The two guys who started Dodgeball leave in a hissy fit. Google bought Dodgeball in mid-2005.

Dodgeball was the pre-cursor to Twitter and Jaiku (albeit a bit more focused on just cell phones than either of those newer services are). Last summer it was the rage with many of the San Francisco cool kids, er, influencers. I remember Irina and Eddie using it almost non stop on our trip to Montana.

So, why didn’t Google get it enough to give these two more resources? Easy. Same reason I couldn’t convince Microsoft to buy Flickr before Yahoo did.

It’s a small thing. A stupid thing. A lame thing.

Big companies have trouble grokking small things like Dodgeball. Heck, how many of you have called Twitter “really lame” in the past two months? Tons!

More evidence that Google is having difficulty getting small things? I heard a rumor that Google executive Marissa Mayer almost killed the Google Reader team because she didn’t think it would get popular. Feed readers are still “small things.” Seeing business value in them is difficult.

It seems that management is trying to get a handle on the chaos that is Google but in doing so is removing some of what made Google attractive to entrepreneurial developers.

What are you hearing from your Google friends?

On my Link Blog there’s a post by Loke Uei about Silverlight (Microsoft’s new Media Platform) comparing it to other platforms. The post is in Google Reader, but has been removed from his blog (I’m in the middle of a link blog posting frenzy, so the post in question has already moved to the second page).

That behavior always gets me to focus in on what got removed.

Loke: I’d recommend putting the post back up or, at minimum, put up a new post on the same URL that explains that the first post was removed.

Remember, once something gets posted on the Internet is CAN NOT be removed.

I was just reading TechMeme, saw that Microsoft and others want us (the government is us, remember) to look into Google’s acquisition of DoubleClick.

That made me remember back to 2000 when Microsoft would send MVPs like me constant pleas to help out in its fight against the government. “Keep innovation free” the pleas used to say. Microsoft was under attack by the DOJ and wanted us to write letters to editors, tell our friends all about how Microsoft was being persecuted. Etc etc etc.

I was sympathetic to Microsoft back then. I thought it was under attack from competitors who had sour grapes cause they had — to put it politely — had their asses kicked in the marketplace by a smarter, stronger, faster, competitor.

OK, OK, I can hear some of you calling “shill, shill” right now, but sit down and wait for a second before you throw more tomatoes at my screen.

Isn’t it funny how there’s been a total turnaround at Microsoft in just six years? Instead of asking us to help poor old persecuted Microsoft out now we’re being asked to have the government look into the business of Google.

Now, you might not agree with me about either case, but I’ll be consistent at least. I was in Microsoft’s side against the government last time (they asked nicely). But I’m in Google’s side this time. Sounds a lot like Microsoft is now the company who had its ass kicked in the marketplace and is running to government regulators to get some relief.

How ironic.

Oh, Microsoft didn’t let Adobe have all the NAB fun. Here’s Beet.TV with Microsoft’s Forest Key who announces a new media player strategy for Microsoft too (based around its WPF/E technology). Here’s Adobe’s announcements on Google News and here’s Microsoft’s news, also on Google News.

So, here’s why this is important:

1) Microsoft doesn’t want to lose more market share to the future YouTube’s.
2) Adobe has more distribution than WPF/E has so far (Flash is on nearly everything and is the technology behind most of today’s popular video sites). It’s hoping to use that distribution to sell a series of servers.
3) Adobe’s development tools are more cross-platform than Microsoft’s are and are hoping its new media player keeps the Microsoft side of the fence from looking very attractive (Apple today announced that it has sold 800,000 copies of Final Cut Pro — those media developers aren’t very likely to jump on Microsoft’s bandwagon).
4) Microsoft’s technology is flashier (no pun intended) but isn’t proven in the marketplace yet. Yeah, Microsoft has pulled out some big guns that are saying they are supporting its new technology.
5) Microsoft has a HUGE lead over Adobe in HDTV. That’s going to be where Microsoft will get a lot of traction and where Adobe is still chasing Microsoft’s tail. Will that lead matter, though? Not to ABC.com. It already has all of ABC’s TV shows online in a near-HDTV format and player (based on Move Networks) and doesn’t need either Adobe or Microsoft’s stuff. Same with Joost, which is getting to be very popular if my Twitter friends are a good judge of things. Same with Stage6.divx.com. No Adobe or Microsoft stuff in either of those. So, really both Microsoft and Adobe are losing marketshare to other HDTV distribution and display technologies.

What do you think? How does Adobe’s and Microsoft’s announcements change the marketplace?

Don Dodge, who works at Microsoft, offers up some interesting analysis of Google and Microsoft’s acquisition strategy. Not saying I agree with it, but it does make for fun Sunday-morning reading.

Oh, there’s plenty of “paying more later” behavior on every side of the fence. Microsoft certainly has a “we can build that ourselves for less” kind of attitude in its halls that is still proving to be ineffective in the Web 2.0 space.

The thing I see in common between YouTube and DoubleClick is that Google is buying a moat around its search engine advertising business. Google doesn’t want there to be ANY reason you’ll think of going with another advertising company. They are spending billions to protect their core business: contextual advertising delivered to search engine users. Since Microsoft doesn’t currently need moats (its core businesses, Windows and Office, have no real competitors left anymore that’ll try to jump the castle walls) Microsoft is willing to drop out of such deals when they get too rich.

Are there any moats left on the block? I don’t know of too many more. News Corporation? (Owner of MySpace?) Too expensive. $74 billion market cap. Yahoo is only $42 billion.

I just went back and read the email reply that Steven Sinofsky sent me back in February 2005 (I asked Microsoft to buy Skype, Bloglines, SixApart, and Flickr, among others). Steven used the words “business value” 13 times (he couldn’t see it in what I was advocating). Flickr was purchased by Yahoo a few weeks after that email. Skype went to eBay in October. Bloglines went to Ask a few weeks before my email.

The email makes it very clear that Microsoft’s leadership isn’t willing to pay big bucks for things that don’t have clear business value. Don is quite right that at some point it’s hard to discern business value in acquisitions. Microsoft has been quite consistent in turning down best-of-breed deals because they get too expensive. Google, on the other hand, is seeing value in these things in the future.

It makes for an interesting contrast, that’s for sure.

Which strategy is best? The conservative Microsoft approach? The rock and roll Google approach?

Yeah, I couldn’t stay away from my blog, I’m stuck in Merced with lots of Farsi-speaking relatives of Maryam’s — I don’t speak Farsi, so instead, read my feeds, which brings me to this post.

So, today Matt Cutts, my favorite Google-employed blogger, caused a bit of uproar by writing several posts today suggesting that bloggers and others identify their links that are paid for, rather than genuinely-earned links — even going so far to tell us how turn in other bloggers who are accepting paid links. Matt recommended disclosing paid links: “The other best practice I’d advise is to provide human readable disclosure that a link/review/article is paid.”

I’ll link to TechMeme because his post is already getting an interesting conversation going.

Anyway, this has an SEOs panties up in a bunch. Tony Hung asks “is this Google’s achilles heel?”

I think they are missing the point. Google is shooting a bowling ball over PayPerPost’s bow (and, yes, I’m still speaking at PayPerPost’s PostieCon on June 1 — PodTech decided to pay my way — I’m giving a talk titled “it’s a Google World.” Which is why I’m interested in anything Google does about paid links).

Disclosure: I will disclose anything I get paid to do +in+ the post I do it.

Can Google detect paid content listing? Of course, especially if done explicitly like PayPerPost (or other paid linking services) do it.

Especially if that system is semi public, like PayPerPost is. All Google would need to do is have a group of employees join systems like PayPerPost and they’d get a detailed listing of who is trying to buy links. Someone just needs to enter those into a database, and watch the results, and they’d be able to reduce their ability to get into Google’s ranking system.

The real message? They will swat down anyone who really does a good job of selling advertising into Google’s page rank system. PayPerPost is just the most public example of someone selling access to Google’s search engine’s result set but there are others and Matt’s series of posts makes it clear he’s looking to track others.

Why does Google care? Well, Google’s relevancy rankings will be hurt if people can buy their way onto their pages instead of earn their way to those search results pages by doing the best content, etc. Lots of people are doing comparisons of Google’s search results to Yahoo, Ask, and Microsoft’s search engines. If Google’s result set isn’t the best Google’s market share will start to go down as people figure out there are better engines out there. That, in turn, will hurt Google’s advertising business.

Not to mention that if advertisers know there’s a cheaper way to get onto Google’s search engine than by buying an ad, they’ll go with that system. So, Google has a LOT of incentive to swat down PayPerPost and pay-per-link style systems.

Matt was just warning us all that if you don’t disclose ON THE POST ITSELF you might get penalized in Google’s PageRank system.

What do you think?

I just got a tip that Google is about to make a sizeable acquisition. Not much more data. So, of course I took it to Twitter. I hear it’s a big dollar amount.

UPDATE: $3.1 billion DoubleClick. Microsoft was in bidding. New York Times has the story and says “Microsoft has been trying to catch up with Google in the online advertising business, and the loss of DoubleClick to Google is a major set-back for Microsoft.”

What do you think?

Ahhh, I keep hearing Steve Ballmer’s words “developers, developers, developers.” Google is holding a developer day on May 31. I thought I’d see this kind of effort after Vic Gundotra started his job at Google (I always assumed he’d run a new developer evangelism effort after his non-compete agreement with Microsoft ran out). Speaking of which, I gotta reconnect with Vic. It’s been too long since I talked with him. Vic, you out there?

First, thanks Leon Atkinson for the compliment: “Scoble’s links are as good as the links that come out of Digg.”

Anyway, while reading my feeds this morning I found this post by Peter Laudati, who works for Microsoft: “Virtual Earth Virtually Ignored? (aka What’s in a name?)”

He points out that Google got all the credit for its new “MyMaps” feature, while Microsoft’s maps had that feature several months ago.

He blames it on the URL and naming strategy Microsoft has been using lately. Or lack thereof.

He’s right. But, his post got me to look a little closer at the personal feature.

I went to http://maps.google.com/ (Google’s maps) and http://local.live.com (Microsoft’s maps).

I think Peter is right, but he’s also wrong.

The reason Google got credit is cause their maps are easier to use.

Why? One search box. Microsoft’s has two.

But, look at the opening page on both services. Google has a lot more info density on my page, cause I’ve done a ton of searches (it shows me many of my past searches).

And Google has two tabs up top: 1) Search Results 2) My Maps.

Microsoft, on the other hand, has 1) Welcome 2) Collections 3) Driving directions 4) Traffic 5) Locate me 6) Share 7) Print.

Too much. If you’re hoping people find “Collections.” But, let’s try them out.

I saved the same thing on both. Or I thought I did. Google’s UI is simpler and Microsoft’s has more choices and isn’t as clear.

I thought I screwed up. I went back and did it on Microsoft’s maps again. Went Collections/New Collections. Filled in the form. Put the push pin on where the Ritz is in Half Moon Bay. Looks like it saved it automatically (I don’t see a save button). Close the browser. Go back to Collections/Open. Nothing is there.

Google’s feature works, and is simple. I can’t figure out how to use Microsoft’s collections feature, and that’s after finding it.

Microsoft’s software makes me feel like an idiot (it’s true, I know, but the software over on Google doesn’t make me feel that way).

So, when you’re wondering why a competitor is getting more hype, you might look a little deeper than just the name.

Key line in the lengthy AppleTV Review over on Engadget: “Simply put, if anyone is thinking about buying this to watch HD movies and videos: don’t.”

I already have a Media Center (running Vista) and an Xbox 360, so I wasn’t going to rely on it for HD stuff, but I have found the Apple TV to be pretty unsatisfying if you are trying to watch any of the shows off of ABC TV’s hot new video player (which, by the way, works just as well on MacOSX as it does on XP — a Vista version is coming soon).

Also, the hot new video thing is Joost. That can’t play on Apple TV either. Neither can my old show over on Microsoft’s Channel 9 (Apple TV can’t play WMV).

That said, for what the Apple TV does do it does pretty well. Works great with most of the stuff over on Blip.TV and my current show works pretty well on it (although it’s definitely not HD and on my big screen is about as blurry as standard TV albeit my stuff is in widescreen so is better than most of the standard TV stuff, which I find mostly unwatchable on my big screen).

The Apple TV is definitely putting pressure on videobloggers to deliver a higher resolution version of our shows, which will prove troubling to deliver for a variety of reasons (I record my shows on tape in HD, which looks glorious, but don’t currently capture those tapes into the Mac in a high res format cause I just can’t deal with the file sizes and, mostly, compression times). Thanks to my Seagate partnership I’m working on some HD tests, though, just to see if we can make the workflow work for, maybe, a show a week (most of my stuff really doesn’t need HD, but there definitely is some that would be fun to do).

Anyway, is the Apple TV a good purchase? Yeah, I’m happy with it. But that just might be the Steve Jobs’ distortion field!

The Engadget review is a must read for anyone who still hasn’t bought one and there’s definitely more media tests ahead in my house!