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Samir wants to know what I think of the Google barcode idea, forever hereafter known as the GooCat.

My first reaction was much the same as Joel’s:

“The number of dumb things going on here exceeds my limited ability to grok all at once. I’m a bit overwhelmed with what a feeble business idea this is.”

Quoting himself, yet – tell it like it is, Joel.

Richard MacManus feels much the same way:

Dear Google: 2000 Called, It Wants Its Ad Format Back

I have a few thoughts to add, pro, con, or unable to suppress giggling about the whole thing:

1. The cellphone thing.  Both Joel and Richard concede that it’s at least somewhat more likely that people will use their cellphone cameras to scan barcodes than that they would use the ungainly devices promulgated by Digital Convergence oh, so long ago.  Both also point out that the major difficulty will be getting Verizon et al. to preinstall the barcode scanner application on people’s phones.  Given that Verizon et al. hate Google with the blood-dimmed passion of people who can’t figure out why anybody should ever get paid besides them, relying on them to preinstall the app that helps Google bridge the gap to print ads seems chancier than chocolate skateboards.
2. Well, Google’s kind of announced its own phone, and its intention to buy some sweet spectrum, and its plan to build its own cell network where you can use any phone you want, including its own.  Might help with the preinstallation concern.  Although the timing’s terrible – if they’re planning to put this into their own phone on their own network, might be a good idea to have the phone and the network first.  Could avoid years of GooCat mockery that way.  I’m just sayin’.
3. Now I’m back on the it’s-a-dumb-idea track.  Isn’t print advertising slowly augering in already? Isn’t internet advertising’s share of the ad pie expected to increase dramatically over the next five years?  Is Google trying to slow the rate at which ad spend displaces print spend?  (If so, then I expect they’ll soon start selling Encyclopedia Britannica door-to-door.) I guess the print pie is still pretty damn big, so Google could get a few years of growth out of filleting whatever parts of that business Craigslist leaves intact.
4. You know what would be a really good idea?  See if eBay’s new CEO feels like selling Craigslist and its 24 employees, who are destroying eBay’s local business (and everyone else’s) out of the belief that advertising wants to be free.  Google could sell the ass off ads on Craigslist pages.  Eric, Sergei, and Larry could offer the post-Meg some of those chocolate skateboards that Verizon’s going to give them instead of preinstalling the barcode scanning apps.  Although those would be hard to give up.
5. Still, if you could stipulate success, you could foresee some totally fun non-ad applications of this.  Geocaching-style barcode-finding games.  Stick one on the side of your new ink-cartridge-refilling shop, give ink-cartridge-refilling prizes to the first ten people to upload their scans.  The Amazing Race to the next barcode, the excitement of reality TV meets the real reality of the supermarket checkout line. 
6. Actually, if I could stipulate success, I’d go after the Craigslist thing first, then buy Nokia.
7. Hey, you could actually wander the grocery store buying things with your phone — the flip side of the as yet unrealized dream of browsing the web on your refrigerator.  Could this be what Google really has in mind – 2D-barcodes + Google Checkout?  That’s thinking big – I’m sure that the retail supply chain is dying to redo their barcodes, right after they finish putting in Wal-Mart’s RFID tags.

That’s all I’ve got for now – who else has a great GooCat story?

UPDATED 1 MINUTE LATER: FIRST! I officially claim ownership of the idea of calling this wacky scheme the GooCat.   Nothing else out there but some baby pictures, a Chinese cartoon logo, and some WoW stuff that’s totally under my head.

D’you suppose they’re going to be fashionable again? or, I guess, for the first time?

http://www.alleyinsider.com/2008/01/googles-newspaper-ads-big-hopes-for-small-barcodes-goog.html

Google’s efforts to get into the newspaper ad business have yet to yield much. One tool it hopes will eventually change that: Small, square barcodes, like the one at the right, at the bottom of print ads. When a person scans the barcode with a compatible camera phone, it takes their phone’s browser to a mobile Web address encrypted in the graphic.

Now this is cool.

A. Torralba, R. Fergus, W. T. Freeman at MIT have collected 80,000,000 pictures representing the meanings of the 53,463 nouns in the English language, and presented them for our perusal in the form of a clickable abstract pattern!

When you get there, the very bright blue splotch at the center near the bottom is mostly sharks.  The first one I clicked on was Cow Shark.  I couldn’t find it again, though.  More tragic, I clicked randomly on the word "nympholept,’ then clicked away again before taking the time to note how it was depicted graphically.  I couldn’t find it again, so now I may never know.

http://airblogging.com helps you blog from your mobile phone.  Unfortunately, they don’t offer the service that I really need, which is help blogging without any technical aids at all.  That’s what I’ve been calling air-blogging.  You know, like air-guitar.

I would be a totally fabulous A-list air-blogger, if there was any way to keep track of a list of bloggers who would be widely known if they ever posted anything.  "What was that conversation about, we were having last week, in the coffee room? When I said, ‘I’m totally air-blogging this,’ meaning, of course, that I knew I wouldn’t get around to actually blogging it?"  Would be No. 7 world-wide for the month of December,  I’m so totally sure, if a) I could remember any details of that conversation and b) anyone else had heard it besides the0phrastus and Pyegar.

I was even going to get around to the themed T-shirt, "I’m totally air-blogging this," or at least an air-T-shirt (one that would be great to talk about, even if it was lacking in the whole coverage department).  Now those spoilsports  at http://airblogging.com have to go and build a legitimate business with the same name as my blogging’s tragic flaw, i.e., that I never actually post anything. 

Thank you, http://airblogging.com, for raining on my whole imaginary parade.

Scoble shows us how.  Sort of.