Consumer Version of Google+ Platform to be Shut Down Over the Next Several Months

Social media is an important aspect of most people's lives. For some, social media is a way to keep up with what's happening in the lives of their friends and family members. For others, social media is a platform by which they can advertise their business or find the latest news updates. Although each platform tries to compete with others to some extent, the different platforms tend to attract different types of users, and often users will have accounts on multiple social media sites. LinkedIn draws in job-hunters and business professionals. Facebook and Twitter tend to be for general connectivity, although the former is more for friends and family, while the latter is more general.

Google+, while not on the same level of popularity as Facebook or Twitter or Instagram, filled a similar niche, intending to connect users and improve social media reach through Google's impressive search engine optimization algorithms. Unfortunately, according to Sam Dean's L.A. Times article, SEO wasn't enough to keep the users engaged. Alphabet Inc., Google's parent company, recently announced that Google+ is getting wound down over the next several months. The company expects to have the social media platform completely shut down by August. This week, a Wall Street Journal article came out claiming that Google discovered a security breach on Google+ months ago, and the company never informed its users. Some analysts believe that this breach in customers' trust could be what brought about the announcement on Monday.

However, it seems very likely that the privacy breach (although it may have been the last straw) was not Google's main motivator for shutting down Google+. The real reason was probably one of simple economics. Google+ just wasn't bringing in enough revenue. Social media platforms, since they tend to be free to use, bring in money by selling advertisements. Advertisers will only pay a company if they can see that the number of potential new customers justifies the cost. If a company can pay Google a set amount of money each month for advertising on Google+, and be guaranteed an increase in customers and sales, then they will gladly make that leap. However, if they know that 90% of Google+ users spend less than 5 seconds per session, the company is unlikely to believe that their advertisements will ever be seen, so they will be unlikely to put an advertisement in the first place.

Although the consumer version of Google+ is getting shut down over the coming months, Google is still planning to keep up its enterprise platform, through which corporate customers interact and provide information that can be integrated into Google's other features, including Google Maps. It's impossible to tell which of the issues (low user rates or recent privacy concerns) really made Google finally flip the switch and shut Google+ down, but other social media platforms may soon follow suit. Due to several recent issues with Facebook's handling of user data and bugs in their operating system that allowed hackers to access the same data, governmental agencies like the Federal Trade Commission have stepped up their levels of oversight. Even the House of Representatives and the Senate are getting involved, looking to investigate and improve laws to keep data safer than before.

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Online Advertising in the U.S. Outpaces Print for the First Time

A company can be the best in the business and can be producing the highest-quality items at the lowest prices, but those facts don't matter much if no one hears about the company. So, in many ways, the reach of a company's advertising efforts can be a far more important factor in the business' success than the business itself. In the past, a company's outreach efforts involved advertisements posted in the local newspaper. Eventually, that developed into short commercials on the radio, then on television. Now, in the digital age, advertisers have to make use of the internet if they want to get noticed. In fact, according to Wendy Lee's L.A. Times article, over half of all advertisements in the U.S. this year were online.

Since companies are looking to target more consumers from the younger demographics, and since it's well-known that younger consumers tend to spend far more time on mobile devices than older consumers, those companies have pivoted their marketing strategy to focus on platforms like Google and Facebook. This pivot was so significant that in 2018, advertisers will spend a total of more than $100 billion on online advertisements, a 16% increase from last year's expenditures. Studies have found that the online advertisements are more successful in targeting consumers, provides the advertisers with more information about the targeted consumer, and even costs less overall.

The advertisements tend to focus mainly on social media and internet searches. For example, if you like a Facebook page related to cooking, you might tend to see more ads on your Facebook feed related to cookware. Or, if you search on Google for a specific product, the next time you use the internet, advertisements will be more likely to show you products similar to the one you searched for, or related products from the same company. Online advertising has the benefit that it can target specific demographics of consumers and can record how many people are actually affected by the ads (determined by the ratio of ad clicks to purchases).

It makes sense that companies are making the shift to online advertising. Social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter have millions of users who log on every day, and a targeted ad can draw in many more potential customers than a generic advertisement in the local paper or a catchy commercial on TV. Especially as streaming services become more popular (thereby decreasing the percentage of the population who actively watch cable television), TV commercials become less effective and more annoying to the common viewer. Online ads are still seen as annoying, but if done in the right way, they can catch a consumer's attention without distracting a consumer from the posts and online content they are actually there to see.

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Tech Companies Aim to Develop Ecosystems of Interconnected Devices

Many new technological innovations revolve around the category of "smart devices." These inventions, which tend to be for the home, but can also be used in businesses, aim to integrate all of the user's devices, for a seamless connection and a simpler interface. For example, over the past year or so, several of the largest tech companies (Amazon, Apple, Google, etc) have come out with their own devices powered by artificial intelligence (Alexa, Cortana, Siri, etc). More than that, though, says Tracey Lien in her L.A. Times article, those big tech firms are making a concentrated effort to integrate all kinds of other technologies into their digital assistants, in order to better draw in potential new users.

For example, Amazon approached a company called "August," which focuses on remotely-controlled locking systems, a few years ago to see if August would be willing to allow integration of their service into Amazon's Echo device. The CEO of August agreed, figuring that the partnership with Amazon could only be a good thing, and now a user of the Echo can lock or unlock their doors simply by speaking and instructing Alexa (Amazon's artificial intelligence) to do so. Using voice recognition to control other devices in a home is a highly-sought-after capability among consumers, which is why devices like the Echo have become so popular.

From August to security camera-designer Ring and so many others, there are over 30,000 different ways by which Alexa interacts with third-party devices and applications. With many, the combination of third-party accessibility is the selling point. Let's say you're expecting your friend to come by to pick something up, but you're bed-ridden, or you just don't feel like getting up to answer the door. Ring would tell you who is at the door, then you could use that information to decide whether to let August unlock the door so they can just walk in. The combination of devices makes many things that much easier and more efficient, saving users time.

The purpose of companies like Amazon is to make their devices so useful that they can bring in more and more customers. Then, much like Apple has done continuously over the years, they create an ecosystem of their devices, where each device is useful on its own, but they blend so seamlessly that having all of the devices is the ideal choice. Through various online shopping services, such as Amazon Prime or Google Express, there may even come a day in the near future when users can control everything about their home, including the purchase and receipt of deliveries, remotely. Already, Wi-Fi enabled thermostats and smart electronics are poking out into the marketplace. Who knows what's next?

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Tech Companies Aim to Get Rid of Alphanumeric Passwords in the Near Future

As technology continuously becomes more advanced, and new innovations incorporate such technology, devices require more in-depth security measures. With the massive influx of "smart" devices, which collect a ton of personal information from their users, people find themselves forced to come up with new passwords all the time. Companies suggest that users choose different passwords for all of their different accounts, but an average user has dozens of different accounts, which makes having different passwords pretty infeasible. According to Hayley Tsukayama's L.A. Times article, that problem may be well on its way to being solved.

Several companies, but especially Microsoft Inc., have been pushing to get rid of passwords once and for all. While they do support the careful protection of online accounts from being targeted by cyber-criminals, research has found that passwords don't accomplish that goal well enough. Many people use the same password or some similar variation of it for all of their accounts because they simply can't remember dozens of different passwords. There is an inherent difficulty in choosing passwords that most would rather avoid: a password must be complex enough that a criminal can't easily figure it out, but should be simple enough that the user will be able to remember it easily.

Apple, Google, and Microsoft have all been making a push in recent years to rely on alternatives to passwords, such as biometric scans or temporary codes sent to the user's mobile device. Those alternatives make the accounts more secure, as a fingerprint scan is harder to hack than an alphanumeric password. At the same time, they make the process much simpler for the user and don't force the user to have to remember and type in a password every time they want to log in. Already, Apple and other smartphone companies have integrated facial recognition and fingerprint scanning in the unlock feature of their phones: a feature that many users love.

The main issue with changing up the security protocols, says Tsukayama, is that people don't like to adjust to a new routine. Even though having to remember a password all the time is annoying, many users (especially older users) are wary about using fingerprint scanning and other biometric markers to log into their accounts. They worry about sharing that kind of very personal information with a company that they don't necessarily trust to keep the data safe (both from criminals and from the criminal justice system). Getting users to make the switch will likely require slow changes, over a long period of time, to educate users while letting them acclimate to the changes.

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Amazon Expects Advertising Revenue to Improve Profit Margin

Jeff Bezos, the CEO of Amazon Inc., recently took over the spot of "richest man in the world" from Bill Gates, the creator of Microsoft. To many, Bezos' wealth doesn't make much sense, because, for the past 20 years, Amazon has not brought in a profit. That may seem pretty cut and dry: profit means financial success. However, for Bezos, that's not exactly how it works. For many years, Bezos' financial strategy has been to choose business growth over profit, reinvesting any revenue into expanding Amazon. In that manner, Amazon's stock value has steadily gone up, even without paying any dividends to shareholders. According to an L.A. Times article by Spencer Soper and Mark Bergen, Amazon's latest shift, to focus on sources of advertising revenue, could help to push the company into profit territory.

Over the past few years, Amazon has been losing money in its e-commerce business but has been able to recoup those losses due to its profitable business of providing cloud services. However, the differences between gains and losses are tight: Amazon's average profit is only around 1%. Up until now, Amazon's advertising business has been pretty small, at $1.7 billion in revenue compared with Google's $35 or Facebook's $17.4 billion. Amazon has nowhere to go but up when it comes to advertising. It is likely that the growth will be among companies trying to get priority placement for their products on Amazon's website. That kind of business plan pivot is unlikely to have high costs and has huge potential for billions more in revenue.

Amazon is in a good place for advertisements. Often, on Google or Facebook, an advertisement appears that tries to push a user toward another site, where the user might purchase the product being advertised. The problem with that system is that users get annoyed by incessant advertisements when they aren't looking to buy anything. The difference for Amazon is that its users are already looking to buy something. Advertisements would be both helpful to the shopper, would benefit the advertiser, and would give Amazon more revenue. Everyone wins!

Food companies spend millions each year to put advertisements on television and in magazines to try to generate more interest in their products among potential customers. The same effect can be achieved on Amazon's website for far lower cost, with less work, simply by adding in suggested searches or sponsored search results. Of course, putting actual images and videos as advertisements can also help, but if someone is looking to buy a product, they're going to choose the one that seems to be at the best price. Through Amazon advertisements, companies can make their products more interesting to the average user. Perhaps one day, Amazon's advertisements could replace those on television entirely. Amazon does have its own video streaming capabilities, after all.

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Google Aims to use Targeted Advertisements to Boost Both In-Store and Online Shopping

Most people who use the internet, especially for online shopping, have noticed at some point that the advertisements that appear on web pages they visit tend to relate to items they have been looking to buy. It is one of the ways that Google makes revenue, by selling advertising space and targeting the advertisements at those consumers most likely to be swayed by them. By correlating the number of clicks on an advertisement to the actual items purchased online by consumers, Google is able to show online retailers that their advertisements are the right choice.

Similarly, Google seems to be looking to move into the non-digital marketplace. According to an article by the Associated Press of the L.A. Times, Google is looking into a new service that will track how much consumers spend in brick and mortar stores after clicking on advertisements related to those purchases. However, it will only be able to correlate the information to stores, not to specific items purchased at the stores, which may not be enough information for some advertisers.

By determining how ad clicks are connected with actual purchases, Google can help advertisers to determine whether their ads are a waste of money or actually useful. If the data is convincing enough, it could be beneficial to both Google and the advertisers it is contracted by. If advertisers see how well their ads work, they are more likely to increase their advertising budget, thus generating more revenue for the retailer and more income for Google. The main problem, however, seems to be the loss of privacy inherent in this kind of data tracking.

Already, Google has digital dossiers on everyone who uses their online services. They know what people search for, what people shop for, and even the types of videos people watch on social media. Using that information, they can create targeted ads that are directed at the proper demographics. This new system just seems to be an expansion of that concept. There are precautions in place, fortunately. The system is expected to run in a "double-blind" manner, which means Google receives personal information that credit card companies and merchants don't, while the credit card company receives information that Google doesn't. Additionally, it won't be able to gather information on cash transactions and about 30% of credit card transactions. Advertisements have the ability to help all involved parties in that they can point customers toward products they want and provided added demand on products for retailers. The main question: is the loss of privacy worth the added benefits of the ads?

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Google Fiber Set to Make Debut in Irvine

We all know the frustration of slow internet. Not only can it delay our work, it can make relaxing at the end of the day an arduous process. The endless buffering, the error messages, and the snail-paced downloads are annoying at best, and anger-inducing at worst. Fortunately, no matter how slow your internet speed is now, technology has been growing in leaps and bounds over the last several years. In fact, Google has been working on a new type of high-speed internet connection called Google Fiber. According to Andrew Khouri, in his L.A. Times article, some apartments in Orange County, California, are even getting a chance to try it out before anyone else.

The Irvine Company, a private real estate company that owns a large portion of the rental property in the city of Irvine, California, just released a statement that Google Fiber is being made available in many of its properties. While they didn't reveal many specifics about when the internet will be made available, Google has stated that their beachhead market will be small businesses and some apartment communities in Irvine. Irvine Co. is Orange County's largest landlord, and as such, is drawing even more interest through their sudden move to provide this highly-sought-after amenity.

Google Fiber isn't just slightly more powerful than normal internet; it can reach speeds up to 40 times faster than the average broadband connection. Housing developers, business owners, and many others are doing everything they can to get a foot in the door with Google Fiber, knowing that the ultra-high-speed internet can be a huge benefit for personal use or for prospective home-buyers. Analysts believe that having the high-speed internet that Google Fiber offers will be a way for commercial landlords to quickly draw in new renters.

Google released a statement recently that said that the roll-out of Google Fiber will be limited. The properties will be limited to those located in Irvine that already have the necessary "existing fiber infrastructure." Fortunately for the Irvine Co., they have been designing their buildings with extra empty conduits since the 1980s, which could make it easier to install Google Fiber without much hassle. While Google said a while ago that they are also looking at Los Angeles and San Diego for a roll-out of the new technology sometime in the future, Google failed to provide further information on the matter. If Google Fiber is as successful as expected in Irvine, it will likely spread very quickly throughout the state, country, and even to various other areas around the world. Everyone wants faster internet, and this could be the technology that gives it to us.

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Alphabet to Surpass Apple as "World's Most Valuable Company"

For years, Google Inc. was always known for its internet/computer science businesses, including its online search database, maps, advertising platform, YouTube, Android, and more. In recent years, Google began investing more and more time, effort, and money in other kinds of technologies. From healthcare devices to drones to self-driving cars, Google has had its hand in many types of technological innovations. Unfortunately, that led to a somewhat unwieldy business model, in which every product/ technological focus was grouped under the single title of "Google." Paresh Dave and Andrea Chang discuss in their L.A. Times article how Google recently underwent a business shift and created a new corporation, Alphabet Inc., within which several subgroups focus on different realms of Google's technological goals.

Not only has the creation of Alphabet Inc. made the business more structured, it also has generated plenty of investor interest. In fact, according to Dave and Chang, Alphabet Inc. is well on its way toward claiming the position of "world's most valuable company" from competitor Apple Inc. In the fourth quarter, Alphabet showed that profit had grown by double-digits, and proved to investors and the world that projects like self-driving cars and virtual reality glasses were not wasting resources, but instead earning revenue. Where analysts expected Alphabet to earn $16.9 billion, the company surprised everyone by reporting $21.3 billion in revenue, an improvement of 18% over the course of two years.

Last summer, when Google first began changing to the Alphabet structure, the company aimed to separate online ventures from those involving physical technological innovations. Each of the individual units of Alphabet is designed to have flexibility over its own budget and operations, but in the end, Alphabet itself will keep watch over each sub-business and make the major business decisions. Certain ventures labeled as "Other Bets," which include YouTube and smart-thermostat maker Nest, had a loss of over $3 billion in 2015, which was to be expected, according to Alphabet's analysts. Loss is expected during the R&D stage of technological innovation, but executives believe that the loss is at an acceptable level based on predictions of future revenue.

Alphabet's momentum seems almost unstoppable. In the past year alone, Alphabet's stocks have risen more than 40% in total. On the other hand, Alphabet's major competitor, Apple, is having plenty of problems that have led their stock values to fall. As mentioned previously, much of Apple's recent troubles have been closely linked to the company's reliance on a single product: the iPhone. Since iPhone sales have gone down, Apple's stocks have taken a plunge. Alphabet's new business model will help to reduce the chances of a similar situation taking place, since the variety of sub-businesses means that even if one sub-business has trouble, it will have little effect on the company as a whole.

Overall, economic analysts believe that Alphabet will keep improving and that its stock prices will continue to increase. Executives have seen continuous increases in the number of users of Gmail and the Google Play Store. They also expect that advertisements on Google and YouTube will be very important for Alphabet's future revenue. Since Alphabet's creation, revenue rose nearly 14% and profit for the year rose by 16%. In the past year, Alphabet also added over 8,200 new employees. As you can see, Alphabet seems very confident about the company's future growth and is planning accordingly.

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Google to Offer New "YouTube Red" Subscription-Based System

Where YouTube once made all of its income through advertisement sales, the Google-owned company is planning to make a big change. Starting next week, YouTube will be providing an option for viewers to pay $9.99 per month to be a part of a service called YouTube Red. As described by Saba Hamedy and Paresh Dave, in their L.A. Times article, this service will not only remove advertisements from most videos, thereby enhancing the viewer's enjoyment, but will also provide the ability to download content and stream music from Google Play.

YouTube, which first opened in 2005, grew in popularity very quickly and as purchased by Google a year later. Since then, while videos on YouTube get millions of views per month, Google has found that the well-known site is not quite the money-maker it might have been expected to be. Analysts believe that this is because YouTube is free, in general. Artists, musicians, instructors, and entertainers can upload videos for free, and people around the world can watch, like, and comment those videos for free. Only videos with advertisements provide any sort of income to YouTube and the maker of the video.

Now, with YouTube Red, Google's parent company, Alphabet Inc., expects to make far more money from the site without increasing advertisements or drastically changing its currently free setup. Analysts YouTube Red has great potential to become hugely profitable, but only if YouTube finds a way to overcome competition by Facebook, Vimeo, and Snapchat, among several other competitors.

Furthermore, will it really be worth it to viewers? Is the removal of ads, even on top of the addition of all kinds of new content by such YouTubers as The Fine Bros, Lilly Singh, and Pewdiepie, really worth the $10 per month that it will cost. YouTube tends to be targeted more toward teenagers and younger Millennials, so that would also mean that subscription to YouTube Red would probably fall under the jurisdiction of viewers' parents, who may not be willing to spend money on that which used to be free.

Much of the new content will be produced by well-known YouTube stars, who, unlike so-called "traditional actors," tend to come up with the content in their own videos. Many such stars started out with comedy or singing shows, filmed in their bedroom, and since have accrued hundreds of thousands of subscribers. It is these individuals that YouTube Red is going to use to try to pique the interest of potential viewers.

Market research company EMarketer believes that the growth of YouTube's ad revenue will slow over the coming years, which would make now the perfect time for the company to move away from advertisements and toward other forms of income. Many wonder, however, how this new system will affect the YouTube stars, some of whom are making a comfortable living off of payments from advertising sponsors. Will they be willing to give up that security to be a part of this new project? Hamedy and Dave seem to conclude that with YouTube Red, the stars will have more opportunities to create newer and better content that previously would have been cost prohibitive. YouTube executives believe that the stars will see the project's potential and will happily sign on to be a part of this new system.

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