Chrome represents the start of the new browser wars

A version of this piece was published in Marketing in 2008


The only billionaire I know collects earthmoving equipment. A visit to his house could well involve digging huge holes in the grounds, or filling them in – for him it’s a contemplative process, and a chance to indulge the engineer in him.

I couldn’t help thinking of him when I read Google’s latest announcement – the launch of their own web browser. Google Chrome will compete in what’s beginning to look once more like an interesting market.

The earliest popular web browser was Netscape’s Mosaic, which burst on to the scene in 1994. Within a year, Microsoft had launched Internet Explorer 1.0 which it distributed for free, and the first browser war was under way. By 1997 it was all over and Microsoft’s Internet Explorer began its domination of the sector – leveraging the software giant’s huge distribution strength.

And it’s not until recently that anyone’s been able to challenge this.

Two things have changed since 1997 that have made this possible. The emergence of the open source software movement (where communities of developers cooperate to create software for the common good) challenged the supremacy of big software companies.

Linux in operating systems. Apache in web servers, MySQL in databases, PHP in web programming – these open source projects now dominate the web’s architecture, changing the business model fundamentally for giants like Microsoft, Sun, and IBM. But it isn’t just software for IT people – this has impacted on consumers too, as the not-for-profit Mozilla Foundation’s Firefox browser has reached 20% market share.

According to NetApplications.com, Internet Explorer has fallen from 80% to 72% in the last 18 months, with almost all of this going to Firefox.

And if you install the Firefox browser on your computer, you’ll see a clue to what else has changed. Because integrated into the toolbar in Firefox is a search panel, which provides listings from Google.

Almost all of Mozilla’s income derives from this search panel – their deal with Google helped them earn $61m in 2006 (the last published accounts), since when their market share has rocketed.

Google know that loyalty to their brand is low. Web users will use what’s to hand – it’s why distribution is critical to the search giant’s success, and it’s why Microsoft’s first move as they launched into battle with Google for the search market was to build Windows Live search into Internet Explorer.

The official Google blog is pretty lukewarm about the new browser – “The web gets better with more options and innovations – Chrome is another option”. Hardly a ringing endorsement.

But one thing Chrome does do is tell Google what people are looking at – reporting back your surfing behaviour. It will add more suction to the data hoover that is Google and that may unsettle some.

But the real point of Chrome is a bigger one. The browser is the window not just onto the web, but on to all of the applications that reside there, from online storage (YoStore) to photo-sharing (flickr), word processing, spreadsheets (Google Docs). In the future, it’s believed, most computing power will reside online – accessed through a browser with little stored locally on our computers.

So browsers are a critical battleground for control of access to the future of computing and the internet, and Chrome’s features are designed to target this.

So whilst there’s little on the face of it that consumers can’t currently get from IE or Firefox, Chrome represents a more fundamental shift in direction. And because it’s open source, the development resource going into Chrome will boost progress of Firefox too.

Google are wealthy, and have a history of launching dozens of software plays and little history of making money out of them. But Chrome isn’t just a rich man’s hobby. It’s a sign that massive change is on the way for how we use the internet – a change that’s set to come at Microsoft’s cost.

It'll take more than good search to beat Google

A version of this piece was published in Marketing in 2008



The story of David and Goliath has attracted people over the generations, for its tale of hope for the small guy, for triumph in adversity, overcoming the odds. Hannibal, the Cartheginian commander, is remembered not just for that terrible film with Oliver Reed, but amongst military tacticians for his victory at Cannae where he destroyed a Roman army which massively outnumbered him.

This celebration of the underdog reflects our need for heroes, but also our desire to control and check the powerful.

So the launch last week of Cuil (pronounced ‘cool’) a new search engine from some ex-Google staff is interesting not just because of what it is, but what it says about the incumbent.

What it is, is impressive. Cuil claims to index three times as many sites as Google, using an algorithm that looks not at popularity (the number and quality of links pointing to a site) but at context – examining the context in which the searcher’s keywords sit in a page in order to understand better the relevance to a search.

If you look at search in purely rational terms, the user is only looking in reality for one result, not thousands. But Google’s claim to index billions of pages, and then its practice of presenting thousands of them to the searcher, give the illusion of breadth and choice – regardless of whether they find the thing they’re looking for. This is a powerful proposition, and it’s one the Cuil clearly have in mind when they promote themselves as listing three times as many pages as Google.

There’s another noteworthy feature of Cuil – their attitude to privacy. Coming hot on the heels with Google’s experience with a US court demanding they hand over all the viewing data for every user on YouTube, privacy is a weak spot in Google’s armour. Google hang on to the search data of every user for eighteen months – a fact that unsettles privacy campaigners, particularly after AOL’s disastrous public release of thousands of searchers’ data two years ago.

Cuil keeps no data from its users’ searches, and it makes a point of this. They keep no log files, IP addresses or personally identifiable information – as they put it, “Your search history is your business, not ours”.

The search results themselves seem promising – an interesting and different layout to Google’s, with three columns of text and pictures. A sliding box to the right allows the searcher to drill into different categories – so a search for Orange brings up the mobile phone company as first listing, but categories allow you to focus your search into Orange County, California, Orange Sodas or Citrus fruit.

This is smart and useful, because the engine is making a reasonable fist of differentiating between fruit and phones – for which it needs to understand context. It doesn’t always get this right – Sky TV comes first in the listings for a search for ‘sky’, but there’s a Virgin Media logo next to the listing.

So Cuil’s interface is a useful improvement on Google’s. But good search and a useful interface isn’t enough.

A quick look at Google’s Q2 results (which despite disappointment in the markets were still 39% up on the previous year) shows that 31% of their revenues come from partner sites – other websites which carry the Google search box.

Distribution is the key to Google’s massive success – most sites take Google’s AdSense program, and Google pay big money to them; $1.47billion out of the $1.66bn they earned that quarter.

So Google’s success in gaining distribution is down to two key things. The monetisation they drive from each search is better than their competitors, and their ability to model and predict this is better – so they can cut better deals for distribution partners, with stronger guarantees.

This is the barrier to entry for Cuil. It isn’t just the quality of their product – it’s their ability to drive distribution that will determine ultimate success. So Cuil is an interesting launch, but the chances of it launching that single stone that strikes the giant between the eyes are pretty slim.

Reach for the tinfoil beanie - the snoopers are out there!

A version of this piece was published in Marketing in 2008


There are, I am assured, people who walk around wearing tinfoil on their heads because they’re convinced that aliens/the CIA/the government are beaming thoughts into their heads.

They are of course, barking mad.

As, we usually assume, are all the privacy activists who go on about CCTV, oyster cards and cookies.

Two years ago I wrote about AOL, who had in a rather spectacular goof, released data they held on the search behaviour of thousands of users. They claimed it was anonymous – but it took just one day for an enterprising newspaper to track down one searcher’s identity by deducing this from her searches.

The release caused a storm, as it turned out few people were aware just how much data was routinely collected about them.

Most search engines, for instance, keep a history of every search you make, with Google only deleting records over 18 months old. Websites keep logfiles, perhaps never deleting them, of which web pages you’ve visited, what you filled in on forms, what images you view.

And it’s this that’s now got Google into trouble.

Media giant Viacom, who have been in a long term dispute with YouTube over alleged copyright infringement, got a New York judge to order that Google (YouTube’s owner) hand over internet addresses, email accounts and a history of every video ever watched on the site.

The judge, Louis Stanton, dismissed privacy concerns as ‘speculative’.

But the consequence of this is that users of YouTube, which serves over 2.5 billion videos a month to 70m users in the US alone, are now exposed. Their personal media consumption is now something for Viacom to pore over, regardless of whether they had consumed content Viacom owned the copyright for.

And as some observers have pointed out, this would never have happened if Google hadn’t collected the data in the first place.

Meanwhile back in the UK, another, connected, story has resurfaced. I wrote back in February about the BPI’s efforts to get ISPs to spy on their customers on the BPI’s behalf, punish them for infringing the law, and provide evidence to record companies.

The BPI got quite upset about this, calling my observations “quite wrong”, and claiming I’d recycled the information from the Times. They wanted to set the record straight, as they expected this story to run and run.


I had in fact got the information from the BPI’s own website.

But I quite wrongly expected this story to go away. It seemed to me that nobody would be so daft as to think they could build a business by suing their customers.

It seems though, in this I was wrong.

Last week, Virgin Media started sending out letters to customers that the BPI had identified to them, telling them that filesharing copyright files is illegal. Virgin’s view is that they’d resist cutting off consumers, preferring an education campaign.

But at the same time, the BPI sent out letters to the same users, threatening “We don’t want you to face legal action, or risk losing your internet service”.

Though I don’t download music, I do expect my ISP to guard my privacy. Moreover, I don’t think it’s any of their business what I do with my internet connection.


Just as I don’t expect the post office to read my mail or BT to listen to my phone calls, I don’t expect an ISP to snoop on my internet connection without a court order compelling them to.

Carphone Warehouse told the BPI to sling their hook – Charles Dunstone described how the fax machine in his office, unused and forgotten for over a year, ground into life to receive a fax from the BPI requesting their cooperation. Good for him.

At polar opposite ends of the modernity scale, Google and the British Phonographic Institute. One cavalier with our privacy, the other trying to get others to invade it on their behalf. I’m reaching for the tinfoil…

Regulators are out of their depth when it comes to the internet

A version of this piece was published in Marketing in 2008


  The media village. It’s a phrase we often use (conscious of its irony) to describe the close-knit and often incestuous community that’s built up around the media and entertainment business in the UK.

It’s a slightly self-deprecating description – perhaps a function of British reserve, a reluctance to trumpet success. But successful it is – responsible for £1bn in exports in 2006, and remarkably (given all the complaints over the level of US-sourced programming) – the UK is a net exporter or television content, with the Office of National Statistics showing a £100m surplus over imports.

This is something to be proud of – after all, US media companies, with their huge domestic markets, have an innate advantage when it comes to funding production. That British companies are more than holding their own is a real achievement – and a reminder of how increasingly international the media markets are.

The web-based media market has no such statistics published about its contribution to the balance of payments – but it’s a pretty safe bet that we’re a net importer, with MSN, Yahoo, Google and AOL mopping up a substantial part of the market in the UK.

The web media market is a truly international one, dominated by a few mostly US companies who have benefited from their huge domestic market size, access to receptive capital markets and little domestic regulation.

But whilst the UK TV industry has evolved to become a sophisticated international business competing on a global stage, it’s notable that regulators and legislators still seem to hark back to the village days.

Andy Burnham, Secretary of State for the Department for Culture, Media and Sport used his speech to the Convergence Think Tank last month to announce that the UK would be rejecting the EU’s directive allowing product placement on TV.

His concern was that product placement ‘contaminates’ programmes, and that "British programming has an integrity that is revered around the world and I don't think we should put that hard-won reputation up for sale."

What’s not clear is whether he thinks this is a commercial argument or a consumerist one.

Consumers need protection, the theory goes, against the exploitation of their attention. There should be a clear line between commercial messages and content, because implied endorsement that placement brings is untransparent and unethical.

Now, in between living the life digital and the life real, I watch TV from time to time – and it’s pretty clear to me that product placement is rife, both in UK and US-sourced programming.

We’re a bit more subtle in the UK (it typically goes under the guise of ‘set dressing’) but in the US they really go for it. Action series ‘24’ has Ford, Cisco and Apple, whilst American Idol has its judges sitting behind large Coca Cola tumblers and the contestants waiting in the Coke lounge.

Cheesy it might be, but nobody died. As viewers, we’re exposed every day to these placements when we watch American imports (although Idol pixellates the glasses), and nobody really minds.

The reality then is that we’re only actually ‘protected’ from product placement if we watch British TV – the rest of the time we’re fair game; and that renders these rules rather pointless.

On the commercial side, it’s surely the responsibility of the executives of these media companies to decide how they manage their reputation – not the culture minister.

So this pronouncement by the culture minister has little effect beyond hamstringing our domestic industry, taking away a source of revenue from them that helps them to compete in the global media market.

The idea that government would stand in the way of business in this way in the US would be unconscionable – Kangaroo would be celebrated; here, it’s referred to the competition authorities.

If we want to have a strong domestic base for our media companies (both in TV and online), regulation is going to have to catch up with the new world order, and see that the real threat both to businesses and consumers is what happens outside the village.

Is search advertising?

A version of this piece was published in Marketing in 2008


In 1928, universities in the USA announced that continental drift was impossible, and banned the teaching of it – a ban that largely remained in place until the theory of Plate Tectonics was published in the sixties.

It’s not unusual for the old to struggle with the new. But perhaps we should be more surprised when the old struggle with the established.

It’s been ten years since Google launched, and five years since they started charging for search. Since then there’s been an explosion in search marketing, and it’s become a vital weapon in the marketer’s armoury – making Google one of the biggest media companies in the world.

So if search isn’t new, we’re hearing some remarkable thinking about it from the traditional media world.

I was at the WARC research conference a couple of weeks ago, and was struck when one of the speakers opined that he “wasn’t sure that search was really advertising – it’s really just distribution.”

Nobody picked him up on it, and clearly smoking the same meme, M&C Saatchi chairman Moray MacLennan at the FT Digital Media Conference a couple of days later picked up on the same theme:

“When you’re putting money into search you’re taking it out of marketing,” he said. “All you’re doing is buying a space on the internet high street. You’re commoditising your brand.”

So are they right? Is search ‘advertising’ or ‘marketing’ at all? Is it just distribution?

Let’s for a moment assume that MacLennan’s right – search is just buying space on the internet high street. If he means that it’s a part of distribution, then that would certainly make it part of McCarthy’s four P’s of marketing. If he means that it’s part of what many marketers call ‘the last six feet’, then to dismiss it as commoditisation of the brand is to similarly exclude in-store merchandising.

And are you commoditising your brand by using search? A commodity has no differentiating characteristics, and is bought on price only – so is search leading brands this way?

In reality, that’s up to us. If we choose as marketers to throw up our hands in resignation at this challenge, then the brands we nurture will probably wither – either becoming commoditised, or more likely, beaten into submission by those who rise to the challenge.

Because consumers make brand choices in search.

This isn’t speculation – it’s empirically demonstrated by the data. Search engine users don’t just make one search before a purchase – they typically make several. We can track this behaviour, and understand how the process works as they progress – “flat screen TV”, “Sony TV”, “Bravia”, and often the model number. We can see where they were diverted to competitors, and where competitors lost them to us – and most importantly we can influence this with the copy we use in the listing (and A/B test that copy to refine its effectiveness).

If we say the right things, and do so in the right places, we can work to protect and even build our brand premium.

This is marketing alright, and moreover, it’s advertising – in a pure, analytical and rather detail-obsessive way. To master it truly, we must understand how it creates value in the marketing and media mix – where and how it influences users on their journey to being customers (either of ours or of the competition). And we’re not going to get there if we dismiss it.

I suspect MacLennan was being deliberately provocative. But what he said plays to the prejudices of the luddite faction, and is on the lips of many in what for want of a better term might be referred to as ‘traditional’ advertising. For these increasingly beleaguered folk, these new forms of advertising/marketing are sparking a semantic debate – rather than a determined attempt to master new techniques that bring real value to marketers.

For these folk, the barbarians really are at the gate – and they’re using Google to get in.