What Has Google Been up to Lately? - Looking Toward the Future
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Despite the control Google is maintaining over its index of videos, the company is known for being very open about certain things; it is a friend to open source and open source programmers. A recent beneficiary of this attitude is anyone who wants to play around with its Google Maps service. A number of programmers have been interested in overlaying maps and map-related information from other sources, thus making the information more useful. Now, thanks to Google opening up programming interfaces for its Google Maps service at the beginning of July, they can create these overlays. (Yahoo did the same thing, just one day later, for its Yahoo Maps service).
While it’s true that Google will, in effect, get free product prototyping from this move, it was more than likely pushed to do this because many Web developers were already creating their own “mashups.” Google Maps product manager Bret Taylor joked that “We are doing this because they were already doing it.” He added that “Frankly we like new and innovative solutions. We expect new and creative ideas to come out of this that we haven’t thought of yet.”
So far, even before Google opened the Maps API, useful mashups included ones that layer craigslist housing ads onto Google Maps, a map that shows exactly where various crimes were committed in Chicago, and an annotated walking tour. Google lets users host their own map hacks (unlike Yahoo, who insists on hosting the hacks itself), but reserves the right to place ads next to the maps in the future. Google might consider offering hack creators the option of having Google actually host the hack; popular ones might find themselves receiving a lot of traffic, which could chew more bandwidth than even a creative Web developer can afford. If Google charges a nominal fee, this could become another source of revenue.
With one of Google’s recent investments, one wonders whether the company has been thinking along those lines – or at least along the lines of getting into the broadband provider business. According to a story in the Wall Street Journal, Google, Hearst, and Goldman Sachs collectively invested roughly $100 million in start-up company Current Communications Group. Current said it would use the investment to expand its deployment of broadband service. That in itself is not unusual – but Current offers broadband over power lines, which has so far been slow to catch on.
That just might change. Current has partnerships with several power companies that will allow it to roll out services to customers in Ohio, Indiana, and Kentucky. Still, progress is slow; power companies are not in the communications business, so they need to make a mental leap. “It takes some time to introduce a concept and overlay our equipment on their power grid,” observes Scott Bruce, managing director for Current.
If Google gained even partial ownership of a broadband company, particularly one that offers a combination of voice, data, and video services (as Current does), this might go some way toward solving its problem of lack of diversity in its revenue stream.
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