Thursday, October 14, 2010

Google: When You See a Product Hockey Stick Growth Curve, Pour it On

Google's philosophy when it comes to allocating money and resources: If the graph of a product's growth looks like a hockey stick, pour fuel on the fire.

And it looks like Google Instant will be available on mobiles this year.

Multiple Android App Stores a "Net Win" for Android

Google apparently believes Android app stores operated by other companies, such as Verizon, possibly Amazon or Best Buy, are a "net win," since the goal of the app stores is to create revenue for developers, not Google.

To the extent that multiple Android stores support that goal, it is a win for everybody in the ecosystem.

Where Consumers Spend Their Communications-Related Money

Whatever else we might say about where U.S consumers spend their money on communications and entertainment, it seems clear enough they prefer to spend on broadband and Internet than voice, on video entertainment more than wireless.

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Will Communications or Entertainment Spending Take a Dip?

There generally is a very-stable relationship between household income and household spending on communications and entertainment.

Over quite long periods of time, the percentage of household income spent on communications or entertainment is unusually stable as a percentage of total household disposable income.

What could be important, for that reason, is any change in the amount of household income. One wouldn't be surprised to see an unexpected bit of a dip in the percentages as the "recovery" continues to struggle along.

If household income falls, people will wind up paying a higher percentage of total disposable income, or will have to adjust communications or entertainment spending downward.

Google making $1 billion a year from mobile

The thing about big companies is that any new proposed revenue stream has to be pretty big to get any interest.

So it is probably worth noting that Google’s non-text display advertising has an “annualized run rate” of $2.5 billion, while mobile business is on track to make $1 billion in revenue this year.

Google Instant is about User Experience, Not Revenue, At This Point

Jonathan Rosenberg , SVP Product Management at Google, says that “from a revenue standpoint impact, Google Instant has been minimal.”

From a resource standpoint, it's more expensive. So why do it? People like it. That doesn't mean there is no revenue-related reason to do it. To the extent that it glues users to Google for search, it is worth it. If other revenue opportunities arise later, that's good. But right now, it might be more a cool feature than an immediate driver of revenue.

Verizon to Sell iPads, Packaged with a Mi-Fi

Verizon Wireless is going to start selling the Apple iPad. You might wonder what the angle is, and it is that the iPad will be bundled with a MiFi, giving Verizon Wireless a recurring revenue stream.

Net AI Sustainability Footprint Might be Lower, Even if Data Center Footprint is Higher

Nobody knows yet whether higher energy consumption to support artificial intelligence compute operations will ultimately be offset by lower ...