“Today, search-engine giant Google will all but declare war on Apple and Microsoft,” Jake Tapper reports for ABC News. “At the computer industry’s largest trade show going on right now in Las Vegas, ABC News has learned that Google co-founder Larry Page will roll the dice and announce two huge developments. One takes a direct shot at Apple’s iTunes: Google will begin to sell videos from the National Basketball Association, CBS and other major content providers, as first reported Thursday in The Wall Street Journal.”
“The other: ‘Google Pack,’ a new downloadable bundle of software that includes Google Maps but also RealVideo and antivirus software, will compete with industry giant Microsoft,” Tapper reports.
Full article here.
Scant information. We will follow up with addition reports as more info becomes available.
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A Google =
10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,- 000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,- 000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000
Strangely equal to the number of security holes in Windows XP
Kind of ironic, no?
Read Cringely’s latest on Google’s desire to get a cut of TV (via the Web, or IPTV) advertising at http://www.pbs.org/cringely//pulpit/pulpit20060105.html.
So this is the battle:
In one corner, Google offering “free” (or very low-cost) video content with customized-to-the-user ads.
In the other corner, Apple offering pay-to-own ($1.99) video content with no advertising that is also viewable on the iPod (and or the rumored subscription movie content with no advertising which may or may not be viewable on the iPod.)
Your choice?
Who wants to watch a basketball game after knowing the final score?
ESPN Classics is good but downloading NBA games after the fact? I don’t think so.
I see Ethel has been reading Cringely.
If I were Apple, I would get into bed with Google. They have the same goals, to usurp MS.
Wow. I really don’t get all the dissmissive comments here – this is potentially huge.
With regard to M$, this is the beginning of their worst nightmare – a company with the reach and resources to mount a legitimate and wide ranging attack on their software and OS dominance.
For Apple, who have hitched their wagon completely to multimedia, it’s just as challanging. If, as mark says, this a straight up choice between free (Google) and pay-per-view (Apple), then as long as there’s some reasonable way to play the content (mp3/mpeg4/whathaveyou) most people WILL pick free. And Google doesn’t have to concern itself with trying to ‘gain’ device marketshare, or convincing the majority of people to try its products, as preconditions/adjuncts to succeeding either (as does Apple).
Seriously folks: in a few years, we could be looking back on this and describing it as the day Google killed two birds with one announcement.
“Who wants to watch a basketball game after knowing the final score?”
Personally, I don’t want to watch an NBA game even before I know the final score. The NBA is such a boring waste of time. They should just play a 15 game season and go right into the playoffs. I mean darn near aeveryone makes it anyway, and ya know, watching these guys slog around the court, jumping 5 inches to slam dunk, its a real yawner.
Besides there arent many personalities in the NBA that I really want to root for.
Odyssey67: One little correction: Apple’s is not “pay-per-view” but “pay-to-own” with unlimited forever viewing. Granted that a person doesn’t watch video content anywhere near as many times as listening to the same music song.
One question is will Google ever get movies for advertising-supported viewing? And if they do get movies (like we can watch movies on network television), how long after the theater release and DVD release and iTunes release will it be?
For Apple, the questions are: are they going to add subscriptions for movies? Or will it only be subscriptions? Will it only viewable on a TV with Internet access but not mobile on an iPod? We’ll know this next Tuesday, we hope.
I agree with ya, the release window is VERY important. Who really cares if you can watch movies 2 months after they are out on DVD. The internet crowd is about instant satisfaction. If I can buy a bootleg for 3 bucks of a movie that is the theatres now, what do I care if google has the movie 3 months later?
Google taking aim at Microsoft? This is hardly sporting. I mean Microsoft’s are passive, slow, and dimwitted creatures with extremely long gestation periods.
Now wrestling Tigers is truly sporting as documented in the book “Tangling with Big Cats” by Claude Balls.