by DMEC Careers Della Huff and Chris Finegold

Internet and Social Networks

Content and Distribution

Mobile

Hardware

Sounds like Adobe and Yahoo are getting together on a plan to include ads in Adobe PDF documents.  Are you serious?  As if I needed another reason to be annoyed by Adobe’s reader… long load times, countless frustrations with digital rights management procedures… I’m not saying they won’t make any money from it, and this is just my initial reaction without knowing all of the details, but at least give me something in return: additional features, exclusive content, something to justify interrupting my document reading experience.
If you have a Mac, you probably love to use Preview, which opens in a snap and is a great viewer for PDF’s, JPG’s and more.  If you don’t, you might want to look into Foxit…

I saw the following at the end of a Google Groups email:

…

Regards,

_name_

---

Never miss a thing. Make Yahoo your homepage.
–~–~———~–~—-~————~——-~–~—-~

You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups “_group name_” group.
To post to this group, send email to _group abbreviation_@googlegroups.com
To unsubscribe from this group, send email to _group abbreviation_-unsubscribe@googlegroups.com
For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/_group abbreviation_?hl=en
-~———-~—-~—-~—-~——~—-~——~–~—

The contrast between the information shown above from Yahoo! and Google reminds me of one of the main reasons I stopped using Yahoo! Mail altogether: I don’t like serving as a billboard. Others have felt similarly for many years now. The message from Yahoo!, appended to the sender’s email because she uses Yahoo! Mail, is irrelevant to most recipients. Most web surfers are well aware of what yahoo.com has to offer. If they wanted to set it as their homepage, they would have long ago. In contrast, the message from Google contains information relevant to many recipients of the email (albeit probably more information than needed by most).

I realize I’m comparing email appendages to mailing list appendages. In the case of email, Google does not advertise to recipients at all. Don’t even get me started on the corruption of messages from Yahoo! Groups…

I’m curious: has Yahoo! reevaluated the decision to append advertisements to their members’ emails, or has improving existing services been lost in the (literal) shuffle? (I hope I get called out.) Has Yahoo! decided their target market doesn’t mind having the Yahoo! brand clutter up their email conversations and they’re willing to pass on people who care? Granted, maintaining an email platform may be a secondary concern as communication shifts to authenticated mediums like IM and other social networking tools.

Over the weekend Google released this video, featuring none other than man of the year Sergey Brin, which introduces the public to the Android Mobile Software platform.

Not only that, but Google also announced a $10M fund to give the best Android developers cash prizes for releasing the best applications for the platform. Now is about the time I wished I knew how to code…

Salesforce.com name is clearly associated with Software as a Service (SaaS). They also want to become the platform of choice, except that the Platform is not in your premises, it is delivered as a service too (PaaS). Salesforce.com is threatened by big players SAP, Microsoft and by small players like NetSuite and of course the open source free versions. While it is not obvious, there is one player who don’t directly associate with SaaS or Paas, the big daddy of them all with loads of cash, Google.

Google is working with mobile providers and delivers them software as  service, delivers Office applications a s a service, delivers software as a service (their API to Google maps), Ads as  a service, soon your social network as service …

Salesforce.com is associating closely with Google, as New York Times calls it,
 

… hoping to ride whatever success that company has in social networking
and office applications, a field now dominated by Microsoft.

…

“Marc is waiting for Google applications to mature,” said one former
Salesforce executive, who asked not to be identified. “If it can link
with Google applications, then maybe Salesforce can develop into a
platform.”

It is an oft repeated remark from businesses partnering with Google that they view Google as both friend and foe. Is Marc relying too much on Google for Salesforce.com’s success? Despite all the rumors in summer about Google acquiring Salesforce.com, nothing happened and I believe nothing will. Google’s  philosophy of open platforms, open networks doesn’t jive with the Salesforce.com model:

“The more our users customize, the more they are tied to our service,”
said Steve Fisher, the Salesforce executive overseeing the platform
project.

 Is the ecosystem a perfect match? Is there a danger of Google turning into the worst foe for Salesforce.com, bigger than SAP and Microsoft combined?

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