Within a couple of weeks in two key markets things move fast. As reported by the Australian newspaper Google recently launched Google Maps Australia (aka Local Google). Jointly with News Corp. the venture will profit from truelocal.com.au database. No prizes for guessing that the venture will start to sell local ads soon, either in self service mode through Google or through the News Corp. local sales teams.
On just about the same moment in Germany Heise reported that Google is in talks with GoYellow. And as usual nobody wants to say anything.
So within a matter of just a few days the local search landscape changed once again.
During the last two days we were for one of our traditional MashUps in
Elm. Lovely weather, thorough discussions, short nights, and lots of
skiing fun were "l'ordre du jour" and made these two days
memorable indeed!
Felix from Eurospider presents
Searching vs Tagging.For some time now, quite some buzz in the classifieds market has been around mappable classifieds. I believe it started at the time with the now infamous Housing Maps. It earned its inventor Paul Rademacher a job with Google.
Since then quite some things happened. Some suggest there is even money in the game. Well, we believe in that, too. That's why at local.ch we (re-)launched the Fundgrueb and a cars section will follow shortly.
All our classifieds are listed in the context of a map. Colleagues in the Romandie now do the same. Our friend from Petites-Annonces.ch actually provides us with all his listings. Our colleague Laurant Boatto now does the same with Google Maps.
The story was covered in the local press (24 Heures - no online access to article, click here for pdf copy (440kb). Just one add-on: The service from Google just seems to be for free, as a matter of fact it is provided by courtesy. The explanation can be found a previous posting of mine.
