I am no expert on the Middle East, but am fascinated by the implications of the Hamas victory this week. In particular, that this provides a clarifying event. There is no doubt where Hamas stands — its leadership thinks Israel should be wiped off the map, in fundamental agreement with their supporters in Iran.

No fuzzy, warm-appearing Yasser Arafat to delude anyone any longer.  I suspect this will alter any romantic visions some in the west may have had about the intifada.

Amr Awadallah’s post today asking whether GOOG will miss its Q405 earnings targets, picked up by Battelle and others, is very interesting.

Twice in the last three months or so, I’ve posted in the same vein, albeit with much less specificity, prompted by the heavy promotion of the toolbar, and the default-on insertion of ads for the Google Clips feature in the Google Reader (admittedly, the second being a minor, minor issue in terms of traffic and thus money).

All of this atypical — and “UnGoogly” — behavior amounts to one of two things:  that they’re worried about maintaining expected levels of growth; or that they’re dead set on cranking out as much revenue per page, damn the “Do No Evil” mantra.

I continue to think that the worry is focused on the middle quarters of 2006, based on projected trendlines and the market’s expectations for growth to justify the whopper P/E. My gut tells me we’ll see another stellar quarterly report from Google for Q405, but that their pronouncements about the coming year will be the most interesting to parse.

Karl Rove, speaking to members of the Republican National Committee today (NY Times link, registration req’d) apparently said that Republican candidates should make the “war on terror” a key issue in this year’s elections.

The Democrats should take a page out of the Republicans’ book and hit this issue — which Republicans believe is their best — head on. Directly, with extreme force, without cleverness, cuteness, or nuance.

Get voters thinking about these questions and issues:

1. Have Republicans in Congress or President Bush really done everything they can to take on the terrorists who really threaten us, specifically Al Qaeda and OBL?
2. If so, why haven’t we captured OBL yet when the President said nearly 5 years ago we would get him “dead or alive”? Why does he continue to send out tapes threating us, and bombing our allies (London, Madrid, Bali, etc)?
3. Has invading Iraq made us safer from Al Qaeda?
4. Has invading Iraq helped defeat or weaken Al Qaeda?
5. Does the President’s declaration he can spy on you and your friends (i.e., American Citizens) without any oversight and in defiance of the law make us safer from Al Qaeda?

After asking those questions, Democrats should simply remind voters that if they are in power they will:
1. Make taking on Al Qaeda the top priority until it poses no serious threat.
2. Do everything in their power to find OBL and his top associates.
3. Do everything in their power to ensure the war in Iraq does not distract us from those first two goals.
4. Do everyting possible to speed up the pace of handing over full responsibility to Iraqis and the UN in support of #3.
5. Commit to fighting Al Qaeda, and hunting down OBL, and not infringe upon Americans’ liberties and freedoms.

Many, perhaps most, Americans now recognize our adventure in Iraq as the Great Distraction that it is.
They need to be reminded that for over three years, President Bush has made Iraq the top priority, not Al Qaeda, and that by doing so he has made us less safe. Period.

Interesting discussion all over the web today about the Government’s anti-pornography crusade and related demand for information from Google by the DOJ.

Further, interesting speculation on Search Engine Watch that MSN and Yahoo complied, at least to a limited extent, with the government’s request.

I think Google’s position is commendable. Their non-compliance will only bolster their "good Google" image. Conversely, it’s possible that if people pay attention to this and it turns into a bigger issue, MSN and Yahoo! will suffer in the minds of some consumers — even though it appears they released no "personal" information.

Both Yahoo and MSN are already tainted, in that they have collaborated with the Chinese government’s efforts to repress political speech. This latest incident reinforces the impression that they’d not put up much of a fight with any government when it comes to information they may have about us users, both in the collective and individual sense.

Ironically, maybe eventually interestingly, this could create a competitive dynamic that is helpful. If Google is consistent in its apparent protection of its users, it should consistently gain loyalty from us (that, of course, requires a big and as of yet unproven assumption: that we collectively actually care about our rights). If Yahoo! and MSN continue to suffer by comparison, they may do more to try to show their bona fides. One way to highlight their efforts would be to pick high profile, important fights with various governments to protect their users rights.

Newspapers, and some other media companies, have long done this, both to advance reportorial privileges and First Amendment principles, but also because they know it’s good marketing. When they fight off government subpoenas, they look like they’re fighting for the little guy, against the big bad government. (One could argue that at least that used to be the case, with respect to things like the Pentagon Papers; maybe most Americans no longer think that in the wake of Judy Miller).

In this age of increasingly bold uses of executive power, including admitted wiretapping and monitoring of US citizens conversations without a warrant and in defiance of the law, could corporations like Google, Yahoo!, and MSN end up being a key wall of protection against unwanted and unwarranted attempts to snoop on us? All incented by competition to be the best "protector" of our online rights?

It’s frightening that it could come to this. I’m glad to see corporations act righteously, as Google appears to have done here. But I don’t want to have to rely on the power of market forces and profit incentives to secure our fundamental constitutional rights.

Technorati Tags: Politics, Internet, Spying

On Halloween, I expressed some skepticism over on my old blog about Apple hitting the million-videos-sold mark, and how meaningful that was.

Today, Apple announced (among many other things) that they had sold 8 million videos.

I admit error, and that Apple is doing somewhat better than I would have guessed. I was expecting a more linear, sampling phenomenon, and announcement of between 5-6 million videos sold by the opening of MacWorld. Having played with the video-enabled iPods since Halloween, I can better appreciate the appeal in certain specific scenarios, for certain content. Consistent with Apple’s success in music, the video iPod without a doubt provides the best overall consumer experience of any portable digital video device.

I’ll also note, and admit for the record, my previous skepticism was probably driven by my direct, personal experience with the push for mobile video while at Real, by good smart folks inside the company as well as cheerleaders outside. They kept telling me just how huge it was all going to be — in 2002, in 2003, in 2004, in 2005. I’m still waiting. I was wrong to conflate the mobile video business with what Apple was trying to do with the iPod. It’s an altogether much, much, much more compelling experience (the iPod).

But now that I’ve admitted error, let’s really step back, do the math, and put this all in context. Because once we do that, I think we’ll find the growth is not yet that terribly stunning. All of the folks out there running the digital media businesses at “old media” companies like Viacom/CBS, Disney, News Corp, the sports leagues and the movie studios need to do some pencil sharpening and calculator work before they stake their companies’ futures on a distribution deal with Apple for the iPod. I’ll take my bait and do a little of the math for them.

First, consider the run rate for the Apple video sales. The key denominator to look at is installed base of video-enabled iPods. Apple didn’t say today exactly how many video iPods they’ve sold to date, but they did announce 14 million units moved during the last three months. Let’s assume that 40% of those were video enabled (the lower denominator actually helps the hypefest case, so I’m picking that to make the argument more fair). That would be 4.8M video iPods.  If that estimate is right, that would mean each video iPod owner purchased an average of 1.67 videos over the three month period, less than one video purchase per month per iPod owner. Dangerously close to sampling behavior (meaning, get the video ipod and buy a video for it) and much further away than the addictiveness they have going with the iTunes store. Trend that out in 2006, with optimistic scenarios for continued video iPod sales, and you don’t end up with a huge industry.

Contrast this with what is happening with Comcast digital cable users and VOD. Comcast told analysts (ed., link to Comcast investor PDF) at the Citigroup Media conference this week that in December 2005, there were 140 million VOD “views” by their digital cable consumers. I can’t totally nail down Comcast’s total number of digital cable homes, but based on another presentation (another comcast pdf) they made last fall, I think it’s about 9.5 million (add up the digital cable subscribers on slide 5). That’s an average of 14.7 views per digital cable subscriber per month, or 44 every three months, some twenty-six times the rate of consumption of paid-for iPod videos.

Now, some might step in here and note that a significant number of those VOD streams offered by Comcast are “free” as part of the cable plan. Well, that’s true if you remember that these folks are paying on average $60-80/month for their digital cable service (almost half pay over $100/month). Further, that perception of “freeness” (despite the monstrous monthly charges for cable) actually helps to make my point, in that consumers with digital cable who really like VOD will find more value in the Comcast VOD offering than the $1.99 or $2.99 per video price that iTunes and Apple are pushing, and a better experience (unless you really want or need the content to be portable). Consumers will feel like they are getting the VOD programming as part of their cable or satellite service, and unless they’re willing to disconnect their box totally, and get their video programming only through the Internet or traditional broadcast or Netflix or some combination thereof, they’d be right.  (The math: If the digital cable add-on expense works out to about  $10-15/month, the average cost per VOD is around a dollar given average usage. Of course, Comcast would remind us that digital cable subs get other benefits, too).

The more that consumers rely on things like Comcast VOD (or similar services from DirecTV, or other cable cos and telcos), the less time and money and interest they’ll have in services from Apple, Google, Yahoo or others. The big question is whether services like those from Comcast end up being “just good enough” — enough programming, at a fair enough price — to capture the marginal dollars and time consumers are willing to put towards more video programming. For now, the answer seems to be: yes.

To sum up, it is doubtful the current strategies of Apple or Google will persuade most customers to abandon these “good enough” services from Comcast and others anytime soon (I know, this runs counter to the conventional wisdom that Comcast and their ilk are dead). If the Internet is going to be the next platform, the challenge will have to come from a player-to-be-named later. Yahoo? Skype/eBay? Someone else?