Jeff Bezos and Amazon Launch Kindle 2.0, Try to Ignore Google Punch to the Solar Plexus

Jack Roberts — Mon, 09 Feb 2009 14:12:41 +0000

‘BRING ON THE DIGITAL BOOK REVOLUTION’, we say. The convergence of the book publishing world is picking up pace with the news that Amazon will unveil the second model of their Kindle e-reader at a press conference later today. According to leaks the Kindle 2 is lighter, still expensive at US $359 (approx. £240), and still looks a bit underwhelming, design-wise. Exciting!

However, despite their best efforts to toast the success of the Kindle (TechCrunch reckons the e-reading device is beating the iPod’s first year sales in the US) Amazon will have to instead fend off questions about Google, who unveiled their own dastardly plan to conquer the book world last Thursday. Google’s announcement, made in a misleadingly innocuous blog post, is only now beginning to percolate into the world media echo chamber, and involves the launch of their Google Book Search service, which allows you to freely read out-of-copyright books, on their Android smartphone platform and – crucially – the iPhone. Unsurprisingly, Google’s plan has very little scope for involving an 80s calculator-style reading device sold by a certain online retailer…

‘Happy mobile reading!’ said the Google Book Search team, presumably lip-reading the screen with the same semi-drugged benevolent monotone they pick up at the door with the free tricycles, although ‘An ice-pick to your heart Bezos clown!’ might have been a more honest exclamation (preferably accompanied by audio samples of bellowing cackles).

Either way, consider the cock well and truly snooked Amazon fools! As BAD IDEA Ed. Daniel Stacey noted in a recent in-depth piece for Slate.com’s The Big Money, the slow roll out of the Kindle in foreign markets has opened up a weak flank that Apple and Google are steaming into like bloodthirsty pirates.

Even if Tech Crunch’s claims that the Kindle has sold 500,000 Kindles in the last 12 months is correct, this is about the same number that downloaded the Stanza application on the iPhone alone, which has only been up and running since July 2008. Plus, you can download Stanza anywhere in the world where iPhones can be used – as opposed to the Kindle, which is a US only device until Bezos pulls his finger out.

Enter Google, whose US $125 million settlement with the American Authors Guild and Association of American Publishers in October 2008 will allow them to mediate readers’ access to free and searchable digital copies of all out-of-copyright books, and take a cut on all purchases of in-copyright books sold through Google Book Search, Google or the Android platform (see left for pics of what Book Search and its reader looks like on Android phones). Expect more global settlements with publishers and authors in the near future.

Where this leaves Amazon is unclear. Maybe they could turn Kindle into a mobile phone device? Or pray that Apple don’t weigh in with some kind of uber-iPhone tablet product? Or maybe they could just give up, and start working for Google like the rest of us will soon, if we don’t already…

(A quick footnote: a world ruled by Google is the latest obsession of new media pundit/Google fanboy Jeff Jarvis, a triumphantly returns to the theme in his latest weekly dispatch for the Guardian technology pages. In the piece, entitled ‘The Foresight of Google’, Jarviscombines a thinly disguised plug for his new book What Would Google Do? with his dream of a Google utopia, where the search engine company dominates the world with hilarious totalitarian consequences:

Imagine a restaurant run by Googlethink. Besides being decorated in primary colours with M&Ms on every table, wouldn’t it reveal its data to us – how many people order the crabcakes – to help us order? Wouldn’t it open up its process – its recipes – so diners could help improve them? I’m not suggesting that it become a computer-run bistro with an algorithmic menu, but merely that if you can hear them, you’ll learn that your crowd of customers is wise.

… We are in the midst of a fundamental and permanent restructuring of our economy and society. In response to my book, one reader emailed me and went so far as to suggest that we may be witnessing the emergence of a new system to follow capitalism, socialism, and communism: Googleism.

Memo to Jeff: now might be the time to lay off the red Google M&M’s pal!

ITV Succumbs to Google “Parasites,” In Denial About Imminent Lobotomy

Jack Roberts — Fri, 28 Nov 2008 16:22:00 +0000

Oh dear. The UK’s biggest commercial TV station today bowed to the inevitable, and announced a deal with Google that will see Sergey Brin, Larry Page and Co. handle a large portion of ITV’s online advertising through it’s AdSense application.

‘So what?’ you might ask. Well, regular BAD IDEA readers may remember that in issue five we reported on Google’s attempts to stake its claim on the advertising money that currently supports commercial television. ITV has been slow to recognise that Google has been aggressively stalking its main revenue stream in the past, but when Google overtook them as the UK’s top company for advertising revenues in the third quarter of 2007, they soon came alive to a fearsome new rival.

Now they appear to have reverted to solipsism. Has it been just two months since Michael Grade, ITV’s cigar chomping exec chairman, was downplaying Google’s threat in a comical piece of propoganda worthy of former Iraqi Information Minister Mohammed Saeed al-Sahhaf? Addressing assembled media bigwigs at the IBC Conference in Amsterdam, Grade declared himself not at all worried about the barbarians at the gates.

“Google and YouTube are just parasites. The day they start spending £1 billion a year on content is the day I start worrying.”

Grade, a creature of the long-dead television ‘golden age’ where laughable un-talents like Timmy Mallet could actually have a career, just couldn’t get his head round it. But why would Google spend £1 billion on TV content, when they can just create web applications that cream the ad-revenue generated by the companies who do?

The disturbing fact for Grade and ITV is that this process is only in it’s infancy: as Niku Banaie, now in charge of strategy and innovation of leading digital ad agency Isobar, told us last year, AdSense is just a small part of Google’s aggressive designs on TV ad spend. The next generation of Google advertising applications will be even more sophisticated, introducing a range of innovative technologies and applications that target consumers in far more social, interactive, and personal ways than a TV channel could ever hope to compete with – largely because they have their hands tied producing ‘content’, an expensive and time consuming activity that they are unfortunately compelled to do by the government.

“Once they set this up, it’s going to become difficult for traditional TV broadcasters,” Banaie said. “Sometimes you sit watching ads in a TV commercial break thinking ‘Why the fuck am I watching that? Why is that even being fed to me at this time?’ Google say this won’t happen with their online TV advertising: they’ll know more about user behaviour, the stuff you watch, and about you as a person. With targeted ads like that, it’s a no brainer for advertisers really.”

Google have already signalled their intention to move into the developing field of mobile phone advertising, and who knows what Minority Report levels of uber-personalised advertising treats they have in store (see the vid below for a sample).

So wake up Michael Grade and ITV: getting Google on-board might sound like a smart idea right now, and even placate a few anxious shareholders, but harbour no illusions: it’s YOUR milkshake that Google will be drinking in the coming years.

Bad Idea magazine » Sergey Brin

Jeff Bezos and Amazon Launch Kindle 2.0, Try to Ignore Google Punch to the Solar Plexus

ITV Succumbs to Google “Parasites,” In Denial About Imminent Lobotomy