Marketing Pilgrim

Earlier this month I explored the idea that Rupert Murdoch’s impending paywall announcement was just that; impending. In a News Corp earnings call he said that the publishing giant would have something to announce in 3-4 weeks regarding a group of publishers that would be banding together to take specialized content and put it in an area that would require a subscription for access. The conventional wisdom, even for someone as adamant about the need to paywalls now, is that there needs to be a consortium of sorts to make this a reality.

Well, we are just about at the 3-week point of this self-imposed time line and there are some doubts as to just how real this whole deal is. Peter Kafka of All Things Digital reported earlier this week.

As rumored in March and earlier this week, Google is bringing the web to your television. You know, like WebTV more than a decade ago. And it didn’t take off then, either.

Google TV will be a set-top box available this fall (and integrated into a new Sony TV coming then, too), allowing us to access the Internet from our televisions (including Flash!). The previews look like really slick On-Demand:

While companies including Apple have continued to try to make Web-TV integration work, the original WebTV was purchased by Microsoft and eventually rebranded as MSN TV. They continue to support existing customers, but Microsoft finally gave up on selling the hardware last year. But Google has tapped Logitech to make some auxiliary devices, including a remote control with a mini keyboard. Isn’t it great? All the inconveniences of your other devices—the tiny keyboard on your phone, the constant distraction of the Internet and the mind-numbing power of the tube—combined into one ultimate time-wasting device. (YouTwitFace?)

Third party apps are on a roll with Google. Earlier this month, they added apps for Google Analytics, and this week at Google I/O, the search giant’s developer conference, Google announced an app store for the Google Chrome web browser.

Says Google:

Google Chrome users who find web apps in the store will be able to create convenient shortcuts in Chrome for easy access. Also, developers will have the option to easily sell their apps through the store using a convenient and secure payment system.

Although the store has yet to launch, you can see a sample of the offerings:

Meanwhile, Mozilla may be considering jumping on the bandwagon, too (via). Right now, they’re just reviewing the underlying principles of an “open web app store,” rather than making plans.

Apparently Facebook is still out there trying to do business but at an important conference like Google’s I/O event they have managed to be much more private than their 450 million users’ data. Of course, that doesn’t take much these days now does it?

All Facebook reports on Facebook’s efforts to work with the Android development community in ways that may surprise some.

Facebook announced new mobile social networking functionality for the Android platform this week. At Google I/O, Google’s developer conference, executives routinely made fun of Steve Jobs and Apple, but Facebook’s role in the drama was overlooked by the press. Facebook’s mobile development team soft launched a Facebook SDK for Android, bringing functionality that was previously only available on the iPhone to the Android platform. It gets better: Facebook gave the Android platform a de facto exclusive on two of its newest initiatives: Open Graph APIs and OAuth 2.0.

In the past few weeks the back and forth between Apple and Adobe about the merits and demerits of Flash technology use has gone from bad to worse. Bitter rhetoric and open letters to about each other played out like a high school romance gone bad. Needless to say you would hope that grown-ups might act, well, more grown up but this is the Internet era after all and sometimes it’s what you say over how you say it that wins the day.

Evidence of how Steve Jobs’ tirade against the evils of Flash and Apple’s adoption of HTML5 as the future of all things Apple might have worked is becoming apparent. Who says throwing a public hissy fit can’t help business?

As one might expect, Google is pretty confident when it comes to just about everything. You have to be to do what they have done in a short period of time relative to most business success stories. Of course, taking the lead position in the development of the Internet Age will do that, won’t it.

Google also is very interested in maintaining that position as the shift toward a more robust mobile computing and communication world is underway (it may even be for real this time!). So when Google’s Vic Gundotra spoke yesterday at the Google I/O developer conference he left little room for speculation as to Google’s intentions for the Android OS and who it is looking to ‘take out’. At about the 3 minute mark of the video below Gundotra takes aim directly at, you guessed it, Apple.