In the mid-morning hours of November 3, I woke up to the realisation that Google Adsense (Ads by Choice, if you like) were no longer displaying on my technology blog.

I quickly signed into my Google Adsense account, while checking to see if the adsense codes appeared correctly on the admin back-end of TechLoy.com

It seemed perfect. What could be wrong?

‘Did Google suddenly run out of ads?’ I thought to myself. ‘Were they experiencing problems with their ad network?’

I checked other sites and saw Google Adsense running undisturbed. While at it, I checked my Google Adsense account to see if my ads were still active.

Yes, they were active, but inactive on my blog.

Sigh.

I looked up the message folder on my Google Adsense account, my email inbox and spam box and didn’t see any email notification suggesting that Google Ads had been disabled.

[As I write this, 14 days after, I haven't received any email yet]

No Ads. No Email. No Sense.

Fast forward to November 17, two weeks later today and in protest , I’m announcing…

‘Ads by TechLoy’!

‘Ads by TechLoy’ are basically text ad links of not more than 100 characters, including spaces appearing on the TechLoy site, its daily RSS Feed and Email Newsletter.

My hope is that ‘Ads by TechLoy’ would help startups, small tech businesses, etc to promote their products and services at a very affordable rate as low as N500/day ($3) per text ad.

In the nearest future, ‘Ads by TechLoy’ would be developed further into a targeted self-service ad system such as LinkedIn Ads and Facebook Ads.

If you run an IT/technology business or startup and would like to take advantage of the opportunities that advertising on a leading technology blog in Africa offers, please don’t hesitate.

Oh did I mention how much TechLoy made during the past four months we ran Google Adsense?

Just about $110. Not even enough to pay my Internet service for one month. And worse, we haven’t yet received the money. We probably won’t even get it.

Dear Google, please keep the money and the change, but you won’t go far ripping people off their earnings.

As John Chow notes in 7 Reasons Why Google Adsense Sucks:

“…there are literally millions of small publishers with super low traffic that will NEVER hit the minimum payout level and just give up or remove it from their site. What happens to this money? Google keeps it. Hmm? I’m guessing that the guy in the 3rd world country with the $38 dollars sitting idle in his account needs the money more than they do? They should be forced to pay out all monies owning to small site owners!”

As long as Google Adsense has continued to suck in terms of CPMs, crappy and irrelevant ads, lack of technical support et al, I’ve decided to discontinue Google Adsense indefinitely from my network of sites.

Seriously, Google Adsense hasn’t made any ad sense to me.

The word is out: Google is secretly working on a project that is capable of making it dominate Nigeria’s Internet ecosystem in years to come. That, I call Net-Colonialism! You may call it Colonialism 2.0, if you like.

The search behemoth succeeded in keying into the  interest of the Nigerian Internet Registration Association (NiRA) by pledging their ‘support’ for the promotion of the adoption of .ng domain names.

If truth be told, Google wanted to get 40,000 (.com.ng) domain names for FREE from NiRA to show their support for the adoption of .ng domains and get small businesses to own a website with all the goodies that Google would offer the small businesses.

But NiRA refused to give away their domain names for free since that would affect their core business. So when Google was willing to pay for the domains, which would provide NiRA a whooping revenue of N40 million annually (at the rate of N1,000 per domain), NiRA bought the idea as nairastic since it would only affect web design and hosting companies which is not their core business.

Google then sought to partner with all the domain registrars in Nigeria and have them become ‘domain resellers’ (domain agents, if you like) to Google. This move would have automatically made Google a ‘Super Registrar’ and given it full control of the Nigerian domain and hosting business, perhaps fixing prices at their will.

As soon as Google realised how unethical this move would have been percieved, they backed out of the negotiations. According to a statement from Google:

“…After much internal discussion, we have decided to provide the domains at cost and have the SMEs pay the standard N1,500 /domain. However, we will no longer require NIRA to provide discounted .com.ng domain names and Upperlink will remain as our only recognized registrar.”

So why did Google back out of the discussions if they really had good intentions for the ecosystem?

If the deal had continued, what would have been the implication for domain registrars, web design/hosting companies and local developers and entrepreneurs?

Domain registrars would have had no choice but to become resellers
to Google (just as recharge card sellers are to MTN, Glo etc) and this would barely make them survive.

Web design and hosting companies would have become support staff to Google, more like labourers that would scavenge content and customers for Google and would no longer have control of the customers and thus would not make any revenue on a yearly basis either from domain/hosting renewal or from web design.

Is there a Win-Win Situation?

In my opinion, Google’s approach did not really show they wanted to become a committed partner. With this approach, Google was looking to take over and dominate the market. Period.

Google should have invited interested partners (domain registrars, web design and hosting companies) to work with them to put Nigerian businesses online in a win-win approach.

In this case, Google should have provided the software (Google automated site builder, Google apps for email and other collaboration services) and market visibility (free listing on Google Maps, etc), while the local partners provide the domains, web hosting, maintenance and support to the small businesses. NiRA, on the other hand, should have provided 1 year free domains to the small businesses in support of the initative. NiRA can charge yearly after first year, at their discretion.

A good example of this approach is Microsoft’s BizSpark programme, which essentially helps fast-track the success of early stage technology startups with all the right resources, including software, support & marketing visibility.

Here, Microsoft’s BizSpark Network Partners share their passion for driving the success of software startups through mentoring, networking, business advice, financial assistance, and peer connections. The Network Partners also understand the startup environment and understand what it takes to succeed.

If Google had borrowed a page from Microsoft’s book, this would have been a welcomed development and I’d probably be the first person to laud this move. Most domain registrars, web design and hosting entrepreneurs I’ve spoken with between yesterday and today think that Google may have a good intention, but their approach wasn’t right.

Of course, I’d love to see 40,000 local websites of small businesses that can’t afford standard costs of web designers and developers on the Internet in Nigeria within the next one year, if only Google does the right thing.

If Google had adopted this approach, the locals would be actively in the game and in charge of the customers, and not a Google-dominated Internet economy. Still, Google will make revenue from adverts in email and Google Apps will be more popular and relevant to Nigeria.

If only.

Image courtesy of Opinion Maker.

Today, Google announced that Somali users can now have a gateway to the world’s information through their own country domain, www.google.so

According to Google, the new search domain for Somalia would make it easier for Somali users to access search in their preferred languages – Arabic English, and Somali. Google believes that the new domain would help people in Somalia to find locally relevant information, faster and easier.

In case you don’t know, Somali is one of the 5 major languages in Ethiopia, and one of the two languages of Djibouti, apart from its national use in Somalia and Somaliland. It is also spoken in northern Kenya and increasingly in Nairobi.

This project was part of the Google Africa community translation program, and was entirely translated by a passionate group of volunteers, native speakers, language specialists and journalists in Eastleigh estate in Nairobi.

Today, May 25  is Africa Day and Google has a new doodle to celebrate the historical annual commemoration of the 1963 founding of the Organisation of African Unity (OAU).

On May 25, 1963, leaders of 30 of the 32 independent African states signed a founding charter in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, which later came to be known as African Union.

According to Wikipedia, the name and date of Africa Day has been retained as a celebration of African unity. The theme of this year’s Africa Day is: “Africa and the Diaspora.”

Google doodles have been produced for the birthdays of several noted artists and scientists. For example, the last Google doodle on May 20 honoured Emile Berliner’s 160th Birthday. Google doodles are also used to depict major events at Google, such as the company’s own anniversary.

But the celebration of historical events such as the Africa Day has become a common feature of Google Doodles.

Do you think the Africa Day’s Google Doodle is creative enough? What could Google have done better?

See all Google Doodles from 1998 to date.

Google has just launched AdSense for mobile content in 15 new countries, including Nigeria. It was initially launched to 13 countries in September 2007.

Before now, web publishers in Nigeria could only earn money from ads on their websites, but now can equally earn from their site’s mobile version.

AdSense for mobile content allows publishers to generate earnings from their mobile webpages using targeted Google ads. Just like AdSense for content, Google now matches ads to the content of your mobile site so you can earn money whenever visitors to your mobile site click on the ads they see.

In May 2010, Google acquired AdMob, a leading mobile advertising network that develops innovative mobile-specific ad units and solutions. The aim was to significantly enhance their mobile display ad services for publishers.

In this case, AdSense automatically detects the type of phone viewing your mobile site and delivers ads to match. For example, if someone views your site through an iPhone, Google would deliver ads specifically designed for high-end phones.

Google’s AdSense for mobile content ad units may only be used in mobile websites only, not in mobile applications.

Editor’s Note: This is a guest post by Saheed Adepoju, Co-founder & CEO of Encipher Group where he shares insightful analysis into Google’s possible strategy towards merging the recently unveiled Chromebook with android-powered devices. He argues that Google will not kill the android ecosystem with the Chromebook and further provides insights into the Google way to Cloud Computing. The post was first published on the Encipher Group website and flags off a series of sponsored posts from Encipher.

At the just concluded, Google I/O, something fascinating was unveiled, the Google Chromebook. According to their website, Chromebooks are built and optimized for the web, where we all already spend about 90% of our time. It would be available from June 15th in stores around the world.

It is believed that Chromebooks would destroy Windows powered laptops and change the way we do our computing, I couldn’t agree more but from an entirely different perspective.

It has also been said that Chromebooks might destroy the Android ecosystem and its advances and ultimately the Android tablets. Well, I simply don’t agree. Why? Because I don’t think a company as big as Google would allow their products to kill each other or at least have seen that they might be a clash in the future of both innovative thinking.

In one of such discussions that Chrome is going to kill android, it is said that Google may scale back its android development because of Chrome. Although this was way back in 2009, I still think that most industry experts still believe that end users still need to choose between both platforms.

However, this year’s Consumer Electronic show (CES 2011) gave rise to a seemingly interesting product which most industry experts may have missed: Motorola Atrix 4G.

From the specifications, it feels seemingly decent but the real deal with the Motorola Atrix isn’t the phone but the Laptop dock accessory. The beauty about the dock is that it is powered by the Atrix’s Tegra-2 processor which is a dual-core 1Ghz processor. When docked, it charges the Motorola Atrix and launches a tiny kernel within the laptop Dock and this mode is called Webtop mode. It has generated a lot of buzz and interests amongst tech savvy geeks and also corporate executives who want a phone laptop combo without the risk of losing anything if both devices get missing.

Google, I believe is going to build a combo just like the Motorola Atrix and its laptop dock. It would eventually be Android powered Chromedock devices. Since Android 2.4 (codenamed: Ice-cream Sandwich) is said to be the end of android fragmentation and the merging of tablet experience and the mobile experience, unifying it brings developers some relief as they would just end up coding once and the experience is shared across multiple devices. I believe this is simply the beginning of Google unveiling their ultimate product line up yet, the unification of Android Ice-cream sandwich and the Chromebook.

The Chromedock essentially would be no different from the Motorola laptop dock. Both are powered by a tiny Linux kernel, both run applications within a browser, Firefox for Motorola and ChromeOS for ChromeDock. So I believe the upcoming Tegra-3  chip (quad-core based) would be an interesting mix to the entire deal as I believe that future Chromebooks would spot a dock-like feature which would allow Android ICS be docked and access all your contacts, applications via the Chrome browser and allow a user switch between Android-mode & Chromebook mode. In the end, it would be beautiful to fully live in the cloud as described by Google.

Since Google already has a solid move in it ChromeOS venture and partnerships with ACER & SAMSUNG, I believe these partners can develop ChromeDocks for future Android-powered phones. In the end, ACER, SAMSUNG and others would release Android-powered phones to work respectively with their ChromeDocks stations. Even Encipher would jump on this bandwagon.

What’s the future like?

Google’s strategy is to take over cloud computing not just via services but control the hardware and also certify such hardware. Their ultimate strategy isn’t really to kill the laptop PC running windows OS but to take over a budding cloud computing enterprise where industry players are yet to really make a big dent. In a bid to win the race for social, which Facebook currently dominates, they are creating hardware to help them connect to this social experience and monetize via it. I believe with such integration, Google kind of puts a dent in the social media experience in being able to integrate your social experience on a mobile device and ChromeDocks.

This also appeals to enterprises as Google has almost any services that are done in premise.  Their Google Apps & Google Apps marketplace has a plethora of applications that can compete with Microsoft anytime. Apps ranging from Google enterprise mail to ERP solutions. And this list is endless. Some are free while some are on a rent basis which allows one to ensure ROIs immediately rather than spend so much and wait for ROIs later on during the quarters.

Microsoft also has a cloud strategy for its products and also gaining recognition but with its slow pace within the tablet market and the mobile space, in the end a combo like a Android powered Tegra-3 device and a ChromeDocks might eventually slow down their pace in being king in such a thriving and bubbling space. This futuristic move might as well kill Microsoft in the enterprise market space where it is currently king. Although I strongly believe Microsoft office is still a killer reason why anyone would stick to Windows for a long time to come.

This also would eat deeply into other ERP solution providers like SAP and Oracle as all infrastructures would be hosted by Google and small start ups can compete with the big boys in terms of scalability without breaking the bank.

What’s in it for developers?

This could be a dream come true. Java’s inspiration as always been, “Write once, run everywhere”. Everywhere refers to any platform be it SPARC, INTEL etc. I believe with Android ICS + ChromeDocks, it would really be a true “Write once, run on every device”, every device being Tablets + Mobile + PC (Chromebooks, Windows, Linux), Apple (via Safari).

Developers wouldn’t need to boot different operating systems to build innovative programs anymore as there now cloud-based IDEs (e.g. Cloud9) which allows developers build and execute web apps straight from your browser. This would enable developers build scalable applications and test on Google App Engine instantly and test it out on the mobile for mobile phones, tablet via the tablet features of ICS via the Chromebook interface emulator for Tablets and finally on Chromebooks itself for a browser feel. Also remember, the Google web-based IDE for Android development (App Inventor) which allows building Android apps straight from your browser to the docked Android phone and tested straight from the ChromeDocks interface for mobiles all courtesy of the power of the ChromeOS.

What’s in the bank for Google?

At the end of the day, this has to translate to revenue for Google. As always, they have been generating revenue from search since inception and I believe it would be no different. Now that they certify both products (Chromebook & Android ICS), I believe they would invade users with ads (though in a positive way).

Interestingly, Chromebooks (ChromeDocks) could have a segment to the right-hand side with interactive HTML-5 ads which changes when a user searches for results. When a phone is docked, it instantly displays relevant apps from the market place which a user may choose to install directly on the docked phone and either played via the ChromeDocks or when the phone is undocked.

With YouTube having a lot of user-generated content and now trying to gain Live-TV attention, your bet is as good as mine. Youtube may replace your TV which in turn translates to more revenue for Google. It would be cool to have HDMI outputs from the ChromeDock to your TV and allows the user watch TV comfortably and use Bluetooth keyboard/Mouse to control the ChromeDocks (with phone docked) and can interact. Adverts would be streamed and played for the user based on interests all stored up in the cloud.

What’s fishy about all these?

Security

It all sounds good and fun, until a breach happens someplace and it dents our happiness. The recent SONY PLAYSTATION breach is a classic example. A lot of enterprises still love on-premise computing as they can safe-guard their data and also prevent exploitation from cloud infrastructure. Google must be able to ensure secured data and also timely delivery of critical transactions whilst using cloud-based applications.

Integrity

Would Google keep their integrity and maintain their mantra? The mantra “Don’t be evil” has shaped them to become a world-class company but occasional breaches such as the Google Street cars snooping of Wi-Fi passwords can dent such integrity especially since a ChromeDocks + Android combo would highly depend on such integrity. However, Google has been a kind company in admitting to such mistakes and I believe they genuinely admit when they cross lines that breaches their motto.

Outage

Ok, I love the idea of outsourcing all my on-premise computing infrastructure to the cloud but what in the world do I do if Google cloud infrastructure goes off for a few hours? I sit and hope they fix it. There have been outages even from the masters of cloud infrastructures. Amazon, Microsoft and Google occasionally report outage and end up apologizing. I believe we cannot dodge this fact since we are talking about computers running the infrastructure. They break down, parts needs to be replaced; OS needs to be upgraded etc. However, I believe Google in time would master the loopholes and provide incredible failovers for such outages. Only time will tell.

Bandwidth

Well, for most part of North America and some other parts of the world, this isn’t an issue but writing from Nigeria and being part of a budding enterprise here, it is a heavy concern. How would a thriving startup here plug into such an innovative idea without decent broadband?  They can’t. However there is hope, with more cables landing, I believe the prices would go down much further producing more competition and faster speed. It is also good that it is happening now so when the combo hits, we would be able to enjoy the innovation as well within Nigeria.

Final Thoughts

I hope I have been able to shed more light into what I believe might be a strategy Google might employ to marry both Android ICS + Chromebooks into what I have termed (Android ICS + ChromeDocks). Disclosure: I don’t work for Google so these are entirely my own insights and forecasts for a thriving cloud computing industry.

I believe strongly that Google I/O 2012 would be a very interesting one for Android + Chromebooks. They might even be giving away the duo for free. Either way, I hope to participate at Google I/O in 2012.

Saheed Adepoju is the Co-founder & CEO of Encipher Group, a software development company based in UK and Nigeria with expertise in ensuring that products and services are always available on the “cloud”, regardless of platform or device.

Image via: Reuters