Apparently CBS has decided Google’s mediocre media sales interface just isn’t going to cut it. They’ve gone and aquired the technology to sell their own episodes of survivor and other series online for 1.99 a pop.

While I don’t see this as a death knell for Google they’re certainly loosing that lustre that they built up awfully fast. They’ve lost quite a bit of value on the news that the fourth quarter profits weren’t up to expectation as well.

It all boils down to having the best product, of course. And Google’s recent offerings have ranged from useless (with the bundle of Google apps) to awful (the Media sales site). Hopefully they’ll get their act together and rally around some new innovations, or throw the towel in on offering direct-to-customer product and excel at the backend.

One thing that they do really well is pimp advertising. And with the percentage of their revenue that it makes up, I’ve got to wonder if they’re a marketing firm masquerading as an IT company.

CBS kicks Google off the island

This entry was posted on Friday, February 3rd, 2006 at 3:46 pm and is filed under News, Google. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.