Amazon Out Googles Google Again

September 2, 2012

Google is about ads. I read in the dead tree edition of the Wall Street Journal about the alleged ad supported Kindle. You can read the pay wall version of “Amazon Heats Up Gadget Wars” direct from the Murdoch outfit’s mouth. You may also find the variations on a theme in “Amazon to Debut Two 7-inch Kindle Fire Models Next Week (and One Is Ad-Supported)” interesting. Here’s a passage I noted:

I’m using a Kindle Touch with ads and haven’t been bothered by them one bit. For $100, I’m sure many consumers could feel the same about an ad-supported Kindle Fire.

Yep, personal testimony about ads on a book reader type gizmo from a real pundit.

My view is quite different.

Assume Amazon rolls out an ad supported, semi-Android tablet book reader. Assume it is supported by ads from vendors who want to reach book readers.

The question that crossed my mind was, “With the Android goodness flowing through the Google and with the manufacturing powerhouse Google bought for $12 billion, why did not the Googlers move on this product?” Is it possible Google “knows” from its predictive analytics that this dog won’t hunt? Is it possible the Google was preoccupied with other, higher priority issues? Is it once again a situation in which Amazon out Googles Google?

The ad supported Kindle is as I write this, speculation. If the ad supported Kindle becomes a reality, we will have to ask the professor pundit, “What will Google do?” Pundits and academics have this sort of question for breakfast. Will these folks read the “real” journalists on the device too?

Stephen E Arnold, September 2, 2012

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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.