Google has confirmed that it will offer RSS feeds for web search results. Use of RSS feeds is still contained to a smaller slice of web users, but the availability of valuable information via RSS (particularly Google search results) influences how browsers, email programs, etc. function. Within corporate tech systems, the initiatives may shift to the best approaches to rendering RSS rather than rendering web pages. Maintaining content becomes a function of maintaining feeds. And/or do content areas on web page that provide changing content become feed readers whose key functionality is rendering feeds in a brand consistent manner?

Google Publication Ads represent another seeming diversification for the company. But the preliminary results have not been astounding (http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/05_50/b3963130.htm). Business model continues to be the breakfast table chatter. Print ads are still the larger fish at an anticipated 22 billion (versus 13 billion for online ads). But Google, with its algorithms, succeeds in a more direct response communication model – that’s a tricky proposition with a full page glossy.

In a meeting earlier today, the discussion was about advertising models and the shift away from conventional modes (which, in its thinking, is already conventional). Moroch’s recent hiring of ex-Warner Brothers’ marketer Brad Ball was a point of interest. Ad agencies are in the business of producing content and Moroch indicates that they get that by hiring someone from Hollywood. Their stated reason pointed to the tactical, but I think the result (if successful) will be an evolving approach to doing advertising.

Something of Google’s success has been a chimera approach – no babies are thrown out the window while the bathwater is refreshed. A business model based in part on advertising revenue is still salient (and makes sense to companies). There is another approach that Google is aggressively pursuing that is about content and web-based application. I continue to be interested in how this approach willl be transformed into a profit center. Or, to use magic as a metaphor, am I focusing too much on the pledge only to be baffled by the turn and stunned by the prestige?

What continues to be the most interesting facet of Google’s continuing acquisitions is the pricing model for consumers. Or rather, lack of one. Google recently bought JotSpot – this purchase remains only a blip in comparision to that of YouTube. But JotSpot started out giving away accounts to its collaboration platform application and then started charging (a sound enough model if we’ve been watching for the past couple of years of web-based application development). This from the JotSpot Web site – After Google (AG): “We will no longer be billing customers for the use of the service. Although you will still have use of the product at your current pricing plan, we won’t charge you anymore when your current billing cycle expires.” Google continues to expand at no (immediate) cost to consumers. Muy interesante.