The CES (Consumer Electronics Show) has recently completed and one thing that is interesting is that the search engines are playing a larger and larger role; Larger than ever before.
In fact, Google, Yahoo! and Microsoft all had exhibits at the show. Also, Microsoft's Chairman Bill Gates and Google co-founder Larry Page were both keynote speakers at the event.
Both promoted their search engines, but both also pushed their consumer electronics.
Wait, Google has consumer electronics you say? Well, not really - at least not yet. But they did a lot of talking about different things and did debut a couple new items.
But the really big news - the news that really started at the last CES - has to do with convergence. That means having different technologies converge into one, or a few, easy to use devices.
For example, Microsoft debuted some new features on their Media Center. New features including having the Media Center computer automatically connect to the Internet and download information about the TV show you are watching. Information such as the title of the episode, the duration and even star bio's and lists of other shows and movies they've starred in.
In addition, Microsoft also talked about a new advertising in this on-demand world. One that places highly targeted ads within the media you are interacting with, whether it's a video file, live TV or an audio broadcast. These ads are going to be (according to Mr. Gates) ads that you will want to see.
Granted this type of advertising model requires intimate knowledge of you, the consumer, but Microsoft claims that their system will learn your preferences over time and will eventually learn what you will respond the best to.
Google's release isn't really consumer electronics but it too takes convergence to the next level.
Google's product is a package of well known software bundled with Google software. This software would include not only popular Google packages but also Adobe Reader, a modified version of Norton Antivirus, RealPlayer and more. It is called Google Pack and can be downloaded here.
This is Google's first foray into consumer electronics, but I would expect to see more of these types of announcements this year.
After all, Google recently partnered with Lexar - a leading manufacturer of USB flash drives. So it would be easy to imagine Google expanding that partnership, which now consists of Google software offering to auto-install whenever the drive is attached to the computer.
For example, Google could provide even more software on such a flash device. Much like the software they are supposedly going to offer tomorrow, Google could bundle various applications on a larger USB drive for no extra cost to the drive owner.
To take this a step further, lets say Google offers a bootable USB device that not only allows the flash drive to reboot the computer, but also reboots it into a barebones Google branded Linux with basic applications like Firefox, Gmail access, the Google Toolbar and a few others. Virtually everything you need to run a computer, but all stored on the flash drive.
It's not as far away as you might think. There is a 50 megabyte version of Linux called '
Damn Small Linux.' Combine that with the 110 megabyte '
Portable Apps Suite' available from
http://portableapps.com and you have a complete system in under 160 megs. If you have a 256 meg flash drive that leaves you roughly 100 megs of storage space.
Now we're getting into a situation where Google doesn't need to try and monopolize more desktop through Windows based applications - they can just take over the whole computer!
But of course, this is still probably months, if not years away, but I do think it will happen one day.
And it's not only the engines involved in convergence. All the major electronics manufacturers are trying to scratch out a niche they can dominate. All the major wireless phone manufacturers are making even more internet ready phones with larger memory and/or hard drives capable of handling downloadable as well as streamable audio and video.
Even products like Apple's iPod are getting into the convergence market by offering similar audio/video abilities.
I expect that over the next 2 years we will see the line between hardware, software and the internet become even more blurred as manufacturers scramble to keep us connected, entertained and (of course) buying their products.
Rob Sullivan
Head Organic Search Strategist
Enquiro Full Service
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