Google Press Day, Live

Google’s 2009 shareholder meeting is today at 2 p.m. pst. As usual they’re holding a press event prior to the shareholder meeting. Chairman and CEO Eric Schmidt, SVP Corporate Development David Drummond, VP Search Products and User Experience Marissa Mayer and VP Product Management Susan Wojcicki are attending and taking questions.

Key topics discussed:

Apple: In response to a question about the FTC inquiry about overlap with the Apple/Google boards of directors, Schmidt says Apple doesn’t see Google and Apple as a primary competitor, and so there shouldn’t be issues with him being on the Apple board.

Antitrust: Drummond says he expect to see increasing antitrust scrutiny as Google continues to be successful. Schmidt says information is incredibly important. Governments will pay attention to what Google does, he says, and will hold Google to their core principles. Schmidt says Google understands that there are consequences to mistakes. Schmidt says Google is always trying to find a balance between what their end users need and other concerns. “We are more careful about when and how we do things that are going to raise concerns of any party.” He brings up book search, says careful planning has lead to a historic agreement that is winding its way through the court system.

Monetization of social networks: Susan “we’ve learned a lot about how to monetize this inventory, we believe there are ways to monetize over time but different from search because by nature different from search.” Says they’ve been working on how to serve those ads differently, talks about ads in activity streams.

Google selling AOL stake: Drummond – it was a financial decision to sell the stake. Eric quips “we love aol, we sent our best guy there to run it.”

Plans for customized news: Marissa, who just testified on news to congress, says they have a team looking at how news will evolve. how stories are presented. navigation. finding and traversing news. some things aren’t as good in online news. comments. what to suggest next after a story is read. presentation of stories and how people move from one story to the next. Marissa is talking about the recent google labs products around news.

YouTube: question on estimated YouTube losses this year. Eric says he “believes youtube will eventually be a successful and profitable business. I don’t know how long it will take. it is a huge traffic phenomenon.” Susan says the huge amount of traffic has attracted lots of advertisers. They’ve monetized hundreds of millions of videos, she says. Preroll formats are being tested, she says, and there’s an opportunity to serve ads in different formats. On music videos, need a click to buy next to the video.

Cost cutting v. innovation: Question on how google keeps innovation going with cost cutting so aggressively. Eric says they’re focused on being more precise in their actions. Susan says Google is focused on small teams that act like startups. Eric says its too early to speculate on what Google looks like post recession. Says Internet growth not slowing and people spending more time online.

Google Ventures Drummond says they’ve made initial investment and hired partners. Goal is to go early stage, professional investing in areas they care about, which is a wide variety of areas.

Cost per click decline: 10Q showed a 14% CPC decline, asked to comment. Eric says they won’t comment much beyond the public statements.

Android: Is android an open platform for innovation v. carriers trying to splinter. Eric says this is a problem with any open source project.

China situation: Drummond says it is an ongoing challenge to operate there. YouTube continues to be blocked. issues with google.com from time to time. Says there’s a preference for local businesses there. It’s a difficult road, he says.

Google and Twitter: Marissa says lots of interesting things happening. Interesting from a search perspective. Some overlap with google trends. “we’re interested in being able to add microblogging into search, but no specific plans.”

Android on Netbooks: Eric says no announcement on netbook strategy but says that netbooks are very real, and that people are using netbooks that are consistent with the cloud computing model. client device to access cloud services, google wants their services to work with netbooks and to keep an eye on this space.

Live blogging continuing…

AOL Posts 23 Percent Decline In Revenues During 1st Quarter

Time Warner announced first quarter earnings today, giving us a peak at how AOL is doing. It’ seen better days. Revenues were down 23 percent to $867 million. Of that advertising revenues made up about half ($443 million), but were down a gut-wrenching 20 percent. Yahoo, in comparison, saw a 12 percent decline in advertising revenues during the quarter, and Google saw 6 percent growth in total revenues on an annual basis. Even Microsoft did better on the online advertising front, suffering a smaller 16 percent drop in the quarter.

Also revealed in the 10Q filing with the SEC is Time Warner’s intention to separate the old dial-up access business and spin off the rest of AOL:

Although the Company’s Board of Directors has not made any decision, the Company currently anticipates that it would initiate a process to spin off one or more parts of the businesses of AOL to Time Warner’s stockholders, in one or a series of transactions. Based on the results of the Company’s review, future market conditions or the availability of more favorable strategic opportunities that may arise before a transaction is completed, the Company may decide to pursue an alternative other than a spin-off with respect to either or both of AOL’s businesses.

New AOL CEO Tim Armstrong gets a pass this quarter because he was just hired away from Google in March. But he has to stop the bleeding before a spin-off or sale is possible. Meanwhile, on the product front, AOL is pushing forward with tweaks to its homepage that more fully integrate blogs, Twitter, and social networks. And AOL is positioning AIM and Socialthing as a single sign-on alternative to Facebook connect and Google Friend Connect

AOL Homepage Looks Different, Real Different!!!

While AOL was officially launching its Socialthing for Websites initiative this morning, it was also quietly making some changes to the design of its homepage. There are some new themes, Twitter integration, a prominent RSS tab up top, and all the information and news modules are now collapsible. There are also a few new AOL content featured along teh left-hand column, such as Paw Nation and PoliticsDaily (see our review).

But if you haven’t been to AOL.com lately (you are not alone), you may not completely recognize it. For one thing, there is a lifestreaming box on the right that lets you log into various social networks, including Twitter, Facebook, and MySpcace. You can see all of the status updates from your friends on other social networks and respond to them from within AOL. AIM and Bebo are also options in that box, but for Bebo you have to click an arrow to even see it (and AOL owns Bebo). You can also check your e-mail from Yahoo and Gmail, as well as AOL. These changes began last year and reflect a growing agnosticism at AOL, which wants to make it easy for you to bring your social network with you to the site.

If you don’t like the look of AOL’s homepage, you can pick a new background theme. Ah, there. That’s better already. And the RSS reader has been moved up prominently as a tab so you can switch away from AOL’s pre-programmed page and program it yourself with your own news and blog feeds. On the main tab, each information and news box can be collapsed, but unfortunately they cannot be moved around. But the rigidity that was once there is beginning to ease, and that is a good thing.

AOL realizes it is no longer the center of the universe, and is adapting. In a sense, all of these minor tweaks add up to an embrace of other gravitational forces on the Web. AOL is presenting them in a way that is palatable to everyday Americans. Forget Oprah. Seeing Twitter on AOL’s homepage is the biggest proof that it is going mainstream.

AOL Launches Online “News Magazine” PoliticsDaily

AOL is adding a twist to old-fashioned political journalism with the launch of its new political news and blog site, PoliticsDaily.com. The site, which will primarily focus on in-depth political commentary as opposed to breaking news, will only provide original content, from long-form analysis to blog posts on issues in the U.S. political landscape. Led by former New York Times Washington Correspondent, Melinda Henneberger, PoliticsDaily wants to tie the old media’s in-depth political analysis with a sustainable digital medium

PoliticsDaily is the brainchild of Martin Moe, senior vice president at AOL and is built under Bill Wilson’s new MediaGlow division, which is building new content brands distinct from AOL itself. MediaGlow, which recently launched topic directory Love.com, runs AOL News, Engadget and TMZ.com, among other properties. PoliticsDaily is part of the AOL News network, which received more than 27 million unique visitors in March, according to comScore stats. New York Times Digital by comparison had close to 46 million unique visitors in March.

PoliticsDaily has enlisted a “dream team” of experienced political journalists from both new and old media, including Walter Shapiro, former columnist for USA Today and former Washington bureau chief for Salon; Jill Lawrence, former national political correspondent for USA Today and columnist for the Associated Press; Carl Cannon, former Washington bureau chief for Reader’s Digest and White House correspondent for the National Journal and the Baltimore Sun; Lynn Sweet, blogger and Washington Bureau Chief of the Chicago Sun-Times; and Patricia Murphy, founder of Citizen Jane Politics, a non-partisan website for women.

The site will include blogs such as “Woman Up,” a blog focused on political issues from a woman’s perspective; “The Daily FLOTUS,” a blog which focuses on First Lady Michelle Obama; and “The Cram,” a student-focused blog on political news.

Consumers are more frequently looking online news for political news, as we saw in the past presidential elections and during the current downturn in the economy. PoliticsDaily hopes to be a mainstream source of analysis and news and shuns the idea of being a news aggregator. While the all-original content includes both long-form articles and blog posts, the site will not be primarily focused on breaking political news—perhaps leaving the real-time, short-form news to other political news competitors like The Politico,The New York Times, The Huffington Post and the A.P.

The competition in the political news sphere is tough, especially online. PoliticsDaily will have to build a credible brand with its original content, going up against media organizations that have long been offering in-depth analysis, like the New York Times, The Washington Post, The Nation, The Atlantic and The Huffington Post. PoliticsDaily will also face some competition from The Politico, which incorporates blogs, breaking news, interactive multimedia features and in-depth reporting into one site. And while the New York Times and Washington Post are hemorrhaging money from their print publications, their in-depth political coverage and analysis on their websites is strong, deploying a wide array of multimedia, blogs and long form commentary.

News broadcasters sites also provide popular political coverage—CNN.com. MSNBC.com, and FoxNews were among the top five trafficked news sites following the election in November. Moe maintains that PoliticsDaily’s long-form magazine content will differentiate the site from The Politico and other real-time focused news sites.

Moe pledges that the differentiation between PoliticsDaily and the Huffington Post will be even more clear. Moe says that while the Huffington Post is largely a content aggregator, has a leftward bent, and doesn’t pay many of its bloggers, PoliticsDaily will be 100% original content from “experienced” paid writers, and will be “poly-partisan” with perspectives from the liberals, centrists and conservatives. Of course, with the financial backing of AOL, PoliticsDaily has the advantage of being able to pay all those editors and reporters. But if PoliticsDaily is supposed to be an online new magazine, why isn’t AOL’s sister subsidiary Time Inc. running it?

AOL Redesigns Shopping Search. Is It Better Than Yahoo’s!

In the midst of the recession, consumers are either cutting back on spending or actively looking to reduce expenses. And with retail sales plunging during March, decreasing by 1.1% compared to February, it looks like retailers are in for the long haul when its comes to the virtual drought in consumer spending. What better time for AOL to completely overhaul the design of its comparison shopping site, AOL Shopping, to promote recession-friendly deals, coupons and sales to consumers across its site. Coincidentally, Yahoo’s comparison shopping site, Yahoo! Shopping, has the same features, but wrapped up in a different interface.

AOL Shopping’s homepage showcases a “monthly specials” slideshow, featured prominently above the fold of the site. Users can click on to a “monthly specials” page with the best deals of the month, up-to-date coupons and sales, or they can flip through the slideshow to see AOL’s recommendations for what products have the best deals. For April, AOL says televisions, appliances and cookware are your best bets. Also, each page on the site displays coupons to the right side of the page, which are fairly random and don’t correspond to what you are looking at on the page. For example, I was doing a search for “Tory Burch Flats,” and was shown a coupon for pet supplies at Petco.

AOL Shopping has confirmed that the site has signed on new advertisers for the relaunch of its site, including Dell, Discover, Sephora, Bank of America, Barnes & Noble and Sears. AOL’s advertising model for the site has also become more flexible, with advertisers now given the option to run ads for a one-day section, site-sponsorship or a year-long ad deal. Given the state of the economy and the downturn in ad spending, it’s not surprising that AOL Shopping chose a more open approach to ad sales. Comparison shopping sites generally make money through advertising and affiliate fees, which can be charged as a flat fee or as a fee each time a user clicks through to the retailer web site or completes an action.

Yahoo! Shopping’s site, whose recession-friendly features appear to have been launched prior to AOL’s overhaul, features an above-the-fold sales feature on the front page, leading consumers to a sales and deals site called “Yahoo! Deals.” Almost identical to the AOL’s “monthly specials” page, “Yahoo! Deals” has coupons, deals, and sales sections. Yahoo!’s search filters are more comprehensive than AOL’s, allowing you to narrow your search results by price, color, and material (I was looking for shoes). AOL doesn’t appear to have any search filters. But Yahoo! doesn’t give you the coupons next to your search results like AOL Shopping now does. It does appear that some deals and sales are exclusive to each site. AOL featured a deal on a Calphalon pan, which I couldn’t find on Yahoo. But I found a deal for a Nintendo game on Yahoo for $20, which was listed at $27.99 on AOL.

Both sites offer competitive deals, coupons and sales for consumers. But Yahoo!’s is more user-friendly because of superior search filters, search suggestions in the search box, and the ability to see results in a grid view or list view. It appears that AOL is playing catchup to Yahoo! in adding the recession-friendly features. They may also be trying to play catch up to Yahoo!’s number of visitors. According to comScore, Yahoo!’s shopping site received 23.4 million unique visits in March with AOL only receiving 5.4 million uniques in the same month.

Other popular comparison shopping sites include Pricegrabber.com, BizRate, Shopzilla, and NexTag.