Google has decided buy mobile phone advertising company AdMob for $750 million in stock. It's a reminder that Google does not automatically take over every market it enters. Sometimes it buys its way into a market. Remember Google Video vs. YouTube?

I wonder how successful Google has been with its mobile advertising. It's difficult to find statistics. According to eMarketer, the mobile ad business will reach $416 million in 2009. Pretty small compared to the $16.4 billion in ad revenues Google took in just through Q3 this year. But everyone (including Google) says mobile advertising is The Future. Assuming they figure out how to offer ads on a tiny screen without getting in the way of what you're really trying to do, and people actually click on some of them.

Assuming the Google Wave manages to inundate the world, what will its impact be?

Olga Kharif at Business Week tries to answer that question in the
article , "Will Google's Wave Replace E-Mail--And Facebook?" It's an interesting read.

New apps from third parties could be a huge business:

"But while the Apple App Store sells software only for Apple gadgets, Google's Wave store would be likely to sell apps that work on all kinds of devices, from laptops to Web-enabled TVs to smartphones"

And quotes from two analysts:

"It'll probably transform IM and e-mail systems," says Jeffrey Lindsay, an analyst at Sanford C. Bernstein. "Lots of imaginative developers will build a whole host of new applications. This is disruptive."

Adam Turner at the Sydney Morning Herald (I guess Australia still has newspapers) wrote an interesting column on his "Gadgets on the go" blog titled "Hands on with Google Wave." He tried it out and found it confusing. People typing over each other because of the real-time updating system (entries appear as you type them), difficulty keeping track of who adds to someone else's entry, impossible to get a chronological listing of the conversation. He thinks people wtill have to discover how to properly use it. I wonder if the folks at Google have figured it out? http://bit.ly/6GHpt

The Google ad deal with Yahoo is in serious trouble.

The Deal reports that the proposal is, effectively, dead.

The Justice Department's Assistant Attorney General Tom Barnett met on Oct. 17 with lawyers for the parties for the second time in two weeks. The outcome of the meeting, which took place just ahead of an expected DOJ challenge to the agreement, was grim, said a lawyer who asked not to be identified.

"Nothing good came from it," he said.

Article at JustMeans.com http://www.justmeans.com/Google-Why-lobbying-is-important/283.html

Is Google still a search company? A couple years ago, I asked that question of a Google spokesman who replied: “We do search. But we reserve the right to define 'search' any way we want.”

That definition no longer applies. After all, Google [GOOG 487.13 -8.72 (-1.76%) ] now offers email, photo editing software, a cell phone operating system, a Web browser, and now, its latest announcement, the Chrome operating system. Just what is Google these days?

Article at CNBC.com http://www.cnbc.com/id/31853979/site/14081545