We had takeaways for dinner that night. As soon as man came home he was sent back out door kids in tow, I was far too busy to cook for goodness sake, I was about to make us millionaires. Turned out they didnt want me I lived in wrong country. I was gutted. It didnt stop me though. I e-mailed guy and asked him to recommend something that he thought would be right for me. He didnt reply immediately like he had all day, so, I sent him another e-mail, and another, and another. Finally close to midnight there was a reply with suggestion of a programme he considered to be "one of best on web" needless to say I joined, to me this guy was a 'guru'.

I never found out about autoresponders until a few months later when I got my own. I had no idea until then. After laughing for a few hours at my ignorance I started to think about how I would of handled someone like me. Let's face it I was a hot, hot prospect. This person had me, I was ready to join whatever opportunity he offered. So my innocence to net taught me an extremely profitable lesson.

When you run a campaign that leads your prospects to a finale, check and see what's happening. If there is a hot prospect or two there, personal touch will close sale, every time.

More confessions coming soon...

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A further link consolidates this proposal. “Google does search. Google does not do horoscopes, financial advice or chat.” No chat? Well, in effect, no there aren’t chatrooms as such, but having Blogger™ (introduced on May 10th) and Google Groups is dangerously close.

The corporation proudly states that “Google Groups comprises more than 845 million Usenet messages, which is world's largest collection of messages or equivalent of more than a terabyte of human conversation.”

When you have a conversation, you chat. End of. Incidentally, they have to rely on Yahoo! for messages being posted. Surely not a merger in pipelines I hope. If so, you’ll find me back in reference section of library…

Would you go to a search engine to “search” whether you have an email? Well, no. So what is it we hear about corporation bringing out their own email service? A look at their recent press releases suggests corporation won’t be happy until they have conquered… what? Well, there’s talk of Gmail not being far off, but would you be overly surprised if you saw postman brandishing Google logo on his clothes and mailbag?

And take Froogle (frugal, geddit?) Granted, it is a useful way of searching for products at low prices but where does Froogle stop and eBay begin?

The Google phenomenon is massive. If you want to know about global trends, then Google Zeitgeist is a fantastic yardstick. And with ideas such as this Google Zeitgeist, incredibly useful for sure.

If Google want to expand, that’s fine but then they’re becoming more than just a search engine and they should stop calling themselves one. This diversification would suggest that they are losing touch with their initial mission statement as mentioned above. And it would suggest that pretty soon, I’m going to become more than a little sick of this brand name. Google’s homepage is blank. Or as near as goddammit. Is it going to stay that way?

The irony is definitely there. By diversifying, by trying to attract more and more users, are they going to risk becoming unpopular? Remember just one thing, as they themselves have said. Google’s competition is “just a click away”, and right now my right index finger is beginning to twitch.

© Copyright Holmes Charnley mmiv