Wow, Scoble thinking Laszlo as a Google Acquisition
May 1st, 2007 by ryanstewart
Scoble posted a followup to the Silverlight news yesterday doing a pretty good rundown of things. I’ve enjoyed seeing him get his finger on the pulse of the space. But in a tiny update he has this:
UPDATE: Laszlo says “don’t forget about us.†I think they are now in play for an acquisition from Google.
That is a GREAT freakin idea. OpenLaszlo is neutral, open source and would probably be cheap. They’ve moved into services as a major part of their revenue, but things like their Webtop could be integrated with the Google ad machine.
What are the odds? Tiny, and I’m about as qualified to talk about Google as Paris Hilton is to talk about molecular physics. But I love the idea.
[tags]Laszlo, Google[/tags]
Posted in Rich Internet Applications
May 1st, 2007 at 10:53 pm
Its an interesting play, but man it doesn’t seem likely. Google keeps talking about how they want to diversify, but they keep making moves around advertising. I think they should change their mission from organizing the world’s information or whatever to organizing the world’s information, while displaying an unobtrusive advertisement. Their major focus as of late seems to be uniting older (and other online) ad mediums and bringing them all into the digital age, under Google’s roof. A ubiquitous unified advertising platform would turn the advertising world upside down and put Google in an even more dominant position than they are today. So, to test out if something is acquirable by Google, just apply the, “Can this directly or indirectly help Google sell more ads?” test.
If Google wants to rock in the interactive space, why not work with Adobe to deal with the Flash SEO issues? Flash is notoriously difficult to get indexed in search engines, and all means of getting a completely flash site indexed involve hacks and workarounds.
Things like swfobject, ufo and swfaddress have proliferated, accessible flash content has come a long way, though it still has a long way to go. Soon enough things like the back and forward buttons, focus control issues (don’t you just love having focus on Flash and then hitting ctrl-t to open a new tab in Firefox), and SEO issues will need to be solved for Flash to truly become the so called first class citizen that we all know it can be. Not to mention how powerful it would be to have Flex apps, both internal and external, have the option of being indexable and searchable.
Everyone would win in that case, Google would unlock an entirely new market of indexable content (which means more ad revenue for them, a greater search base, and a leg up on their competitors). Adobe would finally silence all of these people who keep squawking about how Flash is evil because of accessibility and SEO issues. Why not invite Microsoft to come along too? They could make Silverfish indexable as well!
May 2nd, 2007 at 9:51 am
Sorry, why would they acquire Laszlo? An open source platform for creating Flash based RIA’s….shouldn’t they just devote resources to enhancing the Adobe Flex platform? When Adobe caught up with Laszlo (Flex 2), they went open source – so what’s their new act? And why would Google buy it?
With regards to SEO, I’m seeing a disconnect here – while there are some sites (movie sites, for example) that are completely flash based, they are few and far between. These sites can be SEO, because the flash file is rendered in a HTML shell. The fact that developers DON’T do that is a shortcoming of the developer, not the technology.
Flex applications, however, are just that…Applications. They don’t require bookmarks, back buttons or SEO. Applications are not “content”, they are functions. You can’t SEO the HR app, created in ASP/PHP, available to your employees on-line. A Flex app should be considered in the same manner.
I hear people comment that Flash is “evil”, how they uninstall it, because it crashes, how they hate Flash menus/navigation/video/etc. Reality check: It’s the most installed program in the world. It is on 98% (give it take) of PC’s. Companies use it because customers like it. So, call it evil, uninstall it, complain about the limitations, but pleae realize you are in a tiny, tiny minority.
Cheers,
Davo
May 2nd, 2007 at 11:35 am
Not sure about Paris Hilton and molecular physics, but Britney Spears has a guide to semiconductor physics.
http://britneyspears.ac/lasers.htm
Mike
http://www.riapedia.com/