Relive the magic moments of Google I/O 2013, including the keynote, sessions, Developer Sandbox, and After Hours.

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Google 

The world’s largest media owner, according to ZenithOptimedia’s Top Thirty Global Media Owners report.

It estimates that in 2012 Google accounted for 65 per cent of all internet searches across the world 82 per cent of all paid search advertising. With its investment in Youtube, ownership of Google+ and moves into mobile advertising – ZenithOptimedia estimates that Google has 15 per cent of display advertising worldwide

Top 30 media owners for 2012 (ranked by media revenue in $bn).

1	Google	37.9
2	The DirecTV Group	27.2
3	News Corporation	26.4
4	Walt Disney Company	19.7
5	Comcast	16.2
6	Time Warner	15.6
7	Bertelsmann	11.3
8	Cox Enterprises	11.1
9	CBS Corporation	10.8
10	BSkyB	10.2
11	Viacom	9.1
12	Vivendi	6.8
13	Advance Publications	6.6
14	Clear Channel Communications	6.2
15	Yahoo!	5.0
16	Gannett	5.0
17	Globo	4.7
18	Grupo Televisa	4.5
19	Fuji Media Holdings	4.5
20	Yomiuri Shimbun Holdings	4.1
21	Axel Springer	3.9
22	Mediaset	3.8
23	Hearst Corporation	3.8
24	JCDecaux	3.4
25	Asahi Shimbun Company	3.2
26	Microsoft	3.2
27	Facebook	3.2
28	ProSiebenSat.1	3.0
29	ITV plc	2.9
30	Sanoma	2.5

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Still there?

Sorry for the big shocker. Almost a year after reports that Amazon was testing smartphones in Asia, half a year after rumors Amazon was buying a smartphone chip processor, a year after more reports that Amazon was building its own smartphone, five months after unveiling a notifications system that would look really nice on a smartphone, and six months after probably wild speculation that Amazon was going to unveil a smartphone for the pre-Christmas shopping spree in 2012, there’s yet another report that Amazon is building a smartphone.

But this one has a 3D screen.

The Wall Street Journal says that Amazon is building at least two smartphones, including a high-end model with 3D graphics and retina-tracking technology so that users can navigate content by “using just their eyes.” Plus an audio-only “streaming content device.”

Harrumph.

Amazon is almost certainly working on a smartphone and almost certainly planning to release it in 2013. There’s just too much smoke for there not to be fire. And having made its bet on digital content being the growth engine of the company’s future success — 12 of the 15 highlights in Amazon’s recent earnings release were about digital content — a smartphone that makes use of Amazon’s recently expanded app store and burgeoning virtual shelves of ebooks, TV shows, movies, and all other forms of digital content makes way too much sense.

But a couple grains of salt.

Amazon hasn’t made its bones in the tablet market by offering the absolutely latest and greatest technology but by presenting a solid product at a rock-bottom price. So I’m a little skeptical about all the wild 3D speculation — especially because that could be a sweet datapoint plant for the company to identify leak sources. And, in reality, a company the size of Amazon, like Apple, is working on many different projects at any given time. Some of them will come to market, and some of them won’t.

One company that can’t be happy about Amazon impending smartphone plans, however, has to be Google. Amazon has essentially hijacked Android for its Kindle offerings, taking the open-source mobile operating system that Google has developed, stripping out the Google app store, Google apps, and Google branding, and replacing them with its own offerings. Amazon will doubtless adopt the exact same strategy with any smartphone play — as Samsung might as well.

And, given the fact that Kindle is probably the leading Android-based tablet, it has the potential to do well in smartphones as well.

Of course, incumbent leader in Android sales Samsung might have a thing or two to say about that.

     When we consider the ways technology is rapidly transforming the media landscape — and our lives — three trends stand out. The first is the seismic shift from presentation to participation. The second is the paradoxical shift from using technology to connect to also using technology to disconnect. And the third is the game-changing shift from using social media as a way to make our lives more fun to using social media to make the world better.

     The shift from presentation to participation means that the days of the Media Gods, sitting up on Mt. Olympus and telling us how things are, have long since ended. People are tired of being talked to; they want to be talked with. Ours is a global conversation, with millions of new people pulling up a seat at the table — indeed, nearly 3 billion people will join the Internet’s community by 2020, according to Abundance: The Future Is Better Than You Think, by Peter Diamandis and Steven Kotler. That conversation has fueled revolutions and allowed media to engage with readers — and brands to engage with consumers — in totally new ways. The success of brands in the future will depend upon their understanding and embracing of this new relationship.
     So, if the first trend is a Garden of Eden blooming with engagement and self-expression, the second trendis the snake in the garden. For all the powerful tools at our disposal to bear witness and bring about change, there is also the temptation to fetishize the social and viral for their own sake. On a daily basis, I’m invited to media conferences filled with panels devoted to how we can use social tools to amplify our messages. But very few of those panels seem to care what is the message. As Thoreau said in 1854, “We are in great haste, to construct a magnetic telegraph from Maine to Texas; but Maine and Texas, it may be, have nothing important to communicate.”
Luckily there is a powerful, countervailing force using technology to get away from technology, reflected in apps and features like Freedom, Do Not Disturb, and HuffPost’s forthcoming GPS for the Soul. Of course, I realize there’s a paradox in the idea that, of all things, an app can help deliver us from the snake in the garden, but the snake is very wily, so our solutions have to be just as clever.
     The third trend is the shift from searching for information to searching for meaning. People are using technology to connect with others not just around similar passions and interests, but around the causes that most resonate with them. And the shift isn’t confined to individuals. More and more, brands are  identifying with a cause, and making that identification a central part of their ethos.
In the 1990s I wrote a book called The Fourth Instinct, which explored the instinct that takes us beyond our first three — our impulses for survival, sex, and power — and drives us to expand the boundaries of our caring to include our communities and the world around us. That instinct is now driving more and more of our choices — in terms of what we do, what we value, what we read, and what we buy. And technology has given us the ability to widen the circle of our concern.
So the future is hyper-connected — except when it is blissfully, joyously disconnected.  And an understanding of these three megatrends can guide us to a place where we are more creative, more effective, more compassionate, and more capable of making things better for ourselves, for our brands, and for the world.

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