Shalin Jain’s Little Red Couch

Microsoft, as I recall acquired many companies in the mid-90s. Many of the office products, Hotmail and other now popular MS tools were some smart acquisition decisions. You don’t hear too much about Microsoft these days, do you? Google is the new Microsoft.

The Gmail Story
Google did not acquire any free email service provider but created a all new product and it was a running success. While, I have my own doubts if it really lived up to their ‘actual goals’. Targeted content ads came along with emails but it failed to improve Google’s bottom line. I don’t have figures to support it and hence it’s only my judgement. Email is an activity that depends a little concentration and focus. Text ads do a good job by not bothering you by much but that’s not such a good thing for Google. Google is probably much smarter than I thought. The day Google released Google Checkout I could quickly sum by the reason for created gmail. A few million users already have a ‘G’ account.

Google Videos is not Gmail
Google Videos could never catch up with YouTube and hence they decided to buy them out. Targeted ads on Video/TV content is a huge advertising segment. As the popularity of delivery of video content via internet to television and computers increases google will find a all new way to sell ads. The Television market is estimated to be worth about $61 billions while internet advertising is just under $5 billion market.

So when you are glued to your Mac mini powered TV Box or a Windows Media Center PC, you would indeed be in the new era of Goo-Tube marketing. Its honeymoon for Google while Microsoft is betting it all on Vista and the new .Net Framework.