Free Forrester videos on Social Computing -- and much more

I spoke a few weeks ago at Forrester's Consumer Forum event in NYC about how companies can tap into social computing. I've included the links below to the MP3 and video files (they are FREE!!!), along with several other relevant speeches and Q&A that I thought you'd be interested in. I've included a few summaries as well as the lengths. [Note: the videos aren't quite "videos" (at least, not on my connection), but you'll get the slides that accompany the speeches -- and also a view of me "walking" around the stage!]. Also included are interviews with Paul Tagliabue, Commissioner of the NFL, Greg Joswiak, VP of Worldwide Product Marketing for iPod, Apple Computer Digital Home, and Vyomesh Joshi, EVP of the Imaging and Personal Systems Group at HP.

Charlene Li: "Social Computing -- Bubble or Big Deal?" (29 min. 38 sec.)
Find out how companies can tap into new technologies such as blogs, RSS, viral marketing, and podcasting to develop deeper relationships with consumers — including five rules that companies should follow to successfully grow these new relationships.
http://www.cramereventmedia.com/videoviews/videoView.aspx?videoViewID=88

Chris Charron: "Innovating In A Consumer Driven World" (8 min. 43 sec.)
Companies must tap into the power of consumer-to-consumer communication by adopting a "consumer-focused innovation" approach in which consumers play an active role in products, services, experience design, and marketing.
http://www.cramereventmedia.com/videoviews/videoView.aspx?videoViewID=86

Christine Overby: "The Essentials Of Consumer-Driven Innovation" (20 min. 11 sec.)
To turn consumer insights into profits, companies must master "consumer-focused innovation" — in which consumers play an active role in products, services, experience design, and marketing.
http://www.cramereventmedia.com/videoviews/videoView.aspx?videoViewID=87

Paul Tagliabue (NFL): Q&A with George Colony Part 1 of 2 (5 min. 12 sec.)
Tagliabue provides his perspective on emerging content distribution channels like video on-demand, streaming and downloading, and wireless video. He emphasizes the need to experiment broadly, create new product for every channel, and target the offering . . .
http://www.cramereventmedia.com/videoviews/videoView.aspx?videoViewID=89

Paul Tagliabue (NFL) : Q&A with George Colony Part 2 of 2 (4 min 7 sec)
Commenting on the marketing lessons he has learned at the NFL, Tagliabue discusses the need to monitor consumers carefully and regularly — to uncover invisible changes beneath the surface of macro consumer trends — as well as the need to form multiple . . .
http://www.cramereventmedia.com/videoviews/videoView.aspx?videoViewID=90

Greg Joswiak (Apple): Q&A with Josh Bernoff (22 min. 0 sec.)
Joswiak explains how Apple changes the rules of the game. He includes a special emphasis on how Apple taps into customer feedback online and in its stores and then combines those insights with its own technology vision.
http://www.cramereventmedia.com/videoviews/videoView.aspx?videoViewID=91

Vyomesh Joshi, Exec. VP, Imaging and Personal Systems Group, Hewlett-Packard (3 min. 10 sec.)
Hewlett-Packard's Vyomesh Joshi dismisses "convergence" as an unhelpful word and describes HP's four-pronged strategy for what consumers want in their digital home: content, search, personalization, and community.
http://www.cramereventmedia.com/videoviews/videoView.aspx?videoViewID=96

Catching up: Part 2 – “AOL Going Once…”

By Charlene Li

I wrote about the MSN-AOL rumors a few weeks ago and haven’t had a chance to comment on the Google-Comcast-AOL rumors. But I had to laugh when I got an alert that Yahoo-AOL rumors were on the street as well. I was going to handicap the various combinations for success, but I’m pretty convinced that a deal – if there is one – will be brokered based on economic terms, not on what ultimately makes the most sense in the industry. So instead, let’s take a look at AOL’s various assets and what they mean for each of the contenders.

Search distribution and revenues: This is the obvious one. AOL accounts for about 12% of Google’s revenues or about $380 million annually (and rising) which all of the search players would love to have. Regardless of anything else that happens, AOL is clearly positioning to get the best possible deal for search. The problem is that consumer search and search advertising is going to be heading into a new era in the next year – personalized search requires a great deal more integration while search marketing will tap into user profiles to target ads based on demographics and behaviors. In such a case, simply swapping in and out a search engine won’t be enough. Given AOL’s reliance on display advertising, MSN’s adCenter approach – which integrates traditional brand targeting features – seems to make a great deal more sense in the long run. But I’m pretty sure that Yahoo! has something similar in the works while Google is just this year getting entering the display ad arena.

Brand advertisers: As I mentioned above, Google is eager to enter the display ad space – primarily because it hasn’t been able to tap into all of the dollars represented by both the online AND offline brand marketing budgets. A deal with AOL would give them instant access to advertiser relationships they would otherwise have to painfully build from scratch. Of course, MSN and Yahoo! would love to be able to expand the inventory and reach for their advertisers, but in most cases, they probably are already doing business with AOL advertisers.

Audience of registered users: With almost 50 million unique users coming in every month to AOL.com, it’s a powerhouse. A key benefit to someone like Google is the registered relationship and the ability to understand what users are doing outside of search. Just as a point of comparison, Google’s Gmail service had only 3.4 million unique users in the US in September, according to Nielsen//NetRatings. The value of the AOL portal is not as strong to MSN, and even less so for Yahoo! because they already have a large base of registered users and have been mining user data for years.

As I’ve said before, I still believe a MSN-AOL hook-up would make the most sense and is most likely. The companies are similar in size, culture (and bureaucracy). They both need a much-needed boost in morale and energy that an acquisition could bring. And MSN has the financial wherewithal to make the deal. This deal makes sense on paper, but primarily for back office operations – combining display ad sales, using MSN’s new search technology and bidding infrastructure, and a joining of forces of the #3 and #4 players to make a strong contender versus Yahoo! and Google.

Google is unlikely to have the interest and skill to make a competitive bid (John Battelle has more about Google’s appetite (or lack thereof) to compete for AOL). Meanwhile, Yahoo!’s bid is supposedly fraught with anti-trust implications, but I think they can make the case that they would still face stiff competition from both Google and Microsoft.

But the most interesting development is the quietest – Comcast has long had ambitions to be more than just a distribution pipe. A leader in video on demand (VOD), Comcast could build an interesting cross-channel property between AOL’s online audience and its cable distribution. The fact that it’s making the bid in conjunction with Google also has some interesting implications. I’ve written in the past that Google’s über ad network could make the jump into video ads – and hence, into cable television. Couple this with Google’s video search and you’ve got the ability to not only search across a vast library of video but also deliver it through multiple channels along with contextually placed ads. So even if Google/Comcast don’t end up with AOL, it is the possibility that the two will cooperate at all to create a brave new world that’s most interesting.

Sun and Google’s Partnership Potential

By Charlene Li

After all of the hype over the past day, the actual announcement between Sun and Google was pretty subdued. Here’s what they will work together on:

1)       Google Toolbar will be distributed with Java Run Time (JRT) downloads from http://java.com. Sun reported that they get about 20 million downloads of JRT a month.

2)       Google and Sun will also “explore” distributing Google Toolbar with downloads of OpenOffice (available at Openoffice.org), which has had 50 million downloads in the past year or so.

Now here is our take on it – and for this, I drew on the considerable expertise of my colleague, John Rymer.

First, JRT is used in many consumer applications, especially in music and entertainment. The fact that Windows does not ship with JRT means that each time consumers try to initiate an application that uses Java, it checks to make sure that it has the latest version. If not, the app directs the user to java.com for the download. Voila! You’ll get Google Toolbar as one of the things to download. And we understand that the Toolbar download will be “opt-out” meaning that the default will be to download Toolbar and that users have to take decline the download. Depending on how it’s actually implemented, it’s a fairly aggressive stance to take. What’s interesting is that Google will be *paying* Sun for those Toolbar downloads. It’s not clear how much, but the value is definitely flowing in Google’s direction here, so they have to pay up.

Second, is the “explore” option of attaching Toolbar to OpenOffice. John and I suspect that the reason they didn’t come right out and say that Toolbar would also be downloaded with OpenOffice is because they haven’t reached an agreement yet on how much Google should be paying Sun – or vice versa. This is because value flows in both directions in such an agreement. Google wins with OpenOffice distribution concentrated primarily in China and India, markets Google is eager to penetrate. Sun wins as its downloads have been primarily targeting techies and could benefit from further exposure and distribution to Google’s vast legions of loyal search consumers. For these reasons, we believe that there are probably more detailed conversations that need to be worked out.

Third, there’s an unspoken opportunity here for Sun’s core business – selling hardware. Google has built thousands of its own servers and is one of the biggest users of Linux. We believe that at some point, Google will be under pressure to finally outsource that server manufacturing to someone like Sun. That was probably some of the logic that drove Sun's stock price up 6.5% on Monday.

Lastly, you gotta wonder about the possibilities of the largest search engine teaming up with the largest proponent of open source. Google is eager to offer non-Windows non-Microsoft Office options that it can be a part of, while Sun needs that strong, consumer distribution to move the open source revolution out of the enterprise. I'm looking forward to Sun COO Jonathan Schwartz's speech on Thursday at Web 2.0.

Google Talk’s potential – searchable conversations

By Charlene Li

I was thinking the other day that one of the things you can do with VoIP is to record it, using shareware like SoundStudio to record them to your hard drive (look at all of the podcasting interviews being done over Skype). Once it’s on the hard drive, you could then run speech recognition against the file and create an index that can be searched by, yup, you’ve got it, Google Desktop Search.

Kinda spooky, isn’t it. But think of the real-world applications, ranging from cheaper call center management (there’s some software today that does this, like Witness Systems and VoiceLog), to eliminating the need to keep detailed notes from conference calls. My personal dream application: archiving all of my voicemails and being able to search through them, just like my emails.

If you think about it, it’s not that different from a desktop search program indexing chat conversations. Phone recording law typically requires one party to be notified that a call is being recorded, with only a few states requiring that all parties on a call be notified.

To be clear, I don’t think this is Google’s intention behind launching Google Talk – after all, other search engines like Yahoo! and MSN have already enabled VoIP calling via instant messaging and in some ways, Google is just catching up. But given Google’s mission “to organize the world’s information”, you better hope their mantra “You can make money without doing evil” will keep their ambitions in check.

Rumors of MSN and AOL partnerships

By Charlene Li

The rumors are flying about MSN buying AOL, sparked by a story this morning in the New York Post (registration required) and fanned by WSJ.com. I think the WSJ has got the scenario correct, that these discussions stem primarily from AOL’s interesting in using MSN’s algorithmic and paid search platforms. AOL currently uses Google and the company has been forthright in discussions with me that they will partner for search technology, rather than build their own. I think this is a very smart strategy, as it allows AOL to strike the best technological AND business deal in an ever changing marketing. So at a minimum, we might see AOL switching over to MSN for search technology and ads.

During these discussions, it’s inevitable that MSN and AOL also discussed other ways they can cooperate, especially the idea of combining advertising sales forces on the branding side. As the #3 and #4 portals behind Yahoo and Google, they will need all the fire power that they can muster.

So in theory, it makes a lot of sense to combine the two operations, especially on the back end. But merging the two actual portal consumer experiences into a unified site will be a nightmare. Cooperative ad sales can happen through partnerships and a full out acquisition would be difficult for MSN to absorb. Moreover, while both serve a more mainstream customer than Yahoo and Google, they have very different experiences. AOL provides a more content-driven experience, given its Time Warner and programming heritage. MSN is more utilitarian in its approach, focused on utilities and references. Consumers would rebel at any effort to combine the two together. It would, however, make sense for the two to share content, services, and best practices, injecting AOL’s programming expertise into MSN and MSN’s technical expertise like anti-spyware and virus protection into AOL. 

There are pressures for Time Warner to spin off AOL, but an outright purchase by MSN seems unlikely to me, especially during a time when online advertising is just hitting its stride again. But if there was to be a purchase of AOL by any of the three portals, MSN would make a great deal more sense than either Yahoo or Google.

Yahoo! launches new Web-based mail, a vast improvement over Gmail

By Charlene Li

Today, Yahoo! announced a limited beta test of its new Web-based mail product, integrating technology obtained from their acquisition of Oddpost last July. It took a while, but the results are beautiful. (Note: the beta is by invite only -- I've included screenshots for those without access).

The idea is to make Web-based mail resemble more of a client-like experience with the main benefit being to reduce refresh time. I’ve been a long-time user of Yahoo! Mail Plus for my personal email, but have been reading the mail through Outlook because I couldn’t stand the refresh time. The new beta *almost* makes it as seamless as Outlook, and I’m seriously considering giving up using Outlook to be able to always have my personal email accessible to me, wherever I am.

Here are a few of the details, as well as screenshots (provided by Yahoo!). I’ll focus in particular on ways how it differs from the other really cool email program out on the market, namely, Google’s Gmail (note: Earthlink also has a similar client-like approach in beta, but I haven’t had a chance to try it out yet – I’ll update this post once I do).

-          Client-like performance. Glory be, no more waiting for interminable refreshes! Opening emails are almost instantaneous, as are tasks like composing and replying to emails. I especially liked the reply function compared to Gmail, as I didn’t need to scroll down to the bottom of the email message to find the reply button. In terms of overall performance, I did find Gmail’s functionality to be slightly faster than Yahoo!, but only by a split second – there’s always a very slight pause between when I clicked on a Yahoo! button and execution.

-          Drag and drop functionality. I can select multiple messages and drag them all into a folder. Gmail users can “label” multiple messages at a time, but it requires a separate action to then archive them to remove them from the Inbox.

-          Preview pane. Just as in Outlook, there are three windows in the interface, versus the two that exist today in Yahoo! Mail and Gmail. So a user can see the folder, the inbox, and a third preview pane. Gmail does provide a short snippet of text right within the inbox, which is helpful. The benefit with Gmail is that you get that snippet without having to highlight the email. But for traditional email client users, the traditional preview pane offered by Yahoo! in the new Mail beta will be very familiar and useful.

-          Tabbed interface. Power email users typically have multiple emails open at a time, for example, they may be reading an email and composing another one at the same time. Yahoo! users tabs to manage different activities – so when you compose a new email, a new tab opens. And these tabs are smart – they rename themselves based on the subject as you type.

-          Right mouse button and keyboard shortcuts. For me, the mark of an application versus Web-page are these customized shortcuts. For example, a routine activity I do with email is to mark them for follow-up. In the new Yahoo! Mail, I can right click to mark it follow-up. In Gmail, I have to 1) select the message’s check box; 2) move my mouse up to a drop down menu; 3) click on “add a star”

-          Scroll through all mail messages. One nice feature is the ability to see all messages in the inbox or folder – not just the first 50 messages. It wasn’t instantaneous – I had to wait a split second for the messages to load. But then again, I was scrolling through my spam folder, which contained over 600 messages! It was pretty darn impressive. Gmail was also very quick to refresh the pages, but I could only see 50 messages per page at time, versus the continuous scrolling available on the new Yahoo! Mail.

-           Email search. Yahoo! has a much improved email search built into the new interface. Like Gmail, the search results in Yahoo! show snippets of the email content. But it also shows small thumbnails of attachments, which is pretty useful.

Overall, I think the Yahoo! Mail experience is excellent and will prove to be popular for people who already use Outlook. But Yahoo!’s strategy isn’t necessarily focused on stealing share from Google or its more formidable email competitor, Hotmail. Rather, I believe it’s to strengthen the loyalty of its existing users, and to encourage them to use Yahoo! Mail on a more regular, consistent basis.

This is because email is one of the three cornerstone entry points to the Yahoo! (the others being the home page and the My Yahoo! page). By improving the email experience, Yahoo! encourage greater usage (including people like me who may have been using the POP service in order to use Outlook). By keeping email users on the Web rather than within a client, Yahoo! can encourage users to try other features like Web search (which it can then monetize).

And Web-based email is becoming more and more important – according to Forrester’s Consumer Technographics research, 31% of North American online households use Web-based email at least once a week, up from 27% a year ago.

Yahoo! Mail competitors have their work cut out for them. Gmail may be the darling of the digerati, but I believe Yahoo! Mail offers a pretty compelling alternative, especially when combined with the ability to host your own personal domain (which is the main reason why I use Yahoo! Mail Plus). Gmail also has a major problem in the way it is constructed, in that it doesn’t use the traditional Outlook-esque interface of three-panes and email controls at the top of the page. And then there’s Hotmail. Given the expertise in-house with Outlook, you can expect that MSN will introduce a Web-based, client-like email experience to the market soon as well.

One problem Yahoo! faces is how quickly it will roll out the new interface and if/when it will switch over to the new platform entirely. For the technologically adept, it will be an easy switch…but for many mainstream consumers, the switch to an entirely new interface could be discombobulating. Yahoo! will have to offer both interfaces for quite a while, and potentially introduce some of the DHTML and AJAX functionality into the mainstream Mail user interface to help ease the transition.

Update: Quick clarification - the new Mail beta is by invite only *from Yahoo!*. They have invited a small group of heavy Yahoo! Mail users as well as everyone who has been a loyal Oddpost user (and a few reporters/analysts). So unfortunately, I don't have any invites to give out. If/when they are available, I'll be sure to let all of you Yahoo! fans out there know!

Loving Google's Sidebar -- my new RSS aggrgator

By Charlene Li

I have a confession to make. I may research and write about RSS, but darn it if I can’t remember to actually check my feeds! It’s just not part of my daily habit and after trying about 20 different aggregators, I have yet to find one that 1) works with the Forrester laptop configuration; 2) that I actually use on a daily basis.

That is, until now. Enter Google Sidebar. This is the new extension of Google’s Desktop Search offering – it’s a panel that sits on your desktop and provides a single source of personalized information (like news, weather, stocks, and yes, RSS feeds). Think of it as a personalized portal, but one that lives outside of a Web page (no need to have to surf over to my.yahoo.com or my.msn.com – this application is just THERE!).

A quick glance lets me see recent feeds – no need to have to start another application or open a browser window. Even aggregators embedded into Outlook didn’t do the trick for me as I spend only a portion (albeit, a large portion) of my time there.

What I find interesting is that Sidebar acts like one really big widget – and additional plug-ins are available, similar to what Yahoo’s Konfabulator and Apple’s Dashboard offer. While I’m a big widget fan, there was one major problem with them – I never see my desktop (it’s usually buried under umpteen windows). There are only a few plugins available today – but I’ve already found the “To Do” plugin useful. And I’m really looking forward to getting the eBay Sidebar plugin which is under development!

There are just two things to point out about Sidebar. First, the new search query box in Sidebar provides “search as you type” functionality, albeit, it’s a bit delayed compared to other desktop search applications like Yahoo! Desktop Search and Copernic. In keeping with the "no browser" philosophy, the search query box allows you to look at the initial results quickly and to go directly to that file or email.

Second, when I downloaded Sidebar and used it for the first time, I was struck by how similar it is to MSN’s Dashboard, which MSN has included as part of its Premium access service Internet software (click on “Custom Tools” to learn more – I’ve also included a screenshot from my archives). One of my favorite features of Dashboard was the ability to “pin” it anywhere on the desktop. Granted, there are a lot more advanced features in Sidebar AND it’s more configurable. But MSN introduced this technology in 2002!! They had the foresight to develop it years ago but kept it tucked away in a hidden part of its offerings. Look for them to quickly dust off the covers and make it available forthwith.

Lastly, I've been asked if this will Sidebar and it's inevitable market followers will speed along RSS adoption. There's no doubt in my mind that it will. Making RSS readily accessible AND visible puts it top of mind and spurs usage, which will drive adoption.

Why Yahoo! buying Konfabulator is more than just about widgets

By Charlene Li

I’ve been on a plane all day (I’m now in hot, muggy Boston) and have been itching to write about Konfabulator’s acquisition by Yahoo!. I’ve been using Konfabulator for the past few months (since I’m not on an Apple) and have been tinkering with a few of the widgets. Widgets are little mini-applications that have primarily one purpose – to get for example, a mosquito report or reports your latest feedback rating on eBay. So why would I want a whole bunch of little things cluttering my desktop? That’s exactly what I was asking as I’ve been adding and deleting widgets the past few weeks!

The problem is I already know what the ultimate widget would be me – something that would get me up and out the door in the mornings. I’d pull together a weather widget, calendar widget, traffic widget and to do widget into one nice neat little app, and then feed it with all of the RSS data streams that I deem relevant. There’s only one small problem -- I don’t know JavaScript! So I am at the mercy of app developers who I hope will take pity on my discombobulated mornings and write the darn app!

But why should I have to wait for developers to do this? This is where I think Yahoo! gets very, very interesting with Konfabulator. As a developer tool, it may have some interesting potential for developing neat interfaces into Yahoo!’s vast stores of content and information. But if Yahoo! can put the power of widget creation into the hands of end-users, it would give us end users the power to not only create custom content streams a la RSS and MyYahoo!, but also allow us to filter, distribute, and combine that data in any way we see fit. There’s already precedence for this in the enterprise space, where JotSpot has taken wikis and built applications on top of classic wiki infrastructure. Proposed RSS extensions from Microsoft, Yahoo, etc. will provide additional structure around which widgets can be built – think shopping alerts.

And even if I never get around to writing the ultimate, personal application, I bet there is someone out there who’s also a busy, working mom/dad AND has some JavaScript skills who wrote a similar program for themselves and shares it in the Widget Gallery. And how about setting up a marketplace where I could write out the specs for my custom widget and put it out for bid?

So this is more than just about little widgets - I think it's potentially taking the power of application development out of the hands of "big" companies. Think of it as open source for the masses.

You can download and try out Konfabulator, which has already been renamed Yahoo! Widgets at widgets.yahoo.com.

Google Wallet musings

By Charlene Li

I’ve been asked for the past couple of days what a Google Wallet would mean (regardless of the fact that it hasn’t been announced!). PayPal dominates person-to-person payments today. So if I need to pay my brother back for a scanner he bought for me, or pay for an auction (on eBay, of course!) I’ll use PayPal. It doesn’t make sense for Google to only challenge eBay/PayPal in this area – even though it will bring in close to $1 billion in revenue for eBay this year.

Instead, I think (and hope) that Google is thinking much, much bigger.

I was at the Supernova conference yesterday and ran into transplanted Bostonite Scott Kirsner – we had a good discussion about how all of the new blog publishers would get paid for their good work. One of the ideas we tossed around was Google Wallet – AdSense already puts paid links on thousands of content sites, so why not also enable them for micropayments? Google is already very good at tracking and collecting clicks worth five cents each. Google could also offer be a subscription “pass” that securely grants users access to premium content on multiple sites, with each site getting a share of the payment based on usage.

And here’s another way that Google could leverage a payment system. Google is one of the largest backers of the new Atom standard, which helps syndicate content. Today, most of the content that’s distributed via RSS is news headlines, but I’m a strong believe that commerce-oriented content will be appearing soon. So what if Google were to come out with it’s specialized aggregators or Web sites that would use the open standard to receive items and information?

Here’s an example. Today, if you want to sell a song on iTunes, you have to cut a deal with Apple – painful, long, and not economically feasible for individuals. But what if I were to put together a mix of children’s songs (via Creative Commons) featuring my kids’? I could stream it out as an Atom feed, include payment information in it for Google Wallet, and have it aggregated on Google Music. Voila – we just created an open marketplace for music. Repeat the same recipe for video, ebooks, and yes, even technology research reports.

Sure, Google could launch each of these services using traditional payment methods – but that’s just not the Google way, nor is it ideal for consumers. Each of these payments are potentially very, very small – and having a centralized payment system will help consolidate all of those micropayments.

Google announces “My Google”

By Charlene Li

Ok, it’s not really called My Google, but a confused name called “Fusion”, but I think you get the idea. Available in the test area of Google Labs, the personalized home pageallows users to choose content (like Gmail, the New York Times, Google News, weather, etc.) In all, there are only 12 content choices for the page today.

Pretty slim pickings when compared to what My Yahoo! or My MSN have with their RSS enabled feeds. But expect iterations.

Why is Google doing this? Is this a concession to the strength of portal competitors? To a great degree, yes. Of the people who use Google most frequently to search the Interent, only 17% also have Google as their default home page – compare that to 72% that use MSN for search and also have it as their home page (more details are here – available only to Forrester subscribers). google users The biggest advantage that Yahoo and MSN (and yes, AOL) have is that they each have tens of millions of registered users. This is important if these sites want to be able to provide differentiated services to their users. In the end, it’s all about loyalty – and offering a better service thanks to personalized services will the differentiator.

Here’s an example. Today, if I type in a search for cruise vacation I would get the same results as you would . But with the advent of My Search History from Google and personalized search initiatives from Yahoo! and Ask Jeeves, the game appears to be to sign up users whom the search engines can then mine for data to provide a better search experience. Google is clearly behind and needs to step up their efforts to sign up users – hence the launch of the personalized home page. Google is very behind in terms of default home page share – and it hopes to remedy this situation quickly (stats on default home page and search loyalty are available only to Forrester clients.)

But why would people give up a rich interface like Yahoo, MSN, or AOL for Google? I believe that only Google loyalists will do so. You can recognized them – they talk about how they used Google to solve gnarly problems and gross on and on about Gmail. But for the rest of us, we’ll need to be convinced that it makes sense.

I think that day will come when Google not only offers RSS-enabled content (it’s an interesting change of pace to see Google chasing the industry leaders for a change) but also uses intelligence gathered from watching registered users’ behaviors. For example, if I subscribe to a feed of Canadian news in Google news, but only read articles about Montreal and always ignore news from Vancouver, then the service would push forward Montreal news and de-emphasize (or even not show) articles about Vancouver.

Interesting tidbit: I was called by a reporter during a client dinner about this news. I came back to the table, apologized for having to step away for a few minutes, and asked them to discuss the big news. Talk about real-time groking! We were no where near Web access so we couldn’t evaluate the service. But some of the key questions evolved around how far Google would go in tracking what people did with the site – and especially how consumers would feel about this.

At the end of the day, I believe there is such trust in Google, that most people will feel comfortable with the idea of Google increasingly encroaching into our private lives. As long as Google continues to lead the market – rather than follow it – this should be the case.

Update: In talking with reporters this evening, it looks like Google announced “Fusion” at their industry analyst and media “Factory Tour” of their campus. They had originally intended to launch it at the end of June, but pushed it out early. I wasn’t at the Factory Tour, but from first hand reports, it appears the launch was rushed – there’s also not strong positioning behind the “Fusion” name.

One last thought – Google said that they had been working on this personalized home page for a year and this is as far as they have gotten. Compare this to the richness of Yahoo!, MSN, and AOL’s personalization and you realize just how far Google has to go. The portals have had years of experience, which Google has to catch up to.