Digital Daily » enemiend

Google and Verizon: Best Enemiends Forever

John Paczkowski — Fri, 22 Aug 2008 18:58:47 +0000

Over time, Google will make more money from mobile advertising.”

– Google CEO Eric Schmidt

The prospect of a mobile revenue stream larger than the $16.6 billion in desktop revenues Google reported in 2007 has inspired the company to put its 700 MHz spectrum spat with Verizon behind it. And now the two companies are becoming fast frienemies … or is it enemiends?

Word on the street has it that Google and Verizon are close to inking a mobile search pact that would make Google (GOOG) the default search on Verizon devices and might someday put the ubiquitous Google search bar on the home screen of its phones. In return, Verizon (VZ) would share in the revenue generated by the targeted ads Google serves up in its search results.

That’s a compelling proposition because that revenue is likely to be substantial. According to comScore M:Metrics, just 16.7 million of the 240 million or so cellphone users in the U.S. use mobile search. The remaining 223 million apparently find the laughable and labyrinthine carrier-developed search solutions available to them too annoying to bother with. Put a Google search box on their phones’ home screens, though, and it would likely be a different story.

Lunch on Verizon?

John Paczkowski — Wed, 31 Oct 2007 07:01:45 +0000

After months of sparring over the terms of the 700 MHz broadband spectrum auction, Google and Verizon are becoming fast frenemies (or is it enemiends?).

The two companies are reportedly in talks to bring Google-powered phones to Verizon’s network. Said a source close to the companies, “There are good useful talks going on and they could result in a deal.”

Surprising to hear, given the war of words between the two during the past year. Guess there are no hard feelings over remarks like this one from John Thorne, a Verizon senior vice president and deputy general counsel, offered up last year during a conference marking the 10th anniversary of the Telecommunications Act of 1996.

The network builders are spending a fortune constructing and maintaining the networks that Google intends to ride on with nothing but cheap servers. It is enjoying a free lunch that should, by any rational account, be the lunch of the facilities providers.”

The Frienemy of My Frienemy Is My Enemiend

John Paczkowski — Thu, 17 May 2007 19:06:18 +0000

If Microsoft is planning an acquisition in the online marketing and advertising space, it better act fast, because if it waits much longer there won’t be anything left to acquire. This morning marketing conglomerate WPP agreed to pay $649 million for 24/7 Real Media, one of the last remaining independent Internet advertising specialists, in an effort to catch up with Google’s expanding online advertising business. WPP CEO “Martin Sorrell has said that he views Google as a ‘frienemy,’ ” Dave Morgan, chairman of online ad network Tacoda, told the New York Times. “He wants Google to view him as a frienemy, too. He has now given his response, which is that he’s not going to just sit and wait and see what happens. He’s going to take an aggressive position against a world where Google and Yahoo will dominate.”

The WPP-24/7 Real Media deal follows Google’s recent acquisition of DoubleClick and Yahoo’s purchase of Right Media and puts to rest rumors that Microsoft was considering offering as much as $1 billion for 24/7 Real Media. Which begs the question: Has the software giant turned its attentions to aQuantive or ValueClick? Or has it concluded that there’s no reason to acquire an ad network when it already has a killer publisher ad server?