Posts Tagged ‘google’
Google kills Lively
Posted on: 20 November, 2008
…despite all the virtual high fives and creative rooms everyone has enjoyed in the last four and a half months, we’ve decided to shut Lively down at the end of the year. It has been a tough decision, but we want to ensure that we prioritize our resources and focus more on our core search, ads and apps business.
Google’s announcement doesn’t offer much detail about the reasons for the shutdown, noting only that Lively was an experiment, and that the time has come for Google to “focus more on our core search, ads and apps business.” Lively launched with a bang back in July with talk that it could become a Second Life killer. However limited support, poor uptake not helped by only being available to Windows users, and a general disinterest in the product has seen some speculating about its future for a while.
The world of Google – everything on which Google focuses its time and effort – is built on relevant data. With a small user based and no reason to analyze such little data the move seems logical. It could also be a business decision that sooner or later had to be made.
This is an important reminder that Google has a larger goal in mind.
Google and the recesion
Posted on: 18 November, 2008
It’s interesting that Google is rolling out cool products like this for competing mobile devices like iPhone before their own, Android, but it does make sense. When you talk about getting rapid adoption, it doesn’t make sense to target less popular devices first, even when one happens to be your own.
You can find the free Google application in the iPhone App Store. Once you’ve either installed this application for the first time, or had it updated, you are ready to start searching with your voice. Launch the application, put it to your ear, then speak your search query to give this feature a try. I expect to see a similar feature for the G1 phone.
Where is Google going with all this? Before the recent downturn of the economy, people wondered if Google would be affected negatively by such an incident. It was a valid question, since Google’s revenue is almost entirely in the hands of companies advertising spend, and it’s easy to speculate about what would happen to those budgets.
It’s conceivable that Google will see less of an impact by these hard economic times compared to some, but I’ve got a feeling that they might even thrive if these hard times persist. As Mihai Dragan was saying companies will be looking for more efficient ways of advertising and you don’t have to look further than Google pay per click services for this. I also think Google will be seeing a higher than expected adoption rate for Google Apps.
tudor.totolici 
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