iGoogle

Was planning a post on how well Google's many features/apps are integrated (and was planning to say, not particularly well)... so I just typed www.google.com into my browser and instead of the familiar simple interface iGoogle popped up -

and what do we have but a 2007 version of a 1997 portal.


Yes there's (much) more personalisation, yes it's not an html page with frames but a collections of feeds, yes i'm sure it's great in many ways, but it is not the no-frills homepage from you can conduct excellent search that Google is famous for (or perhaps i should say, became famous for)

Seriously - half-close your eyes and you could be looking at a 90s version of Yahoo, Excite, MSN or a million other portals. Actually I just typed in www.msn.com and (without having personalised either), it and iGoogle are almost indistinguishable

Interesting GOOG judgment

See this link to an appeal judgment in a Reid v Google - a case brought by a former employee of Google who alleges he was sacked because of his age.

Reid was formerly a Director of Engineering and Director of Operations at Google - a reasonably senior position. The reason he was given when he was sacked was that he was not a 'cultural fit'. Reid claims that the 'youthful atmosphere' at Google demonstrates a bias against older workers.

Goodwill

BB has today posted on the Google acquisition of Youtube and the much-hyped 'fact' that the acquisition was on a price/revenue multiple of 100.

A few thoughts:
- I am surprised the multiple isn't higher... youtube would at the time of acquisition have been generating f-all revenue... it clearly wasn't bought on the basis of present revenue, but on the basis of its clear leadership of a segment in which google would consider itself the natural leader
- it is inconceivable that the price/revenue multiple would have been the deciding factor (or even a relevant factor) in determining the purchase price or the valuation. a very early stage (almost pre-revenue) company like youtube can only really be valued on the basis of its potential or else on raw belief / hype... multiples of any kind are largely meaningless
- BB writes that $1.2b of the purchase price is assigned to goodwill. From my M&A experience, 'goodwill' is that part of the purchase price that doesn't fit anywhere else... you can't fairly call it a tangible asset (eg. a computer, a chair) or an identifiable intangible asset (eg. the copyright in a software program, a trade mark). Although of course I do not hold myself out as an expert on accounting for intangibles under US accounting rules.

Sources of traffic - google, blogger, gnoos

I was looking at my blog stats earlier and was not at all surprised that more than 80% of my traffic comes from google (as does everyone else's!). But I was surprised to see that the only other two sources of any prominence are the blogger search tool and gnoos. Good on the Feedcorp guys - looks like they're building some traffic!