Vicky Lalwani

Recently, BigPond has made deals with various music industries including Sony BMG, Universal, Warner Music and EMI, as well as with independent labels MGM and Liberation.

This would mean giving Telstra’s BigPond the rights to even more music, raising their inventory from 20,000 to nearly a million.

The advantage they stand with, is the ability to download the music to almost any portable device including media centers or your Xbox.

Each downloaded song will not have any restrictive copy protection limiting it against a single device. This gives the iPod owners an alternative from iTunes and “puts consumers in the driving seat”, says BigPond MD, Justin Milne.

It is estimated that the inventory would grow up to 1 million by Jan 09. However, in the meantime it shouldn’t be too long before BigPond users get access to more than just the current 20,000.

We all know about Google News, surely most of us have used it at least once. So the question is - how does Google monetise from it?

From a new article that was on Google News, I recently read that Marissa Mayer (Vice President Search Product and User Experience, Google - pictured) stated that Google News generates US$100 million in revenue.

I scratched my head going - “A hundred mil? How?”

Surely she had accidently slipped her tongue with that figure. Google simply directs any one who clicks on a new link straight through to news publisher’s site.

Also the News section is an ad-free area so Google isn’t making any ad-revenue which the company is ever so famous of normally doing.

But then I used Google’s search engine to begin my research - I found this - http://bigtech.blogs.fortune.cnn.com/2008/07/22/whats-google-news-worth-100-million/

The figure comes from a referral technique, where it is assumed that Google News funnels readers to the main Google search site. So while we don’t realise this, it’s one way of Google’s free service, that somehow in the background makes money.

And this article is a perfect example. I read about the news headline at Google News (an ad-free environment) and it took me to Forbes. I read the article there, but I was intrigued. So what did I do, I went to Google search to get my research results (an ad-full environment).

This sort of ad-free service at one side to somehow lead us to the opposite end with ads, is a how Google News makes it’s US$100 million revenue referral.

So if Google is making $100 million from its News service, will the news publishers ask for that extra bit of cash? Clearly they already get traffic from users through Google, but if it wasn’t for them, Google wouldn’t have had the content in first place.

The same will come about when Google launches it’s digital consumer health records, a service that allows people to store and access their medical records online. At first there were thoughts of having ads around this service - but it was later decided that they are better off. This is because Google is hoping that the Google News strategy flows through - where it assumes that someone using Google to store medical records, will likely use Google Search when it comes to finding medication, doctors, hospitals or even to just general research.

The above almost defines the Google ecosystem.

6 months ago, LVMH (Louis Vuitton Moet Hennessy) filed a case in the Paris Court against eBay for selling fake Louis Vuitton goods on the world famous auction site.

LVMH has various sister brands that include Louis Vuitton, Christian Dior, Givenchy, Dom Perignon and Moet & Chandon to name a few.

LVMH won the case and the courts ordered eBay to pay 19.28 million euro to LVMH, 17.3 million euro to Christian Dior Couture and an additional 3.25 million euro to various perfume brands (Christian Dior, Kenzo, Givenchy and Guerlian).

The multi-million dollar luxury lifestyle company won on the basis that eBay failed to make any attempts to prevent the sale of the counterfeit items. Also, eBay is not an authorised site to sell and advertise the LVMH branded products.

Not long ago, eBay also had to pay Hermes 20,000 euros in damages for selling its counterfeit goods (3 Hermes handbags of which 2 were fake - all sold for 3000 euros). The case against Hermes was bought forward by the traditional auctioneers in France who claim that eBay encourage trade of pirated and stolen items.

eBay has 84 million active users and 39 markets worldwide and in 2007 they recorded sale of all items on its auction platform to a total of $US60 billion.

Source: http://www.smh.com.au/news/technology/ebay-cops-hefty-penalty/2008/07/01/1214677979204.html

Mark Cohen bought this article to my attention. It states that LimitNone, a company that developed an application, about a year ago, would allow users who use Microsoft Outlook to export all its contents into Gmail.

Back in 2007, LimitNone demo’ed the software to Google’s senior executives and were assured by Google that they would not roll out a competing product, but would instead work with LimitNone to roll it out.

However, all that changed when Google produced its own Google Email Uploader, an app similar to LimitNone’s gMove.

Originally LimitNone’s app was called MY GRATE, but on Google’s recommendation they renamed it to gMove.

“Google claims its core philosophy is ‘Don’t be evil’ but, simply put, they invited us to work with them, to trust them — and then stole our technology,” said Ray Glassman, CEO of LimitNone, in a prepared statement.

LimitNone claims the damaged to be worth US$1 Billion

Don’t be evil eh?

After dropping out from Harvard, and spending most of his day in a garage back in 1970s, multi-billionaire Bill Gates will be leaving Microsoft this week.

It has taken 3 people to fill the shoes of the man who started it all. Chief Software Architect will be Ray Ozzie, Chief Research and Strategy Office will be Craig Mundie and infamous Steve Ballmer will be the CEO.

While Bill will stay on Microsoft board as Chairman, his focus will be on his personal charity - The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

Analysts say that Bill leaving could impact the direction or image of the company. Bill Gates is the heart of Microsoft, and he pushed it to where it is today. With his departure, the executive directors are all responsible to preserve that image.

It has taken 1 year for Bill Gates to officially step out of this position to hand over to the above 3 mentioned successors. However, in that past year while Bill has stepped away from the operation management of Microsoft, several hiccups have been made. For example, launching the new Office and Windows platforms - it’s been a year since those products have been released, but the strategy of them replacing its predecessors haven’t been successful. In fact, customers prefer to stay on XP rather than upgrading.

It’s almost like Microsoft has no answer in what to do next - and all this while Apple’s OS is gaining traction.

Aside from the Desktop Market, Microsoft has to deal with it’s ever-growing competitor Google - who now offer free online document collaboration tools called Google Docs.

Then there was the whole failure of Microsoft - Yahoo takeover of nearly US$50 billion.

On the flip side, the server and tools division are the bread and butter of Microsoft’s profits. While it’s entertainment unit, which makes Xbox and it’s games are yet to record a profit.

A founder and CEO of a company has so much more value added that they are sometimes invisible to where the company is heading - though they are the ones making those little tweaks which are often never realised.

Did Gates leave at the right time? Will he ever come back? Where will Microsoft be positioned in 5 to 10 years time?

For those who do not know the infamous story of Kerry Packer and Alan Bond, here goes:

Back in 1987, Kerry Packer sold Australia’s Nine Network to Alan Bond for AU$1.05 Billion.

3 years later, Alan Bond’s company went down and the network was in trouble. Kerry bought it back for a mere $250 million.

Today Nine Network is still part owned and operated by the Packer family.

Now, James Packer (son of Kerry) has been on the Alan Bond side of a recent business transaction.

In 2007 James’s company, PBL, along with their partnership with Microsoft, bought Myhome.com.au from Shane Dale for AU$8 million.

A year later, and the site was recently closed down a couple of weeks ago. PBL is estimated to have spent $20 million on Myhome.com.au with no gains.

Media claims that Shane Dale, recently bought back Myhome.com.au for AU$1.8 million. However, Mr Dale said the numbers are not right, but did not confirm its accuracy.

It is apparent that PBL and Microsoft / Ninemsn had no real understanding of the online real estate market.

What are you going to do with MyHome.com.au, Shane?

I have been working for Fairfax Digital since August last year and earlier this year I was presented with the opportunity to work on a project for the News and Information team. The same team that does www.smh.com.au, www.brisbanetimes.com.au and www.theage.com.au.

I accepted the opportunity and joined the team as a project manager.

Several months later, and today it has successfully launched by David Kirk and Ron Walker in Perth www.watoday.com.au

On that note - when I had a look at our competitors’ (News Ltd) PerthNow (http://www.news.com.au/perthnow) homepage, I had a smile on my face to see the Google ads present links to Fairfax’s WA Today website. See the screenshot here.

In a recent article I read on Business Week, it seems people aren’t following the path of having to keep raising someone else’s offer in bid to buy a product.

Regardless of it being done on eBay or elsewhere, it seems that most online shoppers prefer the easier fixed price ‘buy now’ sort of products.

I must admit I feel the same why. I cannot be bothered to go back onto eBay again just because someone offered 50 cents more that what I was prepared to offer.

This happened to me once when I was in a meeting around the same time that the auction was ending. I get back to my emails, and voila - I lost!

Sure there is advantages of the auctions because you can get a bargain - but at what cost of your time? If it is something that is worth over $500 then I may consider the auction approach, but otherwise I’d just rather click the ‘buy now’ or ‘add to shopping cart and checkout’ buttons.

How many of us still buy things on auction and for what other reasons would still carry on using it?

What today’s jobs have come to! I guess for those juniors looking for a job and have certain needs - this could be it!

“I don’t need a company car, just give me access to facebook thanks!”

Smart employer!

Recently, Chris and I decided to start up getmeactive.com - an online active lifestyle social network.

http://www.getmeactive.com/beta (for the website)

http://www.getmeactive.com (to register your interest)

http://www.getmeactive.com/blog (the Get Me Active blog)

With the Social Network boom, we feel that we have found a market gap - and that is putting people who want to get active, to meet people who regularly work out and keep fit.

So, if you’re looking for a trainer, some one to play tennis with or simply want to join a group of people to do the harbour bridge run, then this is the place. We have several people give us some feedback, and with a bit of tweaks here and there, we’ve got it a bit stable.

As the title says, it is in beta stage, so if you experience bugs, and problems - please let me know.

Also there aren’t many users on it yet - but as a start up site - we just need to get the word out.