Google Shoes the Next Money Maker?

October 19, 2011

We know the home economics major, the failed Web masters, and the “real” analysts are busy with the Endeca Oracle tie up.

We’re not. Oracle bought a late 1990s technology which requires a ton of services. This move reminded us of three things:

When the acquisition price is not disclosed, we think that Oracle ponied up some big bucks to get Endeca’s 600 customers, its services business, and the technology that makes the Harvard Business School wiggle with joy
Oracle is now going to tackle HP and Autonomy with its Oracle database plus Endeca. This should be exciting and create some enterprise marketing excitment. Happy customers? Will that be secondary?
After $70 million in funding, a stalled IPO, an injection of cash by Intel and SAP Ventures, Endeca is no longer the last remaining 1990s search vendor.

What we noted today was a far more intersting revenue angle than flogging computationally intensive systems to Oracle customers.

Despite Google’s well designed and ever-impressive logos on their homepage, shoes are not their forte. Well, I suppose we can at least deduct that Evan Steinberg, Google Community Manager for Android has nothing to do with their graphics department, according to Gizmodo’s article, “These Google Designed Nikes Are Proof That Google Has No Taste.”

Yes, Google has a shoe designed with its likeness, if an Internet entity can one of those. The elements range from a snapshot of Larry Page’s face on the tongue, to Google Maps watermarked underneath the swoosh, all the way back to the original exclamation point studded logo.

The Gizmodo article accurately points out the following:

The Nike Air Mags, though not the prettiest shoe, represent a sort of nostalgic geek beauty. These Google designed Nike Dunks though? Just plain fugly. Even the geekiest, worst-dressed Googler would never be caught dead in these.

Hopefully people will see these shoes for what they are, a shoe given to the friend who excessively says “let me Google that” or the family member who is employed by the search engine giant–not any sort of representation of their reputation.

Will Google sneakers be allowed at Oracle?

Megan Feil, October 19, 2011

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Stephen E. Arnold monitors search, content processing, text mining and related topics from his high-tech nerve center in rural Kentucky. He tries to winnow the goose feathers from the giblets. He works with colleagues worldwide to make this Web log useful to those who want to go "beyond search". Contact him at sa [at] arnoldit.com. His Web site with additional information about search is arnoldit.com.