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Six months ago, Google launched Google City Tours. A Labs product for Google Maps, City Tours was based around pedestrian sight-seeing, with maps, walking times and sight suggestions. Now Google is continuing to edge into travel (at least pedestrian travel) with enhancements to City Tours . They’ve added more detailed directions and travel times as well as integrated better with My Maps and tweaked the UI. Interestingly, some of these were already in place in Google Maps but just recently added to City Tours: Today, we start providing complete pedestrian routing information for every step of your tour, taking road types, bridges and bodies of water into account just like a regular Google Maps walking directions search . We still try to minimise the time you spend walking and we still won’t recommend a visit to an attraction when we think it’s closed but, now, the suggested tours are a whole lot closer to reality. You can also now import your own My Maps or other public My Maps to create walking tours: create or find a My Map with the sights you want to see and City Tours will customize a walking tour with detailed directions for you. So City Tours is not bad and getting better—but is this really Google making the first steps toward Google Travel?

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Google Edging into Travel Again

Early last month, Google announced it was acquiring AdMob for $750M. The deal is still in the works, of course—in part, at least, because the FTC is taking a first and, as of last week, second look at the deal. As the FTC continues to scrutinize the search giant buying the mobile ad giant, consumer groups are taking their opportunity to have their say —and it’s not in favor of the deal. The biggest concerns of the Center for Digital Democracy and Consumer Watchdog include decreasing competition in the mobile ad market and consumer privacy. The groups say that together, Google and AdMob would control most of the mobile ad market. AdMob is already the leader in the market, thought there’s lots of competition in that area. However, with backing from the search engine, it’s possible that AdMob could come to dominate their arena just as Google pwns theirs. The second argument is based on the fact that Google and AdMob both collect considerable information about their users. Together, that information may be a threat to consumers’ privacy, with the two entities sharing everything from searching habits to location data. The groups’ full filing with the FTC is embedded below. It’s easy to understand the appeal for Google, though—with AdMob “approaching a $100M business in the next three years,” as TC puts it, this could be the way for Google to stake their claim in the emerging mobile market. CW and the CDD often make this type of filing on Google’s acquisitions, and it doesn’t always seem to have an effect. But with the FTC already taking a harder look, their word may have that much more sway with the regulators this time around. LtrFTCfinal – What do you think? How much influence will CW & the CDD have this time? Will the FTC ultimately okay the deal?

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Consumer Groups Lobby FTC to Block GoogleMob

As the great Yogi Berra once said, “It ain’t over ‘til it’s over” and the deal between Yelp and Google is the latest proof of that. In the Internet space in particular an extra dose of caution is recommended when hearing a ‘rumor’ (i.e. something that comes on ‘good authority’ and is almost a done deal) to take a step back and give the rumor a chance to breathe. Unlike a bottle of fine wine, though, rumors in this space often go south but that’s just part of the space. The latest ‘event’ that received the treatment of a lot of attention but didn’t finish as rumored was the ‘deal’ between Google and Yelp. Last week we told you of TechCrunch’s report on the imminent Google deal to purchase Yelp. Google and Yelp are in advanced acquisition negotiations, we’ve confirmed from multiple sources. And while the deal isn’t done, we’ve heard that it’s very likely to close. The price is supposedly at least $500 million. Well, TechCrunch reports that this deal has derailed and that Yelp is walking away from a significant offer. The deal was, as we wrote late last week, in the later stages of negotiation. The two companies had agreed on a price – around $550 million plus earnouts – and were working through the final details of the acquisition. Then something happened that made Yelp reconsider the deal. Over the weekend they notified Google that they were not going to sell, say multiple sources. That something must have been pretty big and pretty sudden. These negotiations take a considerable amount of time to get to the point where an anonymous source gets the itch to leak the ‘truth’ to the Internet media press. This information was leaked but apparently there were a few landmines that were not seen or not considered ‘deal breakers’. One can speculate all day long as to why this deal fell apart but we are not going down that road. In fact, until something is officially noted by either company (which may or may not happen) we’ll sit on the sidelines for now. So with everything in life and, in particular the Internet marketing industry, step on the rumor mill with your grain of salt handy. As for now let us know if this is good news that the deal fell through or were you thinking there was some good to come out of the acquisition.

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Google and Yelp a “No Go”

Google Street View began its European adventure a while ago—and it’s been met with resistance in more than a few places. Switzerland, like several other countries, was concerned that Street View wasn’t sufficiently blurring people’s faces and cars’ license plates, and that the height of the camera meant they’d see over privacy hedges and fences (which, even in the US, might constitute a breach of privacy). Today, the Swiss government tells Reuters that Google is already ready to accede to its pending ruling. The Federal Data Protection and Information Commissioner (FDPIC) Hanspeter Thuer brought the case against the street-level panoramic photo mapping service, and though it hasn’t been heard yet, Google is ready to comply. As part of this agreement, Google may continue to photograph Swiss cities, but will not put any photos online until the agreement is approved. They must also give at least a week’s notice in cities they plan to photograph. Although today’s agreement didn’t touch on this problem, Google has previously said they’re not willing to lower their cameras (though they did this in Japan, but that was for photo quality in narrower streets). A source told Reuters that a decision from the Federal Administrative Court was “unlikely” in 2010. Switzerland joins England , Germany , Greece , Japan , Australia and even America as countries with some level of backlash—be it grassroots, individual legal challenges or governmental challenges. What do you think? Will Google also give in to the height restrictions, or will they ultimately win out?

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Google to Bow to Switzerland’s Street View Wishes

Deloitte’s 2009 State of the Media Democracy report was released today. Unsurprisingly, it reports that TV has become more popular in the struggling economy (beating out other forms of entertainment). But the big news might be two of the “lesser” findings—about online recommendations and the mobile Internet. Online recommendations are becoming increasingly influential, especially compared with online advertising. Online advertising doesn’t stack up against its offline counterparts—83% of those surveyed cited TV advertising as having an impact on their buying decisions, but less than half mentioned online advertising among their top three. Even clicking through to another site has dropped from 72% to 59% over the last three years. (Only half would click more on more targeted ads, down from two-thirds last go round.) Online recommendations and reviews, on the other hand, are on the way up: Over half of all U.S. consumers and 69 percent of Millenials believe that online customer reviews and ratings influence their buying decisions more than any other type of online advertising, and 51 percent have purchased products based on an online recommendation. In fact, 24 percent of U.S. consumers would like to have an online service that recommends a product based on other consumers’ preferences. Meanwhile, the mobile Internet is making great strides in separating the Internet from the perception of a desktop. Of those surveyed, a third used their phone as “an entertainment device” and nearly half (47%) of smart phone owners say their phone is one of their three “most valuable” media/entertainment products (up from 20% last year). 48% of those surveyed have data plans, and nearly all of them (88%) are using their phones to access the Internet. (The rest are paying too much .) Shopping is already making headway on the mobile Internet—15% have purchased something on their phones. Also popular: texting, online search, downloading apps and online GPS. Clearly, both of these findings show us how the Internet is spreading not only in influence but in accessibility. What do you think? How can better you use online recommendations to your or your clients’ advantages? Are you ready for the mobile Internet?

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Online Recommendations > Advertising

The move to trying to save more money online should come as no surprise to anyone for all the obvious reasons. With those reasons being so obvious we won’t belabor the point here (btw, for those wondering, the economy still kinda sucks). What is happening though, is the shift from the printed coupon to the online coupon is very real and is creating the same commotion in the heated online v. offline world as the news debate is. After all, many papers are clinging to the fact that their Sunday circulations remain OK because of the perceived savings offered by the coupons. NCH Marketing Services, a subsidiary of Valassis Communications is reporting an increase of 30% use in traditional coupons with an additional $600 million in savings by consumers. Unfortunately, we often measure just how hot an industry is by how many lawsuits it generates. Yahoo Finance reports : This past summer, Valassis won a $300 million verdict against News America Marketing (NAM), a subsidiary of the Rupert Murdoch-owned News Corp. It accused the coupon powerhouse of trying to monopolize supermarket advertising. In July, following the verdict in Michigan’s Wayne County Circuit Court, NAM president Chris Mixson said the decision “rewards a company that turned to litigation as its business strategy rather than compete.” He said evidence barred by the court would have made a case that Valassis tried “to induce collusion when it announced its new pricing policy in a public investor call.” So as with most things, the offline world is busy navel-gazing in court while the online business is preparing to move in take control. While those two titans of paper coupons duke it out, another battleground is emerging. Although a study by Experian Marketing Services, a global information services company, assessed that 70% of households still clip coupons from newspapers, beleaguered print media companies are starting to lose their once tight grip on the market to online competitors. NCH says online coupon distribution rose 41% during the first 9 months of 2009 and RedPlum.com saw coupon prints from the site jump 51% so far this year. At year-end 2008, online coupons represented 4.8% of all coupons redeemed in the U.S., compared to 6.3% by mid-year 2009. I am still amazed at how slow and plodding the offline world is in most sectors when it comes to seeing the competitive threat that online services is. Hey, all of you folks in the printed coupon business here’s your wake up call. Google purchased AdMob to get into this business. And to prove they are serious Google has begun issuing 100,000 window stickers to businesses in more than 9,000 cities and towns. Each window decal has a unique bar code that can be scanned with the camera feature of most mobile devices. The code will then immediately load the browser with information about the business and allow access to related coupons and offers. You don’t need a printed coupon for that to work.

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Coupons Fast Becoming Online Faves

One of the things that bugged me about Google’s iPhone app was that clicking on a search result opened the page up in Safari. If my Twitter app can show me a web page within its own browser, why couldn’t Google figure it? Well, it finally did! The new Google Mobile App for iPhone just hit the iTunes App Store : You can also change the colors of your iPhone app, turn on improved voice searching, and, get this, the new app supports Australians! Huh? Yeah, apparently… …you can now choose your spoken language or accent. For example, if you’re Australian but live in London, you can improve the recognition accuracy by selecting Australian in the Voice Search settings. And now both Mandarin and Japanese are supported languages as well. I wonder if there’s a setting for Brits living in North Carolina–cos you all know how strange that accent sounds!

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Have a Strange Accent? There’s a Google iPhone App for That!