Google’s pursuit of all things media remains relentless. In recent weeks it announced its Android operating system for mobile phones, its OpenSocial standard to link applications across major social-networking sites, and filed a patent application for a magazine of sorts that would allow users to collate Web content around which Google would wrap targeted ads. Additionally, Google has accelerated its push into traditional media with a jobs-ads initiative as well as a digital, auction-based platform for buying and selling to TV and print publications. All of which multiplies the arenas into which Google can sell advertising, from which it derives 99% of its revenue. The formula is familiar: Sell ads around content it doesn’t own; return some of that revenue to the owner of the content; repeat. Good strategy. Google’s revenues almost tripled, to $11.8 billion, in the first nine months of ’07 and its stock price approached $700 a share. Allergic to owning content, Google sneezes money
