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As a marketing platform, Google has become the largest online advertising channel in the world through the Adwords platform and you can even say just from having your site rank well in the organic results. But as a company, how does the public and maybe more important for Google, how do investors see Google? Is it a developing technology company or media company?

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Google: Media or Tech? Bloomberg-Clip - (BLOOM-Clip) Oct. 30, 2007. 11:29 AM EST Roundtable Discussion with Scott Kessler of S&P and Featured Guest Leo Hindery of Intermedia Partners

What do you think? Is it an advertising company, technology company, or both? 99% of its revenue from advertising? Google has become the largest advertising agency in the world not only placing ads on millions of websites through Adsense and displaying billions of ads through their search engine, but ventured into radio advertising and print advertising.

It has become the new age of advertising technology and Google created the largest platform in the world. You can create a marketing campaign just using Google and have incredible marketing results.

If you want to talk about Technology…two words: Google Earth. If you watch the news and see images of an air strike in Iraq or California wild fires, sure enough, you will see images provided by Google. A partnership with NASA is also in the works or has already begun. A phone like the iPhone with Google applications should be out at some point where I'm sure you'll have an adsense ad right in the welcome screen =).

I think a mix of both is what made this company grow and what it has become today. MediTech. I'M COINING THE WORD "MEDITECH"…BREAKING NEWS IN THE PALATNIKFACTOR.

Myspace has announced a new partnership with Zazzle.com that will enable a user on a site to customize & purchase merchandise from a band (music oriented at this point I believe.)

As the Wall Street Journal reports, “The Zazzle "widget" will take fans to an online store the band has set up, with a gallery of approved artwork and a range of products to put it on.

Zazzle Chief Strategy Officer James Heckman cites a hypothetical customer: "A girl who wants a fitted, cropped tank shirt, but only likes one band member. She can isolate his face, put it on the exact shirt she wants, and it will be on its way to her the next morning" from the company's manufacturing plant in San Jose, Calif.”

Here is what I find most interesting and exciting about this as a marketer. I wrote an ebook on Myspace Marketing which I have sold and been successful selling products on Myspace but this changes everything once applied to profiles selling products, etc.

When marketing on Myspace or anywhere else, I’d say especially social media sites through profiles since they are time consuming, you want to convert your user and this whole time on Myspace, we’ve been making the user take the extra step of driving them to the profile with links to purchase products. This new feature will make the conversion process easier by eliminating the step of driving the user elsewhere and having products right on the profile. What is even cooler is that the user can customize the product as described in the example above by James Heckman.

Again, this widget is only for music profiles for bands since the bands don’t even have to own merchandise but provide the images! So, if you’re a band and don’t have merchandise, you will have the option to sell merchandise to your fans without actually manufacturing clothing and incurring that cost.
This concept will be re-created for all types of products, etc and social media retail is next on the list to create huge buzz and advertiser interest.

It’s funny that the question for so long was “is Google the next Microsoft?” Could this question now be reversed? I’m not a financial analyst but you don’t have to be when you look at what each stock is worth. Now, how much does a stock price say about a company? It speaks volumes on current revenue (not all the time), expected revenue, future outlook, current events, and more.

Goog (Google Stock): $679.23 as of Oct. 30, 2007
MSFT (Microsoft Stock): $34.57 as of Oct. 30, 2007

I pose the question in the title financially. Could Microsoft raise their stock price to that of Google’s at some point? The stock price can’t determine that Google is in fact a bigger company than Microsoft but I believe it to be (or use it as) an indicator or public and future outlook. I’d personally value Microsoft’s stock to be worth more.

Microsoft appears in Forbes Fortune 500 companies at #49 in 2007 & Google at number #241. So, why the craze with Google and why is Microsoft seen as the company that tries to catch up? It comes down to stock price and future outlook.

If you ask the general public which company is bigger, without a question people would answer “Microsoft, of course.” Indeed, it is. The buzz is so loud around the net (blogoshere, news sites, and stock watch) about the Goog, which many see Microsoft as the company that is trailing…and really, it’s only trailing in terms of search.

Let’s look at the latest companies Acquisitions:

2007 Microsoft:
August 30, 2007 -Parlano
July 26, 2007 -AdECN, Inc.
May 18, 2007 -aQuantive, Inc.
May 3, 2007 -ScreenTonic
March 14, 2007 -Tellme Networks, Inc.
February 26, 2007 -Medstory Inc.

2007 Google:
1. 2007-07-09 - Google to Acquire Postini
- Services for Message Security, Archiving, Encryption, and Policy Enforcement
2. 2007-07-02 - Google Acquires GrandCentral Communications
- Services for Managing Voice Communications
3. 2007-06-19 - Google Acquires Zenter
- Online Slide Presentations
4. 2007-06-05 - Google Acquires PeakStream Inc
- Multiprocessor and GPU Software
5. 2007-06-01 - Google Acquires Feedburner
- Feed Distribution and Management Tools
6. 2007-05-30 - Google Acquires Panoramio
- Community Photos Website (Works with Google Earth)
7. 2007-05-11 - Google Acquires Green Border Technologies
- Secure Connections for Web Browsing and Email
8. 2007-04-19 - Google Acquires Marratech - Video Conferencing Software
9. 2007-04-17 - Google Acquires Tonic Systems
- Presentation Creation and Document Conversion Technology
10. 2007-04-13 - Google Acquires Doubleclick
- Advertising Technology Platform
11.2007-03-16 - Google Acquires Trendalyzer
- Presentation Software
12. 2007-03-16 - Google Acquires Adscape Media
- In-Game Advertising for Video Games
13. 2007-01-00 - Google Acquires Xunlei (Partial Acquisition)
- File Sharing Website

With more acquisitions from Google, Microsoft has stated recently to buy 20 small companies a year! ((*Tip: Start something cool and innovative online that could match Microsoft’s portfolio and offer it to them!))

Now the question stands, do you think Microsoft can achieve the Google stock price? Is Google just way over priced? Can MSN someday, somehow, catch up to Google’s search market share, at least catch up? If there is one prediction I can make is this…If Microsoft purchases Yahoo, which I think is very possible, we have a search competition on our hands.

It’s the time of year where people are BUYING! So, how do you capitalize online during this time of year? Tune in to the new Palatnik Factor podcast where I discuss what I did last holiday season to generate about $6k in revenue in about 2 months.

If you haven’t heard of drop-shipping, it’s time to get your feet wet and do some research as to what products you can sell without buying them. As you’ll hear many times in the podcast, it’s all about getting the right product at the right price (as is with any other business), but this just takes a bit of research on your part.

Tune in now to the latest podcast episode, "Making Money Online During The Holidays" and let me know your thoughts or feel free to post any questions here!

If you haven’t seen the home page of Myspace yet, well…you’re going to find one man, one presidential candidate all over it…Barak Obama. What better way to target the youth of America than through social media sites? Myspace is a great avenue for a president to promote his/her candidacy to a young demographic. It could prove to be a good online marketing strategy for Obama.

“MySpace and MTV are teaming up to give you the chance to meet Sen. Barack Obama, ask him questions by IM, and give live feedback on whether you like the answers or not. Tune in for the live stream at 1:30 ET/10:30 PT on Monday. Your questions and feedback will be broadcast on MTV Monday night. Check it out!”

If you look at the blogosphere, which is always a good indication of what people are talking about or interested in, look at the difference between both candidates:

The question is now being raised if Mark Zuckerberg, founder and developer of Facebook, could be the next Bill Gates? I guess any young guy that has a company worth billions will always be compared to Bill Gates. Bill Gates most definitely believes in the Facebook product and brand buying a share of the company for $240 million dollars, as the site is now valued at $15 billion.

Some comparisons by an AOL article between Zuckerberg and Gates:

Gates has built an empire in Microsoft and its many products and acquisitions. There is no comparison between what Zuckerberg and Gates have built…unless of course Zuckerberg somehow gets Facebook to be the default page on some browser that's just as big as Explorer and makes a software platform installed with every PC that's not Apple or Microsoft. Nevertheless, Facebook is becoming a huge force and becoming the biggest thing in social media, for now, with all this buzz. I have to give it up to Microsoft though for making deals with Digg for ad space and now purchasing a share of the largest social site (Myspace is still up there though, traffic wise and has a great new concept I'll blog about soon) battling out Google and winning the companies share. I really think Yahoo is soon to be bought out by Microsoft…it's coming.

If your company was worth $15 billion dollars and you had a chance to sell it before it devalues, would you take the money and run to your next start-up or try to build on the Facebook brand and take it up a few more billion?

BTW- I'm close to being the next Bill Gates as well, I have more Facebook friends. I just need to top his net worth…that's all.