Google Inc has accelerated its efforts to sell advertising for magazines and newspapers while continuing to gear up for potentially lucrative opportunities in broadcasting and mobile devices, CEO Eric Schmidt said.
Schmidt updated a small group of reporters on Thursday on the online search engine leader's expansion beyond the Internet during a casual lunch that also was attended by Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin.
The triumvirate touched upon a wide range of subjects, but questions about Google's finances or the current state of the Internet advertising market were forbidden because the company just completed its third quarter.
Internet powerhouse Yahoo Inc last month warned its advertising growth slowed late in the quarter, raising investors' curiosity about Google's results, which are scheduled for release on Oct. 19.
Besides touching upon Google's ambitions in new advertising markets, the company's brain trust also emphasized the company's plans to sculpt its hodgepodge of technology products into a more cohesive unit revolving around its search engine.
"We don't want people to have to learn about 20 different products that work in 20 different ways," Brin said. "I was even getting lost."
In his comments, Brin also hinted that Google may tweak its technology so online videos appear on the first page of responses to search requests.
"Often times in research, video can be a very good answer to a question," said Brin, who cited requests about lock-picking and diving as examples.
When asked if Google planned to change its algorithms to list videos as possible solutions, Brin said, "It's an oversight that it's not true today."
Developing new advertising channels has ranked among Google's top priorities so the company is less dependent on a single medium. The Mountain View-based company generated virtually all of its revenue -- totaling US$4.7 billion during the first half of this year -- text-based ads displayed on thousands of Web sites, including its own.
By its own executives' admission, Google's off-line efforts got off to a bumpy start last year when it began placing ads in a few magazines.
After making a series of adjustments in recent months, Google is now lining up ads for nearly 100 magazines, Schmidt said. He said the company also is exploring opportunities to help newspapers reverse the industry's recent decline in classified advertising.
Schmidt said Google's plans to being placing radio ads by the end of this year remain on schedule, contradicting recent talk within the industry that the company had postponed the project.
"The tests are going extremely well," said Schmidt, who added Google eventually plans to employ about 1,000 workers in its radio division.
Google acquired a toehold in the radio advertising market last year with a US$102 million purchase of dMarc Broadcasting. The company has promised to pay another US$1 billion to dMarc if undisclosed financial targets are hit.
Developing a system to deliver text-based ads in the US to cell phones and other mobile devices is also in the works, Schmidt said.
Google is already testing the technology in Japan, where it makes more money from its mobile ads than it does from ads displayed on personal computers.
Yahoo, which runs the Internet's second largest marketing network behind Google's, began testing mobile ads in the US and Britain earlier this week.
"The mobile advertising market should be, eventually, more successful than the fixed market," Schmidt said.
"A year from now, hopefully, we will have integrated offerings that target the person and the phone," he said.
FIVE-YEAR WINDOW? A defense institute CEO said a timeline for a potential Chinese invasion was based on expected ‘tough measures’ when Xi Jinping seeks a new term Most Taiwanese are willing to defend the nation against a Chinese attack, but the majority believe Beijing is unlikely to invade within the next five years, a poll showed yesterday. The poll carried out last month was commissioned by the Institute for National Defense and Security Research, a Taipei-based think tank, and released ahead of Double Ten National Day today, when President William Lai (賴清德) is to deliver a speech. China maintains a near-daily military presence around Taiwan and has held three rounds of war games in the past two years. CIA Director William Burns last year said that Chinese President Xi Jinping
President William Lai (賴清德) yesterday said that China has “no right to represent Taiwan,” but stressed that the nation was willing to work with Beijing on issues of mutual interest. “The Republic of China has already put down roots in Taiwan, Penghu, Kinmen and Matsu,” Lai said in his first Double Ten National Day address outside the Presidential Office Building in Taipei. “And the Republic of China and the People’s Republic of China [PRC] are not subordinate to each other.” “The People’s Republic of China has no right to represent Taiwan,” he said at the event marking the 113th National Day of
REACTION TO LAI: A former US official said William Lai took a step toward stability with his National Day speech and the question was how Beijing would respond US Secretary of State Antony Blinken yesterday warned China against taking any “provocative” action on Taiwan after Beijing’s reaction to President William Lai’s (賴清德) speech on Double Ten National Day on Thursday. Blinken, speaking in Laos after an ASEAN East Asia Summit, called the speech by Lai, in which he vowed to “resist annexation,” a “regular exercise.” “China should not use it in any fashion as a pretext for provocative actions,” Blinken told reporters. “On the contrary, we want to reinforce — and many other countries want to reinforce — the imperative of preserving the status quo, and neither party taking any
SPEECH IMPEDIMENT? The state department said that using routine celebrations or public remarks as a pretext for provocation would undermine peace and stability Beijing’s expected use of President William Lai’s (賴清德) Double Ten National Day speech today as a pretext for provocative measures would undermine peace and stability, the US Department of State said on Tuesday. Taiwanese officials have said that China is likely to launch military drills near Taiwan in response to Lai’s speech as a pretext to pressure the nation to accept its sovereignty claims. A state department spokesperson said it could not speculate on what China would or would not do. “However, it is worth emphasizing that using routine annual celebrations or public remarks as a pretext or excuse for provocative or coercive
RSS