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NI flights halted as ash returns
All flights in and out of Northern Ireland’s three airports have been cancelled until 1900 BST due to the return of the volcanic ash cloud.
The Irish Aviation Authority has closed airports in Sligo, Donegal and Knock.
Dublin and Shannon airports are expected to remain open until at least 1400 BST.
Passengers who are due to travel on Sunday should check with their airline or tour operator before travelling to the airport.
In a statement, Ryanair said it expected Dublin, Kerry, Shannon and Cork Airports to remain open until at least 1900 BST.
Irish Aviation Authority (IAA) Chief Executive Eamonn Brennan said there is a strong possibility of other airport closures in the Republic on Sunday.
"The IAA is currently carrying out observation flights at a number of altitudes and is in discussion with other aviation authorities, airlines and engine manufacturers to assess the results of the tests in the interest of passenger safety.
"The authority will continue to review analysis and observation results throughout the day."
Forecasts say the ash may extend over the UK on Monday and Tuesday.
Jonathan Astill, from the air traffic authority, Nats, said: "Unfortunately, yet again, a mixture of volcanic activity and weather systems have conspired to bring a cloud of ash down towards the UK.
"As a result we’ve now got a cloud of high density volcanic ash rapidly encroaching on Northern Ireland and the Isle of Man."
EasyJet said it has so far cancelled 11 Sunday flights from Belfast International Airport.
The cloud is expected to lie over the London area by Tuesday, but is likely to have drifted out of UK airspace by Wednesday, forecasters say.
Prof Brian Golding, head of forecasting research at the Met Office, said the cloud stemmed from an eruption on Thursday.
"The volcano has now dropped back in height. It did that yesterday, so the ash coming towards us for the future isn’t quite so deep as it was on Thursday.
"It isn’t going to turn into a huge area and it’s being blown eastwards, between south-east and east. "
Ash from the Eyjafjallajokull volcano has caused disruption to thousands of flights since April.
The Department of Transport, which is establishing five-day ash prediction charts, is warning there is a chance airports in south-east England may be also be affected in the next few days.
Five day forecasts
Transport Secretary Philip Hammond said the situation was "fluid" but passenger safety was the top priority.
Ministers agreed on Saturday that the five-day forecasts, rather than 18-hour ones, would be made available on the Met Office website.
The Met Office said its charts would be updated every six hours. A spokeswoman said the ash plume was currently about 25,000ft (7,620m) high, with winds blowing from the north west.
But she said the wind was expected to change direction in the middle of next week, taking ash away from the UK.
In April, airspace across Europe was shut down for five days over concerns ash could turn to molten glass in high temperatures, crippling plane engines.
Scientists and engineers have since revised the safe-to-fly threshold, but clouds of volcanic ash have continued to drift over Europe, causing airport closures, flight delays and cancellations.
Airline fined
In the past week, several airports in southern Europe have been forced to close and flights have been re-routed.
Meanwhile, Italy has fined Ryanair 3m euros (£2.5m) for failing to help some passengers after cancelling their flights during the crisis.
Italy’s civil aviation authority fine on Ryanair comes after it said it knew of 178 cases of passengers who did not receive mandatory assistance, such as food – required under EU regulations – between 17 and 22 April. Ryanair called the allegation "complete rubbish".
Are your travel plans likely to be affected by the latest anticipated disruptions? Are you travelling from an airport in the south-east of England between Sunday and Tuesday? Will you make alternative travel plans? Send us your comments Click here to add comments..
This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.
New ultimatum for Bangkok protest
Thai protesters have stood their ground in Bangkok, defying a vow from PM Abhisit Vejjajiva to use the military to stop them toppling his government.
One protest leader said Thailand was close to "civil war" after clashes in Bangkok between protesters and soldiers that have left 24 people dead.
The fighting flared as the army moved to isolate a fortified protest camp.
Mr Abhisit said he was considering a curfew in Bangkok and has postponed the new school term in the city for a week.
Thousands of people who say Mr Abhisit came to power undemocratically remain behind makeshift barricades of rubber tyres, sandbags and bamboo stakes in the Ratchaprasong commercial district.
The protesters are known as red-shirts, after the colour they have adopted.
They want the prime minister to step down to make way for new elections.
Army ‘prepared’
In a televised address on Saturday, Mr Abhisit said the army would not back down in its operation to clear the protesters.
"We cannot leave the country in a situation where people who don’t obey the law are holding hostage the people of Bangkok, as well as the centre of the country," he said.
"We can’t allow a situation where people set up armed groups and overthrow the government because they don’t agree with it."
Mr Abhisit has said that a few armed "terrorists" are among the protesters.
An army spokesman said the military was planning to enter the protesters’ camp if they did not disperse, but gave no timetable.
"There is a plan to crack down on Ratchaprasong if the protest does not end," said the spokesman, Col Sunsern Kaewkumnerd.
"But authorities will not set a deadline because without effective planning there will be more loss of life."
The BBC’s Chris Hogg in Bangkok says the army’s actions are like squeezing a balloon full of water – they are just pushing protesters into a different part of the city.
Black smoke drifted into the air over Bangkok on Sunday morning but the streets were mostly quiet after three days of fierce battles that saw soldiers fire live rounds and rubber bullets at protesters who threw stones, petrol bombs and shot fireworks in return.
The army has declared live fire zones in some areas as it attempted to cut off the camp from supplies and reinforcements.
Some 170 people have been injured since the latest violence broke out on Thursday, and 27 people have been sent to jail, each given six-month sentences. All the fatalities have been civilians.
More than 50 people have been killed and at least 1,500 wounded in total since the protests began in mid-March, Thai officials have said.
Despite claims by the Thai government that the situation was under control and its soldiers had only fired in self-defence, army snipers have been accused of targeting protesters. Footage from Bangkok on Saturday showed red-shirts dragging gunshot victims to safety.
The violence escalated on Thursday after a renegade general who supports the protests was shot in the head by an unknown gunman.
Gen Khattiya Sawasdipol, better known as Seh Daeng (Commander Red), is in a critical condition.
National divisions
The latest clashes have raised questions about the stability of Thailand, South-East Asia’s second-largest economy.
"The current situation is almost full civil war," said one of the protest leaders, Jatuporn Prompan. "I am not sure how this conflict will end."
Many of the protesters are from poor rural areas in northern Thailand where support is still strong for former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, who was ousted in a 2006 coup.
They say Mr Abhisit was put into power in a parliamentary vote by an alliance of the Bangkok elite and the military and want him to dissolve parliament and call fresh elections.
He had offered polls in November – but the two sides failed to agree a deal because of divisions over who should be held accountable for a deadly crackdown on protests last month.
Mr Thaksin has called on the government to withdraw troops and restart negotiations. He is living abroad to avoid a jail term on a corruption conviction.
Are you in or close to the protest camp in Bangkok? What is the situation in the area? Are you worried there’ll be more violence? Send us your comments Click here to add comments..
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Flights grounded after ash return
Flights are to be suspended at airports throughout the north of England, including Manchester and Liverpool, as volcanic ash drifts across the country.
A no-fly zone has been imposed by the Civil Aviation Authority from 1300 until 1900 BST.
East Midlands, Manchester, Liverpool, Doncaster, Humberside and Carlisle airports are all affected.
A spokesman for Liverpool John Lennon Airport said that 30 flights have been affected there.
He advised passengers to check with their airline before travelling.
This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.
Volcanic ash closes UK airports
Airports across much of the UK are to close between 1300 and 1900 BST as volcanic ash drifts across Europe, the air traffic authority Nats has said.
In England, East Midlands, Manchester, Liverpool, Doncaster, Humberside and Carlisle airports will be hit by the Civil Aviation Authority’s no-fly zone.
Airports in Northern Ireland, Prestwick near Glasgow, those on Scottish islands and the Isle of Man are also affected.
London airports are unaffected, while Dublin remains open on Sunday.
Planes have been grounded in other parts of the Irish Republic. Travellers are being advised to check with their airline before leaving home.
The UK no-fly zones are set out by the Civil Aviation Authority using Met Office data. Forecasts suggest the ash cloud could extend further over the UK during Monday and Tuesday.
Nats’ Jonathan Astill said: "Unfortunately, yet again, a mixture of volcanic activity and weather systems have conspired to bring a cloud of ash down towards the UK."
The cloud is expected to lie over the London area by Tuesday, but is likely to have drifted out of UK airspace by Wednesday, forecasters predict.
Transport Secretary Philip Hammond said the situation was "fluid" but passenger safety was the top priority.
Prof Brian Golding, head of forecasting research at the Met Office, said the cloud stemmed from an eruption on Thursday.
"The volcano has now dropped back in height. It did that yesterday, so the ash coming towards us for the future isn’t quite so deep as it was on Thursday.
Airline fined
"It isn’t going to turn into a huge area and it’s being blown eastwards, between south-east and east. "
Ash from the Eyjafjallajokull volcano has caused disruption to thousands of flights since April.
Meanwhile, Italy has fined Irish airline Ryanair 3m euros (£2.5m) for failing to help some passengers after cancelling their flights during the crisis.
Ministers agreed on Saturday that the five-day forecasts, rather than 18-hour ones, would be made available on the Met Office website.
The Met Office said its charts would be updated every six hours but that the wind was expected to change direction in the middle of next week, taking ash away from the UK.
Scottish transport minister Stewart Stevenson called upon airlines to be "consistent" to "avoid unnecessary and unhelpful confusion".
He said he had written to BA chief executive Willie Walsh after the airline cancelled three flights to Scotland on Friday. BA said the flights were cancelled as a "precaution".
Molten glass
BA is facing industrial action in the coming days, potentially adding to travel disruption.
Meanwhile, Network Rail said it was boosting services to and from Scotland, and to Irish Sea ports, with engineering works postponed where necessary.
Dr Dougal Jerram, a volcanologist from Durham University, warned the last big eruption of Eyjafjallajokull – in the 1820s – went on for about two years, and its current eruption could last "several months".
But he said the continued eruptions would not necessarily cause more problems to air travel, as a number of factors – explosive eruptions, a concentrated plume and certain weather patterns – needed to be in place at the same time to create "the perfect storm".
In April, airspace across Europe was shut down for five days over concerns ash could turn to molten glass in high temperatures, crippling plane engines.
Scientists and engineers have since revised the safe-to-fly threshold, but clouds of volcanic ash have continued to drift over Europe, causing airport closures, flight delays and cancellations.
In the past week, several airports in southern Europe have been forced to close and flights have been re-routed.
Italy’s civil aviation authority fine on Ryanair comes after it said it knew of 178 cases of passengers who did not receive mandatory assistance, such as food – required under EU regulations – between 17 and 22 April. Ryanair called the allegation "complete rubbish".
Are your travel plans likely to be affected by the latest anticipated disruptions? Are you travelling from an airport in the south-east of England between Sunday and Tuesday? Will you make alternative travel plans? Send us your comments Click here to add comments..
This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.
Clegg in ‘inner core’, insists PM
Prime Minister David Cameron says his deputy Nick Clegg will be in the "inner core" of government.
On BBC One’s Andrew Marr show he hailed what he called a "progressive alliance" between the Conservatives and Lib Dems.
He said the coalition government was not just about grabbing power but was based on shared values, describing himself as a "Liberal Conservative".
He also confirmed left wing campaigner Will Hutton would lead an inquiry into cutting top public sector pay.
Mr Hutton, who is vice-chairman of the Work Foundation think tank, was the "right" person to lead such an inquiry, said Mr Cameron. Only recently he urged the Lib Dems to shun a Tory coalition, in an article for The Guardian.
End to large bonuses
Mr Cameron said NHS managers and other senior civil servants should not earn "more than 20 times the lowest paid" in their organisation and they should not be paid large bonuses, of the kind he said had been approved "in the the last days of the Labour government".
The same principles should apply to the BBC, he added, although the Corporation would not be included in the review as it was independent.
Labour MP Frank Field is also understood to have been offered a role with a new Poverty Commission.
Mr Field was minister for Welfare Reform in Tony Blair’s first government and last year led a successful campaign against the abolition of the 10p tax band.
Mr Cameron said he had considered trying to set up a Conservative minority government, with a basic Lib Dem agreement not to vote it down, rather than a full coalition, when his party failed to win an overall majority in last Thursday’s general election.
Although such a move would have been "easier and simpler" and was what people expected, Mr Cameron said he and Mr Clegg "both decided to take that risk" and go for a full coalition which he said was "in the national interest, had a majority and is strong and stable".
‘Inner core’
He said a document would be published shortly setting out in greater detail how the coalition will work together – but he insisted Mr Clegg would be in the "inner core" of the government, which meant he would chair cabinet committees, which guide policy formation, and be consulted on ministerial appointments and sackings.
"The deputy prime minister is clearly part of the inner core. When it comes to government appointments and, if I can put it this way, disappointments, of course that is the prime minister’s job.
"But this is going to be something that we try and do together".
Mr Clegg will stand in for Mr Cameron at prime minster’s questions, when the Conservative leader cannot attend, but Lib Dem MPs would continue to sit together in the Commons and the two parties would fight each other at by-elections.
But the prime minister made clear he expects the two parties to work closely together in government and hopes to avoid holding separate "political cabinets" made up only of Tory or Lib Dem ministers.
Like Mr Clegg, Mr Cameron acknowledged the coalition deal would upset some in his party, but he insisted it was more than a marriage of convenience, saying: "I have always described myself as a Liberal Conservative."
And he paid tribute to the "brave and courageous" actions of Mr Clegg, whose party is meeting later to discuss the coalition deal and who has faced criticism from one of his predecessors, Charles Kennedy.
In an article for the Observer, Mr Kennedy said he feared the coalition would he would wreck plans for a progressive centre-left alliance with Labour and he feared the Lib Dems would be swallowed by the Tories.
Mr Cameron described his deal with the Lib Dems as a "progressive alliance" based on shared values of "more freedom in our society" and the decentralisation of power. He insisted "this is not just about a group of people who have got together for power".
He also announced the new Office of Budget Responsibility would be launching a full audit of government spending on Monday, saying Labour had made "crazy" spending decisions over the past year that "no rational government would have done".
He refused to rule out an increase in VAT in Chancellor George Osborne’s forthcoming emergency budget, but said: "We believe that spending should bear the brunt of the burden in terms of cutting the deficit."
This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.
Tweets In Buzz: It’s Complicated — Well, Maybe Political
Yesterday, I moderated a panel at TiEcon featuring the heads of product for Google, Twitter, and Facebook — an interesting group, obviously. It was a good, long discussion (hopefully I’ll have the full video to post soon). But definitely one of the most interesting points of the discussion was when I asked Bradley Horowitz, a Vice President of product management at Google, why Google Buzz doesn’t import tweets in real time? His answer was, well, interesting.
Users of Google Buzz will know that the service is awful at importing tweets. Currently, the import is done in bulk at the end of each day, resulting in a barrage of tweets in streams. It’s so bad, that many users unsubscribe from others who set their Buzz account to auto-import tweets. So why does Google do this? Well, it’s complicated.
It seems logical that Google Buzz would do exactly what FriendFeed (prior to its acquisition by Facebook) would do, which is pull in tweets in realtime. After all, from what I’ve heard from multiple sources, Google does have full access to Twitter’s firehose. This makes sense considering that Google uses the Twitter firehose to populate its search results with tweets baked into them. So why the delay for tweets in Buzz?
When I asked Horowitz this question, he immediately passed the microphone to Twitter’s director of product, Jason Goldman. Goldman immediately passed the microphone back to Horowitz without saying anything. At this point, the audience was getting into it — what’s the answer? Horowitz would only say that Google is working closely with Twitter to come up with the best solution to import tweets.
That, of course, is bullshit.
I pressed, but Horowitz wouldn’t give me anything. So all I can do at this point is speculate based on what I know. Twitter is giving Google full access to its firehose per its agreement for search results. But Buzz may not want to use this data presumably because it would overwhelm Buzz — much like tweets overwhelm FriendFeed. If you’re trying to start a service, it makes sense that you wouldn’t want it to be overrun with data from a competing service. But still, tweets in realtime in Buzz would make it much more useful than it currently is. It would make it, well, FriendFeed.
In other words, I think this is all political. Google doesn’t want Buzz to become yet another Twitter client. And it’s hard to blame them.
Horowitz noted that we’d be hearing more about how Buzz can be used as a platform during Google I/O next week — so hopefully they’ll have more to share about Buzz in general. For now, unfortunately, all of us must suffer through this half-assed approach Buzz takes towards tweets. It makes it the social service that is sort of social.
Central Command Turns To Twitter To Solve The Gulf Oil Spill. Uh Oh.
As you’re probably well aware, there’s a massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico right now. When BP’s Deepwater Horizon drilling rig exploded and then sank last month, it began dumping thousands of barrels of oil into the Gulf each day. By the time the oil stops leaking, it’s expected to be the worst oil spill in U.S. history. Yeah, it’s bad. It’s so bad, that BP and several other organizations working on the spill are apparently running out of ideas. And they’re turning to Twitter, according to gCaptain.
A group of a dozen or so organizations including BP, the EPA, the U.S. Department of Interior, the Department of Defense, and OSHA have set up Deepwater Horizon Response, a “Unified Command” established to “manage response operations.” Naturally, there’s a website for this effort, but there’s also a Facebook page, a Twitter account, a Flickr account, and a YouTube account. They’re covering all the social media bases (though no Foursquare account just yet).
On one hand, this is absolutely great. This site and all of these social accounts are giving users access to a ton of information about the spill, and what’s being done to try and solve it. On the other hand, it’s a little scary to see tweets like this: “Submit alternative tech ideas to stop leaking...” Yes, they apparently must now resort to crowd-sourcing ideas over Twitter for how to stop the spill. Ugh.
Let’s hope they’re just tweeting stuff like that to let people know they’re doing all they can, and are willing to explore all ideas. Let’s hope it’s not that they’re completely out of ideas and need Twitter to solve the problem for them. (But tweets like this and this aren’t looking too promising.) Especially since that account only has around 4,000 followers, and that tweet was only retweeted 3 times. Maybe they should enlist Ashton Kutcher, and his nearly 5 million followers to help out if they really want to crowd-source this thing.
If you do have an idea for how to solve the spill, submit it using this form. If somehow this crowd-sourcing over Twitter does actually produce a solution, I’ll be all in favor of them winning some sort of Nobel prize at that point.
[photo: flickr/NASA Goddard Photo and Video]
Information provided by CrunchBase
Steve Jobs Spars With Gawker Blogger Over Revolutions, Freedom, and Porn
For many years, tech fans have known that Steve Jobs will occasionally respond to messages directed to his well-publicized email address. Most of the time his responses consist of snappy one-liners, often containing a nugget of new information. But it’s rare to hear about a full-on debate, with Jobs offering some rationale behind Apple’s highly controversial decisions.
That’s exactly what happened last night, when Gawker writer Ryan Tate got irritated by an Apple ad describing the iPad as “a revolution” and shot off an email to Steve Jobs. Three hours later, at nearly 1AM, Jobs replied, and a passionate email debate ensued. The email exchange is mainly focused on Apple’s stranglehold on the iPhone OS platform, and its decision to force developers to build applications using Apple’s tools.
Tate is clearly agitated throughout the exchange (in his blog post he notes a few things he regrets writing in his email responses). For the most part Jobs seems to be level-headed, though he does take a jab at Tate at the end. Through it all, though, one thing is clear: Jobs is on a mission to reinvent computing. He’s well aware of the controversies, and for better or for worse, it sounds like he genuinely believes that what Apple is doing will lead to a better future.
You can read the entire exchange on Gawker here, but here are a few interesting responses from Jobs:
Tate:
If Dylan was 20 today, how would he feel about your company?
Would he think the iPad had the faintest thing to do with “revolution?”
Revolutions are about freedom.
Jobs:
Yep, freedom from programs that steal your private data. Freedom from programs that trash your battery. Freedom from porn. Yep, freedom. The times they are a changin’, and some traditional PC folks feel like their world is slipping away. It is.
Here’s a later back-and-forth (note the jab Jobs takes at Tate at the end):
Tate:
Was it a “technical issue” when Microsoft was trying to make everyone write to the Win32 API? Were you happy when Adobe went along with that?
You have the chance to set the tone for a new platform. For the new phone and tablet platform. The platform of the future! I am disappointed to see it’s the same old revenge power bullshit.
…
PS And yes I may sound bitter. Because I don’t think it’s a technical issue at all — it’s you imposing your morality; about porn, about ‘trade secrets’, about technical purity in the most bizarre sense. Apple itself has used translation layers and intermediate APIs. Objective C and iTunes for Windows are testament to this. Anyone who has spent any time coding knows the power and importance of intermediate APIs.And I don’t like Apple’s pet police force literally kicking in my co-workers’ doors. But I suppose the courts will have the last say on that, I can’t say I’m worried.”
Jobs:
You are so misinformed. No one kicked in any doors. You’re believing a lot of erroneous blogger reports.
Microsoft had (has) every right to enforce whatever rules for their platform they want. If people don’t like it, they can write for another platform, which some did. Or they can buy another platform, which some did.
As for us, we’re just doing what we can to try and make (and preserve) the user experience we envision. You can disagree with us, but our motives are pure.
By the way, what have you done that’s so great? Do you create anything, or just criticize others work and belittle their motivations?
Zelle 1337 Jewelry, For The Lady Who Pwn3d Ur Lyf
I’m not so sure the average non-geek girl would love necklaces and earrings made of resistors, fuses, and floppy disk parts but there’s no harm in trying. Besides, I suspect real geek girls would definitely squeeeeeee at these.
All of these handmade pieces are created out of used electronics and are actually quite striking. The best part? Each comes with an offical “Certificate of Autheticity” that looks like the EULA that came with Windows 95.
Socialwok Adds A Collaboration Platform To Microsoft Outlook
Socialwok, a product that ads a social layer to Gmail and other Google products, is spreading its wings beyond the search giant to Microsoft land. Today, the startup, which launched its Google Apps-focused product at TechCrunch50 last year, is rolling out the Socialwok Social Connector for Microsoft Office Outlook 2010, 2007, 2003.
Similar to the layer that Socialwok creates for Google Apps and Gmail, the connector allows Outlook users to create a private social network within the application to share ideas, emails, files, Office documents from Microsoft Word, Google Docs and other rich media using status updates.
From inside Microsoft Outlook, users can see the latest activity of their co-workers in the office as well as view what files and emails have been previously shared. Microsoft Office users can also access the Socialwok user profiles of their co-workers from the Microsoft Outlook address book.
Of course, the timing of Socialwok’s connector fits with the roll out of the new version of Office 2010 this past week, which brings all of its applications, including Outlook, Word, and PowerPoint, to the PC, phone and browser. Outlook specifically has been revamped to become more social, with integration available for LinkedIn and MySpace
But Socialwok’s beauty is that it wraps a collaborative, social network around the most unsocial of email applications, allowing users to never have to leave their email clients. And as Microsoft moves its applications to the cloud and the idea of the social CRM takes off, Socialwok’s plugin could become appealing to business users.
Socialwok, which employs a freemium model, has steadily been adding features and improvements to its application, including adding support for Facebook, Twitter and Buzz within its applications and releasing a new version of its HTML 5 mobile version for Android and iPhone browsers.
Of course, it’s interesting to see Socialwok playing nice with Microsoft products considering the startup has mainly tied its application to Google products. Not only was Socialwok was chosen as one of the showcase companies for AppEngine technology at this year’s Google IO Developer Sandbox but Socialwok was just integrated as a pilot partner in Google’s recently launched Google Apps Marketplace.
The Microsoft integration certainly adds a twist to our theory that Google could buy the startup. It should be interesting to see if Socialwok will face the same fate as Google Docs killer and collaboration platform Etherpad or Microsoft Word collaboration plug-in Docverse.
Information provided by CrunchBase
Will Facebook Be Tomorrow’s Google, and Google Tomorrow’s Microsoft?
Editor’s note: Can Facebook become the next Google? In this guest post an ex-Googler, Bindu Reddy, persuasively argues the case from the perspective of Facebook’s potential as an online advertising platform. Reddy is the CEO of MyLikes, a word-of-mouth ad network funded by other former Googlers. At Google, she managed a team of product managers in charge of various Google apps including Google Docs, Google Sites, and Blogger.
Today, Google is the place to go to if you are looking for information about pretty much anything. By displaying sponsored links that are relevant to what you are looking for, Google showed us that ads are most effective when they are useful. So effective, that Google built a $25 billion search advertising business over the last decade.
However, Google’s search advertising business is inherently constrained by the fact that it works only when users are already looking for something. You have to search for makeup before Google can serve an ad for the latest Dior mascara product.
Facebook on the other hand has become the world’s identity gatekeeper—your age, sex, location, where you went to school, where you work, who your friends are—all of this personal data is used to serve you tidbits of information that you are likely to be interested in. Want to see pics of your cousin’s wedding? Want to know what movies your co-workers are watching this weekend? What music your friends “like”? You need to go to Facebook. The bottom line is that you are now trained to go to Facebook to discover things. With the growth of the Facebook app platform and support (so far) from apps like Farmville and Mafia Wars, Facebook has also grown into the number one destination on the web for entertainment and spending time.
Just like Google introduced sponsored search as an advertising model which fits in seamlessly with search results, it doesn’t take a whole lot of imagination to see how Facebook could build brand and discovery-based advertising into its product which will be useful to members. Like Google’s AdWords, Facebook ads will be most effective when they are integrated into the core product and are very relevant to the user.
Take for example, the sponsored ad from Sony at right. It’s a sponsored poll widget I can actually interact with. Much like a mini Facebook-app it amuses me with a poll while ensuring that I interact with the brand. Innovative ad formats are rapidly evolving on Facebook as marketers figure out smarter and smarter ways to catch our attention. It’s only a matter of time before Facebook figures out how to make brand advertising useful and effective on Facebook.
Unlike Google AdWords, this model will not be constrained by the fact that you have to actually look for something. You don’t have to search for makeup, you simply have to log into Facebook, and be a young woman fashionista to discover Dior Mascara. Dior can reach many more potential customers this way than by just advertising on Google Search.
With an effective and useful discovery advertising model, Facebook, is the first web company that has a very good chance of getting a significant share of the traditional TV and offline brand advertising market (estimated at about $132 billion). Given than search advertising is still just 6.25% ($25 billion) of all advertising dollars ($458 billion), Facebook may well surpass Google’s advertising revenue, and market cap, in the next decade.
Will we see a replay of the early half of the last decade when Google rapidly grew to take over Microsoft’s top spot as the premium technology company? This time around it might be Facebook’s turn to replace Google and it is not clear that there is anything that Google can do about it. Here is why:
Google doesn’t get brand / discovery advertising
Google’s ad business models are based on intent and relevance and not on discovery. The performance based AdWords and AdSense models are easier to measure and appeals to the logical / analytical minds at Google. The power of influence, discovery and brand advertising needs more right-brain thinking than Google’s left brainers are used to.
Also, instead of innovating and exploring new forms of brand advertising, Google’s strategy in that space over the last few years has been to simply buy DoubleClick which is the leader in old-school brand advertising (mostly banner ads). This basically means that there is no fresh thinking in this area at Google compared to Facebook, which understands the power of discovery and recommendation.
Google’s is a great technology company and a mediocre product company
As Google readily admits, the most powerful people at Google are the engineers. Product management, like other non-engineering organizations at Google is more of a service organization. This essentially translates to Google being good at technology-heavy offerings and mediocre at product-heavy offerings.
Give Google a technology challenge—Build the largest search index (Google search), the biggest storage system (Gmail), the fastest browser (Chrome) or the niftiest javascript interface (Maps) and Google excels. Turn around and give it a product challenge—Build a community video site (Google video), a social network (Google Wave, Buzz and Orkut), an e-commerce platform (Google product search) and Google’s offerings are more mediocre than excellent.
Google’s technology infrastructure, is optimized for large scale data sets and not rapid iteration. Its engineers like working on better algorithms and large systems and not on understanding the social behavior/economics behind a rapidly-evolving user-generated community site (perhaps with the exception of the folks at YouTube).
Google has an incremental product strategy when it comes to its core products.
Unlike Facebook, which constantly makes drastic changes to it’s core product, even at the risk of annoying some of it’s users, Google’s strategy on core apps such as Search and Gmail is largely very data driven and incremental.
Google cannot leverage it’s core apps to compete against Facebook with this kind of incremental approach. Only recently with the introduction of Buzz as part of GMail and the left-navigation bar as part of Google Search has Google begun to make bolder moves. However as with Buzz, these changes seem to be too little too late and it is not clear if they have the wherewithal to stay the course.
Given this, I seriously worry whether there is a good chance Google might lose it’s dominance. What do you think? Will Facebook execute brilliantly and become tomorrow’s Google or will Google wake up and triumph over Facebook much like Microsoft did with Netscape?
