If you’re a gadget developer or a gadget-related business, it’s your lucky day. Using some of its billions and billions of dollars cash sitting on the balance sheet, Google has launched Google Gadget Ventures to provide grants and seed money.
There are two options: you can apply for a $5,000 grant for further development provided you have more than 250,000 pageviews/week. The second program is $100,000 seed investments that will start as a Google Gadget (I guess that’s a trademark now!) to be a major part of a Google Gadget. To get the seed money, you need to have received the $5,000 grant.
Couple of thoughts: obviously we’re living in a gadget/widget world where customization and personalized will run rampant to give every Web user a different view of the world. Second, it’s nice to see Google find new ways to spend its money. When you’re making billions of AdSense dollars, it’s gotta be tough to find ways to do something with it other than letting it collect dust in the Google Vault. Of course Sergey Brin and Larry Page could ask Bill Gates about how to sit on billions of dollars for years!
4 Comments
This is just another example where I think Google follows the “don’t be evil” mantra. They provide money to spark innovation and at the same time they create some bit of dependency on their technology to power the gadgets. It is possible to expand your business and feed innovation at the same time. I think more companies need to explore this business model and maybe value their employees in the process. In the whole process their employees love working there and love the benefits/lifestyle it creates. I think Google is creating a special kind of harmony… make employees happy, they spark innovation, you make money on the innovation, and its dependency on your company, which then you use to make your employees happy. Google wins, the employees win, the public wins, and advertisers win.
Now only if my company can give me 1 day a week to do my own projects like they do at Google. Then perhaps I would be happier and more innovative too.
It strikes me that Google Gadgets are similar to Facebook applications in that they are hosted by third party developers, and it is easy for them to become popular, but there is no easy way to monetize them. In other words, the best reward a developer can look forward to for making a popular gadget/application is a high hosting bill. Google’s solution is a cash grant, I wonder what Facebook’s will be.
Google is getting involved in a variety of venture capital activities so this seems like a pretty interesting – if relatively low-cost – to get deeper into the start-up landscape.
I don’t think Google needs to monetize the gadgets specifically since people will use them on their personalized Google pages and other Google services. It’s a way to make Google sites more sticky which in turn will generate revenue.
As for Bill Gates sitting on his billions, he’s not exactly doing that. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has made some significant inroads in public health. And I believe Bill Gates has said in that past that, like Warren Buffett, he doesn’t intend to leave his children all his wealth.