Ken Hayes

Getting a haircut the other day at my neighborhood barber, I nearly fell off the chair when she said a man from Google had stopped by and photographed her small shop – inside and out.  Actually she said something like, “You’re on the Internet; see this company that came by and said people wanted to see photos of my shop on the web.”  This proprietor doesn’t have an e-mail, doesn’t realize her business listing already existed on Google, didn’t reach out to become a client, doesn’t have a Google advertising account, and was impressed they were doing this for free.  No strings attached.  Whoa – if I were the Yellow Pages, I might as well close down my business now.

Online yellow pages charge businesses $57-$199 per MONTH for listings, but Google’s traffic swamps them all – and it’s growing.   So the stakes are huge.

We’re all familiar with Google Maps and Street View – you can check out who parked in front of your home or what your neighbor’s backyard looks like.  Until recently, there was not much monetization in that business.  It was a huge logistical effort to drive down nearly every street in major cities and display the resulting database.  Free to users.

What’s happening now is the next logical step – going INSIDE businesses and shops to create an even more rich experience.

Given that there are 40,000+ barber shops in the US, how many does Google intend to photograph for free?  Even if a photographer could shoot 16 shops per day, that’s 2,500 man-days or about 10 man-years of effort, probably a $1m expense.  That works out to about $25 per shop.

Now, I am all for a company providing a free service – if the terms are clear and transparent.  But I am suspicious when a company doesn’t present any economic model that makes sense.

I could understand Google contacting my barber if their statistics system identified a large volume of users searching for barbers in my zip code.  But quite frankly, knowing the clientele of my barber, where I am one of the youngest clients, there ain’t a lot of online searches going on here.  Given that my barber did not reach out to Google, and the traffic volume has to be light, why spend the resources to approach this shop and shoot it for free? When she didn’t even ask for it?

What intrigued me was the two pages the Google photographer left behind.  You’d think Google would ask for a signed release, or at least leave behind a specific offer or price list.  Apparently not.

How will Google use these photos?  How can the owner get them removed?  What prevents these photos being used against the owner?  What if they show up promoting another shop?  None of this is explained.  Check out a scan of the pages here:

My favorite line is “Here’s what we [Google] think you should know about the shoot.”

If that isn’t a sign of an omniscient power with paternalistic tendencies, then I don’t know what is…

We are in an incredible age, where even people and companies “off the grid” are being mapped and cataloged.  As an Internet advertising fan, I have no doubt that Google will make sure my barber pays up – when a significant amount of her customers begin to contact her through a Google Voice system, or an e-mail, or electronic coupon.  I am impressed and humbled by the resources Google is willing to spend.  A truly long-term goal, indeed.  Who needs the Yellow Pages?

www.answers.com/topic/barber-shops

A couple online Yellow Pages companies:

www.supermedia.com/packaged-solutions/business-profile-packages
$99 to $199 per MONTH for a guaranteed 25 clicks per month.
Superpages.com and Verizon printed yellow pages.

http://listings.yellowpages.com/Services/ServiceTieredProducts.aspx
$57-$172 per MONTH for a detailed online profile.

In my quest to become less dependent on PC-based programs (that’s you, Microsoft Office and Outlook) and to become more web and “cloud” centric, I have experimented with running a couple startups on the Google Apps platform. It is both impressive, and scary, at the same time.

Google Apps is a single log-in for a set of functions necessary to any company or organization: e-mail using a shared domain (e.g. @kbhayes.com), group and individual calendars, shared and individual document repository and a wiki to keep track of all the details. Of course, any individual can use Gmail, but that introduces a host of logistical and lack-of-company-control issues. Apps integrates all these functions.

The amazing part is, the cost to a small company (say, under 50 e-mail addresses) is zero. To get guaranteed up-time and access to more advanced features, like Google Video and Blackberry Enterprise Support, the cost is $50 per user per year. In contrast, my Yahoo Business Mail account for one person is $96 per year.

Gmail and calendar are great functions, but the Apps module which sold me is the wiki, known as Google Sites. As I am now running a number of micro-startups under multiple domains, I am faced with detail overload – how to track dozens of partners and the dialog with each, dozens of log-in credentials to different services, constantly changing documents like price lists, to-do action lists, links of competitors, etc. And my collaborators are located on the other side of the world – so anything I work on has to be accessible to them constantly. Like most wikis, Sites maintains an audit trail of changes and e-mails me whenever my partners update any part of the wiki – which helps me stay on top of changes without drowning in e-mails which get buried in my inbox.

Those who read my blog know I’m no blind fan of Google (see my predictions of Google as a monopoly), but I checked out a number of alternatives – ZoHo, Zimbra, Yahoo, Outlook/Exchange hosting, ACT, etc. Some of them are better at individual functions than Google Apps, but none can beat the pricing and overall integration of Google.

The downside is almost complete dependency on Google, which is the scary bit. Google’s infamous non-transparency as to how it applies its own rules, and the inability to reach an actual customer-service person, create frustrating situations. For example, a few days ago I had to send the same e-mail one-by-one to about 70 clients, with minor text variations. Lo and behold, Google’s rule of “sending a max 500 e-mails per day” suddenly kicked in and I received the dreaded bounce-backs with a message “Delivery to the following recipient failed permanently” and a link to a Google Help page explaining why they now think I am sending SPAM.

Of course, this happened after just 70 e-mails, and the ban was lifted without notice about four hours later. But I had no clear explanation of why the limit kicked in so quickly. Nor is there any way to appeal such a decision.

Am I being dangerously tempted by Google’s Siren Song? Is my business venture, which is pure “white-hat” legitimate work, at risk of being squashed by Google? Am I really just trading one monopoly in the Windows platform for another monopoly in the cloud? Is Microsoft actually the underdog on their home turf? Stay tuned…

Google Apps: www.google.com/apps/