Although Microsoft is better known for
producing software that operates other manufacturers devices (e.g. Windows,
Pocket PC, etc.), it looks like MS
is now stepping up to the plate and looking to score a home run with it’s own
“iPod killer,” codenamed
Project Argo, which it plans to
release around the holiday season this year.

Rumors have been circulating for a
while and Engadget even featured some blurry
pics of a possible device in June. More recently, though, a much clearer
picture was leaked for what is now being touted as an MS portable media player
that would be marketed
under the Xbox brand.

Besides a “more advanced” and larger
video screen, Argo will have at least one killer feature that is lacking in MP3
players at the moment: WiFi (possibly Bluetooth and even WiMax as well). Here’s
a description from Engadget:

Microsoft's new portable
audio and video player will have a screen that's “bigger than that of the
iPod video” (which isn't really saying much) and built-in WiFi so you can
not only download content directly to the player…but actually participate in an
Xbox Live-like social network that will help you connect with other people with
similar taste and interests.

What’s more, Mr. Gates is digging
deep into his own pockets and coughing up some incentives in order to motivate
people to make the switch from iTunes:

To attract current iPod
users Microsoft is going to let you download for free any songs you've already
bought from the iTunes Music Store. They'll actually scan iTunes for purchased
tracks and then automatically add those to your account. Microsoft will still
have to pay the rights-holders for the songs, but they believe it'll be worth
it to acquire converts to their new player.

Talk
about competition! Will Apple develop Argo-rophobia? Or perhaps Apple should
just relax and wait for MS to turn everyone off with their packaging: take a
look at this video for
a laugh and a half.

My apologies for the long delay
since my last post—I’ve been really busy with out-of-town relatives.  Since there’s been a lot of interesting news and announcements over the last
week or two, however, I’m just going to post a series of quick and concise entries, starting
with…

GDrive: Online Storage by Google

On July 10th, Corsin
Camichel discovered and leaked the existence of GDrive (codename: platypus)—a previously
predicted web-based storage solution from Google—including a screencap of a page
that shows the following GDrive features:

-
Backup. If you lose your computer, grab a new one and reinstall
Platypus. Your files will be on your new machine in minutes.
- Sync. Keep all your machines synchronized, even if they run different
operating systems.
- VPN-less access. Not at a Google computer? View your files on the web
at http://troutboard.com/p.
- Collaborate. Create shared spaces to which multiple Googlers can
write.
- Disconnected access. On the plane? VPN broken? All your files are
still accessible.

The story was quickly picked up by
plenty of other bloggers,
including a brief
summary by Techcrunch and Google Blogoscoped’s initial thoughts
and update.
The latter post (unfortunately) suggests that GDrive may in fact be an internal
project; at least for now. Who knows what will happen, but as Google continues
to challenge the likes of Microsoft
Office Live with offerings like Writely
and Google Spreadsheets, it only
makes sense to start offering an online storage solution as well.

Some of you may have seen the cover
story of the June 8^th
issue of Business Week:
“Innovation Champions: The new breed of
managers and their radical cultures of creativity,” which prominently
featured Google’s Marissa
Mayer on the front cover. Well, this week’s QOTW comes from the
accompanying podcast, which is part of Biz Week’s ongoing podcast series called
“Cover
Stories”.

In this episode, John Byrne (Executive
Editor, Business Week), interviews the author of the Innovation Champions article, Michelle Conlin, about her “innovation
learning journey” and her overall experience with visiting some of today’s most
innovative companies, including Google, HP, Citibank, and many more. The
interview reveals a lot of good insight on these companies and people, and it’s
definitely worth a listen, even if only to discover some of the interesting
things that reside in the Googleplex
(did you know they have valet parking?).

So, this week’s QOTW is taken from
the last 4 mins of the interview, where Byrne asks Conlin to summarize three
take-home points of what she learned about innovation from her visits. Here’s
what she said:

The first
thing is that, I think it’s really easy to be skeptical—“Innovation. Oh yeah,
new fad. Great. Why should I buy into this?” But what I saw is that it’s real
and it really is changing your company or soon will. And if it’s not…Don’t
think that you’re going to be around that much longer. It’s changing your job…And
what that means is that companies are looking for a different kind of talent;
and it’s all about being (what I called earlier) “bilingual;” being a “polymath;”
being left and right brained; being able to be super analytical, but super
empathic; and holding those two talents at the same time. And those are the
kind of people who are in play right now and that companies want.

The other
thing I would say is, I’ve read a lot about how important the design of an
office space can be, but what I saw is that it can really change the quality of
the work that is coming out of your company…If you can maximize the amount of
time that [a good person] is trolling hallways and bumping into people, you’re
going to “up” the good ideas…A lot of times, spaces aren’t designed so that
people can just hang out and bump into one another…It’s trying to get your
company to sorta be what MySpace is, in a way; trying to take advantage of that
open, social network.

The third
thing is that…If you are 36, you really are ancient. What I saw—especially at
Google…was this youth movement of people who just are so fluent with this
technology and who people like myself are looking to try and teach them what
this means for how the world’s going to change.

I guess the overall message for this
interview is similar to what I mentioned in my posts on Google’s
Innovation Equation and Yahoo’s Hack
Day, in that a big part of driving innovation and creativity in a
company has to do with a BIG change in current corporate culture—people are no longer
experts at just one single thing, but multi-talented in several different areas;
interaction (networking) and ideas are encouraged and not corralled into cubes;
and finally, understanding and embracing emerging technologies and trends is
essential to success.

On June
29th, Google
finally launched their much
anticipated online payment (e-commerce) solution, Google Checkout. There were plenty of
rumors circulating that suggested it would be called “GBuy”, but I guess they decided
to go with “Checkout” instead, much to my relief (I won’t get into details, but
if you’re familiar with Chinese swear words, you may understand).

Buying

Basically, Google
Checkout competes directly against PayPal
and other online payment solutions. However, while services like PayPal follow a “stored value” approach, Checkout
functions more like a regular credit card payment system, with one major
difference…Google stores all your financial transaction information (e.g.
credit cards, shipping and billing addresses, etc.) on their servers and then plays
the mediator between merchant and consumer.

In other
words, if you trust Google to be the sole keeper of your information, you only
need to sign-in to your Google account in order to purchase items from any
number of online stores, WITHOUT having to re-enter any of your personal
information for each merchant.

As Mike
Arrington from TechCrunch put it “…Google Checkout is more like a unified shopping identity
for buyers who can give their credit card number to just one company (Google)
and limit email contact received later from places they shop online.”
I guess Google decided to go with the LOTR approach on this one: “one
service to rule them all”.

You can take
the “buyers” animated tour of how it works here and below are
Google’s three main reasons to buy with Checkout, as stated on their website:

Stop creating multiple accounts and passwords.
With
Google Checkout you can quickly and easily buy from stores across the web and
track all your orders and shipping in one place.

Shop with confidence.
Our
fraud protection policy covers you against unauthorized purchases made through
Google Checkout, and we don't share your purchase history or full credit card
number with sellers.    

Control commercial spam.
You
can keep your email address confidential, and easily turn off unwanted emails
from stores where you use Google Checkout.

So, while
the financial transaction system itself may not be anything new or fancy, Google
does offer a few novel benefits that would make it somewhat more compelling to
use compared to alternative solutions. For example, Checkout not only
offers a “fraud protection policy” (so does
PayPal), but it also adds an extra layer of security by NOT revealing your
full credit card number to the merchant as well as giving you the option to
keep your email address confidential, thus reducing the possibility of merchant
fraud and email spam, respectively.

Depending
on how much trust you have in Google securing your data, I can only imagine this
to be a good thing. I mean, I’m no math genius, but from what I remember of probability,
the fact that your personal financial information only resides on one server—rather
than scattered throughout the web—is probably one way to reduce the chances that
such information could be stolen (e.g. through hacked merchant servers).
Furthermore, any method to reduce spam is always welcomed.

Selling

From the
merchant standpoint, Checkout also offers some interesting advantages; the
most obvious of which is a low 2% + $0.20 transaction fee, as opposed to PayPal’s higher, scaled rate, as seen below:

Also, if you
already use Google AdWords to advertise your business, Google offers you
the possibility of earning “free transactions,” depending on your ad-spend:

For every
$1 you spend on AdWords each month, you can process $10 in sales the following
month through Google Checkout for free. For example, if your AdWords spend in August is $300, you can process
up to $3000 in sales for free through Google Checkout in September…This unique
Google Checkout benefit means that every dollar you spend toward promoting your
business through AdWords also helps directly reduce your processing costs.

So here’s a table of Checkout’s transaction fees for comparison, followed by an example
of how the transaction processing works:

You can take
the “sellers” animated tour of how it works here and below are Google’s four
main reasons for selling with Checkout,
as stated on their website:

Attract more leads.
Shoppers who see the Google Checkout™ badge on your AdWords ads will more
easily find you when they search.

Convert more leads into
sales.
A fast, secure checkout process helps persuade shoppers to buy on your site and
buy more often.

Process sales for free.
For every $1 you spend on AdWords, you can process $10 in sales for free. For
sales that exceed this amount or if you don't use AdWords, you can process them
at a low 2% and $0.20 per transaction.

Protect yourself from
fraud
Our fraud prevention tools stop invalid orders from reaching you. And our
Payment Guarantee policy helps protect you from chargebacks.

Currently,
stores that are participating in the Checkout
program include: ACE Hardware, Buy.com, eCost, Jockey, Sports Authority, Starbucks,
Timberland, uBid, and many more.

In summary,
it looks like Google has introduced a new and attractive online payment system
for merchants, particularly those already using Google AdWords. However, the
advantages to users/buyers, while appealing at first glance, have received a
somewhat more ambivalent response from various reviewers (see: 1,
2,
3). In
the end, whereas the likes of Microsoft Passport and Yahoo PayDirect or Wallet
may not have succeeded, Google Checkout may stand a fighting chance; if
anything, simply because people
seem to trust Google a lot more than other tech companies.

Here are some great
resources for Google Checkout, including lots of insight as to why and what Google stands to
gain from Checkout:

- Google
Checkout (official site) for buyers
and sellers
- Animated
tour of Checkout for buyers
and sellers
- Official Google
announcement and FAQs
- TechCrunch
review
and opinion
- A
great overview and insight and PPT
slides by Charlene Li (Forrester Research)
- Om Malik “reads
between the lines” of why Google
is doing Checkout
- CNet review
of Checkout
- An interesting overview
by Chris
Sherman (SearchEngineWatch.com)