data coming from these mobile apps," said Scoble.
These apps run alongside the Facebook page and you see your friends doing things on it and you click and do them too. And of course, this is all coming from an app via Facebook gathering the data.
The others in that day's Gillmore Gang conversation didn't seem to accept the premise. Spotify is reporting what we're listening to, but not reporting it to Google. "Why is that important?" asks one. Well, so they can pitch you the ad better.
Scoble saw the Google eyeglasses as part of a marketing gimmick to make it appear that Google is making futuristic things and has a more interesting future for us than Apple. He also saw that it would have to get more information from sensors to give the glasses a context. He described some device being tested that was gathering everything about how he moved -- when he ran, when he got into his own car, when he got into somebody else's car, when he went to church or the store or a kid's basketball game.
That would have to be related to Google's navigation, and as one of the investors said, Google's navigation is like no other -- you can be in the woods and it will help you walk out; you can tell how long your bus ride will be; it homes in on you and shows you as a blinking dot on a map and keeps rolling the map out in real time. I didn't realize this isn't available on an Apple phone because Apple doesn't want it there -- that would of course enable Google to scrape data from Apple's customers that Apple would rather have.
I would highly recommend listening to the video towards the end at 63:02 -- it's like a cameo view into the future, and a very disturbing one.
Keith Teare, who jokingly described himself as a venture communist on the show, said that despite that more precise view of the user that the apps might garner, "The ad will be hated just as much." Well, maybe.
Scoble seems to think there is some brand new form of advertising based on the vast treasure trove of data FB has about us that will be coming to mobile.
People are skeptical because they think users bat away mobile ads even more than on the web -- I see the reality on the dashboard at Adsense, however, is that people click on mobile ads even more than on pages simply because they are accessing content more on phones than sitting at a computer these days. That isn't my behaviour, but it is for more and more people.
The tablets can simulate the look of turning magazine pages and put full-page ads on them; what will mobile do? More games, for one, and maybe the awful gamification, but I really have to wonder what "new thing" could be brought to advertising.
Currently, Facebook pitches me ads that have nothing to do with what I am really interested in buying because it is drawing static data off my profile as it has rigidly set it up for me to fill out, and possibly key-word searching my posts. So I get an ad for some correspondence school to get a masters in human rights, even though I have absolutely no intention, and have never written any such intention, of going back to school, online or off.
Says Scoble, "Google has Android, it knows where you are, navigation, but doesn't know the CONTEXT." Well, Facebook isn't terribly good at picking up that context, either.
"Name an app that doesn't have an FB integration into it. When FB starts to monetarize, it will accelerate," says Scoble.
Steve Gillmore concedes this, but he concedes it with the heavy sign of the technocommunist he is.
"Facebook Connect is probably the most successful software in history, followed by Twitter Connect. They are the on-ramp for this new kind of e-commerce. That's going to be enormous," he admits. Indeed. He would have preferred that we all be collectivized on Diaspora and...what was the name of that open-source Twitter-like thing he used to tinker with all the time? But it was not to be...
Scoble thinks in three months, we'll see a new kind of advertising network come out of Facebook. Well, as I've been saying, it better be Adface like AdSense that lets me monetarize the content of my FB pages, or I will not think much of it. More ads for dating men age 55-65 are not going to cut it.
"Apple and Google have not built this market, Facebook has. The market is rewarding them for that," said Scoble about the IPO.
I'm getting a bit sick of discussing an IPO for stock that I didn't have the inside price on and couldn't afford even now as it decreases in value, but the point seems to me, despite the wailing of the Guardian and many do-gooders, that Facebook did exactly what it needed to do. It got money from the public to grow its business. It unloaded the stock of employees it needed to cash out to keep motivated. It unloaded the stock for angels and VCs. The rest of the public got screwed, but then, they could just hang on to the stock and it will likely increase in value if in fact Facebook "executes," as the geeks say, on its mobile marketing scheme.
"Facebook shows a future where Google is less important," says Scoble -- even though Scoble himself has largely moved his blogging with commenting to G+ -- he doesn't let as many comments come through on Facebook. As for Twitter, I don't remember the last time I saw him there.
Scoble talked about a trip to Petaluma where using the app Ways, he would get traffic conditions in a way Google navigate couldn't give him -- social news about where accidents were, etc.
"Googles is not giving it to me, the app companies are; they have data tha that Google does not have. Period," said Scoble, and that has been my point.
I don't use apps a fraction of what he does because I find them all laggy and clunky on our Androids. It seems like you spend a lot of time on a smart phone constantly shutting off apps to make sure they don't use up the power. It's all a nuisance. I don't have a need for it, if I'd prefer to think when I'm out walking around and only go on the Internet while at home or in an office.
Really, Scoble couldn't be more emphatic about this -- and I wonder when he will blog this so it will get more attention -- the information is locked inside the less-viewed Gillmor Gang video.
"Google doesn't know I listened to Skrylix on Spotify on the way to Petaluma; Google doesn't know what Foodspotters shows, which is that I'm at a sushi restaurant. Google is fucked! Facebook has that data!"
I suddenly realized why Google may have bothered grabbing data from wireless connections like emails and content snippets while it is out ostensibly doing Street View.
It can't get that data from mobile phones and apps any other way.
All the apps are published on FB, Google cannot see that data. Google has to go and crawl it we give it permission -- and that means having an Android phone, not an i-phone from Apple or another company.
"Larry Page complains that FB is not giving up their data," says Gillmor. "Google has a problem."
It's why the geeks, including himself for years, who are Google-centric if not Google engineers themselves have loudly demanded social media to be "open" and that everybody be able to port data in and out -- so that Google could do the same thing and have everybody's data, too. I never bought the line; it is the technocommunist line, and the only way we can have any semblance of freedom and privacy is if there are multiple big entities vying for us and competing with each other. The commons is not the answer in the way they imagine; the commons will be built up by walled gardens and choice, not collectivization.
Now the collectivization is not to be (you can see Scoble arguing with others mourning the death of the common web on his blog) -- but Google can hardly sit still with this for long. If even I've noticed it and especially Scoble has noticed it and dramatically expressed it, and probably hundreds of others, they will have to "do something".
Somehow, I don't see people adapting to the G0ogle glasses, but they might rush them out as a glorified i-phone with the screen in a flip-top or welded into one of the eye pieces to the side as you see in prototypes. And Google will probably buy up some of these apps so they can get the data.
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