Without a doubt, the breakout story this year in the social Web space is Pinterest. The company, which set a record for the fastest site to reach 10 million users, has become a consumer phenomenon and has many wondering about which path the company will take in the future.

At GigaOM Pro we have some opinions about this, but we also want to ask our savvy early-adopter audience about what they think about Pinterest and the impact the site will have on not only the consumer Web but also the company’s competitors.

So please take our poll and let us know what you think. (We will close the poll on Tuesday.) We will tally up the results and feature them in a report on GigaOM Pro, as well as send the results to those who take the survey.

And if you want to be entered into a drawing for three Amazon $50 gift cards, make sure to enter your email address below. We promise your info will not be used for anything other than notifying winners and confirming the identify for those who want their views published.

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Stephan Pastis

Like many of society’s pop culture fixtures, the comic strip is a product of the last century’s dominant medium for information and entertainment, the daily newspaper. But as with most everything associated with the newspaper business, the comic strip finds itself struggling against the harsh reality of ever smaller page real estate, papers shutting down, and generational shifts towards other forms of entertainment.

And while there’s no doubt that comics continue today as a vibrant medium on the web where new voices such as those behind Penny Arcade and The Oatmeal thrive with millions of readers, a glance at the comic strip page in any major metropolitan newspaper gives the impression that papers themselves have given up on new voices that could attract new generation of readers, often times running strips in which the creator no longer is the driving force behind the strip or, in some cases, may have died years ago.

So what does all this mean for the newspaper comic strip artist?  To find out, I thought I’d ask Stephan Pastis, creator of perhaps the last big comic syndicate success story, Pearls Before Swine. Pastis launched his comic strip 10 years ago after a career as a lawyer, and today Pearls Before Swine runs in 650 newspapers worldwide, an impressive number given how fast and far newspaper circulation has been falling.  Pastis recently also became somewhat of a pioneer in the comic strip syndicate world, as he became the first syndicate-based comic strip artist to release a dedicated iPad app with interactive elements wrapped around the strip itself, an app called Only the Pearls.

Below I have some of the highlights from our conversation, but you can also listen to my entire conversation with Stephan in the Soundcloud player below by clicking the big orange button, or download it here to take with you and listen to on your mobile device.

Stephan Pastis & Michael Wolf – GigaOM Podcast Jan 2012 by GigaOM

The decline of newspapers and the future of the comic strip

For someone who makes his living in the daily paper, Pastis admits that the decline of the paper is something he and others in his business think about every day as they look to the future. He said that everyone in the newspaper business is looking for the magic formula, how to stay relevant. What gives him hope, however, is that he thinks people always need news.

“Regardless of what platform they find themselves on, someone has to provide them with their local news, and in theory comics would be a part of that.”

The iPad app

Stephan Pastis Character on Pearls

According to Pastis, an iPad app wasn’t a nice to have, but a necessity. Since approximately 1 in 5 books purchased today are electronic, Pastis knew he was missing an opportunity. He had amassed 18 collections of his comic strip in print, but he didn’t have an e-book.

He also knew that going into this, he wanted to take advantage of the medium, and that’s why he decided to make an enhanced e-book app complete with audio and video interviews, animated strips, as well as interactive components.  He said with print, he had models set for him by artists he had admired, such as Scott Adams (Dilbert) and Gary Larsen (The Far Side), where they would add commentary about the strips below the strips themselves. With apps, his heroes hadn’t gone there before him, so he used the principle that guides him in his strip.

“I used the guide that I use when I do the comic strip, [which] is what would I like to see? What I would like to see is video, audio, animation… a few surprises. I want to be fully immersed in it, don’t just want to turn pages or see just strips I’ve seen before.”

The Oatmeal as a model for the future

The Oatmeal

I asked Pastis about some of the newer artists who are seeing success on the web, like Matthew Inman of The Oatmeal fame, and if these new artists gave him hope. He said that when he’s asked about getting into the business, he points to The Oatmeal and others like Cyanide and Happiness.  He wasn’t sure how you could monetize the audience, but felt good content on the social web would bring the audience. He also said, as a syndicate strip artist who beat the odds, he can see both sides.

“For people that have made it in syndication, sometimes they look at the internet as something that has diluted their fame. They’ve done something very few people can do… The flip side is you can be in your bedroom and have a an audience of a million people with no gatekeeper, and that’s very appealing.”

The power (and danger) of the social web for an artist

He also had some interesting thoughts on connecting with his audience through the social web. He said that nowadays, audiences can sense an intermediary, the voice of “PR”, and things like Twitter and blogs have created the expectation that the artist is going to be the voice they hear.  If you are a wallflower, according to Pastis, this world does not benefit you.

He also said that social media presents a danger to the artist. Artists have, traditionally, created best “in a vacuum,” hearing only their own instinct, and hearing instant feedback through social media could threaten that.

“At the end of the day you are expected to lead. You cannot be whipsawed back and forth by how your audience feels. Ironically, if you follow what they tell you, they won’t like you soon enough. “

I also talked to Stephan about the future of the comic strip three panel convention, about his penchant for making fun of others strips and much more, so I’d encourage you to take a listen above or download the podcast conversation here.

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That all makes for great listening, but the real reason Maron’s podcast deserves a listen from digital media and technology execs is because it shows how someone like Maron, who was “in a compromised position and a little desperate” when his terrestrial radio show was canceled by Air America, has been able to resurrect and build a career through the power of Internet distribution and community, as with an increasing number of other artist-entrepreneurs.

I recently took some time to chat with Maron, which you can listen to by clicking below on the big orange “play” button from the embedded SoundCloud player. In our conversation we talk about some of the lessons he has learned since the launch of his podcast. He talks about his experiments with new methods to sell his content (including the launch of his own app), how he views podcasting and new media in the context of the larger new media landscape, and his thoughts on old friends like Louis C.K. as they find ways to disintermediate and disrupt the old guard, among other things.

Marc Maron – GigaOM Podcast by GigaOM

I suggest you give the whole podcast a listen, but below are a few takeaways from my podcast conversation with Maron.

Embracing new models isn’t optional but required

According to Maron, unless you are a megastar, you need to take control of your own career and embrace new distribution models,  because no one else is going to do it for you.

You think your local paper is going to take care of you? The comedy club’s website is going to draw people in? You really have no choice.

While Maron is specifically speaking of comedy, it is true for artists of all stripes. Taking control of your own distribution and monetization through new Internet models is something we are seeing musicians, authors and video artists at all levels do, since, increasingly, they can’t rely on corporate media to promote and monetize for them.

Experiment with monetization models until you get it right

Maron knew that once his library of podcasts grew to a certain size, he could monetize the back catalog. Once he reached 150 podcasts, he used an aggregator and attempted to charge for podcasts through iTunes. However, it proved difficult, so ultimately he shifted gears, embracing an app model with in-app payments for recurring subscriptions. He has found sponsorship revenue growing as he has become more popular, and he is also using a donation platform, which works well because of the intimate nature of the podcast medium.

With podcasting, you’re able to create a genuine, intimate relationship with people because it’s a solo listening experience, so they build a bond with you. It’s a deeper relationship.

New models accepted as part of “the media landscape”

Maron records his show in his garage, welcoming household names such as Conan O’Brien, Ben Stiller and Rainn Wilson into his garage, complete with cat hair from the many strays Maron welcomes into his home. I asked Maron about this, and he said it’s just the way business is done today.

 [In today's media landscape] it’s not unusual to go to someone’s house, sit in their living room, and do a thing.

On Louis C.K.

Maron counts Louis C.K. among his oldest friends in comedy, and when I asked him about what he thought of Louis C.K.’s self-distribution efforts, he had this to say:

It’s spectacular. Anytime someone makes a move in that direction it empowers the artist. . . . What Louis did was a milestone in creative marketing by the creator.

Go ahead and listen to the podcast, and let us know what you think about Maron’s observations as well as the podcast itself. We are looking into doing more podcasts and would love to hear thoughts from our community.

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One of the areas we’ve seen huge demand for research from both our online and corporate customers is in the area of enterprise IT and cloud computing. From our tablestakes infrastructure, platform and storage coverage, to surging interest in all things big data, to evergreen topics such as enterprise mobility and social enterprise, we can’t produce research fast enough for our customers in this space.

So as 2012 will no doubt bring new opportunities, it will also bring a new face to GigaOM in Jo Maitland, our new Research Director for Enterprise at GigaOM Pro.  Many of you know Jo from her time as as an Executive Editor at TechTarget, where she steered the coverage of all things cloud computing, managing five dedicated cloud sites by the time she came to GigaOM.  In addition to her time at TechTarget, Jo cut her teeth as an industry analyst with Forrester and the 451 Group.

We have big plans in 2012 and expect Jo to be a big part of our success, please help me welcome her to GigaOM Pro.  You can follow her over Twitter and  over at GigaOM Pro, where she’s already finished her first report and will also be our infrastructure curator.

A few examples from this year:

e-books: Probably the most active area in large part because there is huge shifts taking place in digital publishing. From former mid-list writers like Barry Eisler to superstars like JK Rowling, writers are increasingly making waves in digital publishing.

Video: The story of the year for artists-as-entrepreneur came at the tail-end, with Louis CK saying no thank you to corporate middlemen and putting his new concert video online for $5 a pop.

Radio/Music: All sorts of independent entrepreneurs are putting audio entertainment online, from the rise of podcast kings like Leo Laporte to a huge number of independents like Adam Carolla and Marc Maron. Music artists are being given freedom too, through new platforms to create and share their music like Soundcloud.

So what is driving this movement towards the artist-entrepreneur that will give it huge momentum in 2012?  Here are a few underlying trends:

The distribution chain is collapsing across content verticals

The middleman is under attack on all fronts, whether its in video, music/audio and e-books. As devices like TVs become connected, as books become e-readers and tablets, and music is now digital, the storefront is fast-becoming the entire distribution chain.  With e-books it’s Amazon or Apple, with radio it’s iTunes, with video it’s Google/YouTube, Netflix and other upstarts who are investing in original content, or simply direct-to-consumer efforts using web-payment platforms like Paypal.

Louis CK, who created his own site, paid for bandwidth, and used Paypal for payment, captured how many artists are beginning to think when he said in an interview with Bill Simmons that he “didn’t want to cut out the middleman, I just didn’t need one. There wasn’t any reason to have someone there. I just thought make this thing and put it up.”

Content production, distribution and monetization tools are becoming democratized through the web

In e-books, distribution and storefronts have already collapsed into one, but managing distribution across multiple channels is difficult since storefronts are still siloed (Amazon is separate from Apple iBooks, which is walled off from Barnes&Noble, etc). However, companies like Smashwords enable creation and distribution across multiple storefronts, while Vook, post-pivot, is working on SaaS tools to create e-books and manage their distribution, complete with reporting and management dashboards.

In music, artists are starting to embrace sites like Soundcloud to create music and share it, while others direct-to-fan sites like Topspin Media are enabling artists to create commerce sites to sell music in turnkey fashion. And it’s not just music sales, but actual concert tickets. The Pixies used Topspin to sell tickets for a recent concert, utilizing email campaigns and to notify fans and processed the tickets using an iOS app at the door.

With video, big middlemen still dominate, but that is changing as video creation and distribution costs come down in a world of connected devices. As Ryan Lawler wrote in a piece for GigaOM Pro:

“independent content creators stand to gain the most through massive reductions in the cost of recording equipment and editing software, as well as the greater availability of streaming video service on connected devices. They gain new distribution opportunities for their content and greater possibility for monetization. Consider any of the top YouTube video channels, which probably wouldn’t be able to survive in the pay-TV universe but have created thriving businesses due to the cost structure online.”

Generational shifts towards technology savvy-artists

As Matt Mullenweg put in in his New Year’s resolution on GigaOM:

“For a year now, I’ve said scripting is the new literacy. That’s something I strongly believe. In Douglas Rushkoff’s latest book, he talks about “program or be programmed.” That is, if you’re not in control of your inputs, you’re not really in control of your outputs either. You’re just a reactionary force.”

Matt is right, in that scripting is the new literacy, and a growing form of artistic expression. Tech-savvy artists are creating apps and developing sites to put their art into the world. Whether its Matt Inmann creating his work and coding his site at The Oatmeal or young app developers like Robert Nay, artists are becoming coders and vice versa, since, as Mullenweg states, scripting is “new literacy”.

No doubt, the vast majority of economic wealth is still distributed through large corporate media, but as new technologies enable artists to reach consumers directly through push-button creation and distribution, there is a movement afoot. Expect this movement to expand in 2012 as more artists take control of their own economic destinies and become part of the artist-entrepreneur generation.

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How so? A graduate student at MIT is developing a new technology that utilizes natural language processing — the same technology at the heart of Siri — to help process and check statements from politicians, political action committees and, perhaps, even news organizations themselves against databases such as those from factcheck.org to test their truthfulness. The student, Dan Schultz, calls his project “truth goggles,” which will come in the form of a browser plug-in that would highlight passages or statements where the truth might be stretched a bit.

I have to admit it’s a neat idea, because most of us — no matter our political leanings or education on issues — may not be able to detect when a politician is not being truthful. Not only that, in an increasingly polarized world, everyone seems to have their own set of facts, which just as often as not can be  entirely contradictory to the other side’s facts. Using technology to process the massive amounts of statements and information made by politicians and commentators might just give us a way to sift through whose “truth” is more truthful.

Humans still required

While it’s a neat idea to leverage technology like natural language processing to connect us to fact-checking databases, in the end, those same databases require humans to create them. This is because data funneled through an API into the truth goggles still rely on human monitoring skills since, for better or for worse, the databases of fact-checked datapoints are human fact-checked datapoints.

That’s not to say this isn’t a big step forward, since non-partisan fact-checking organizations, like factcheck.org, by and large have the respect of both sides of the political spectrum, or at least while their interpretation of the facts matches those of the politician.  And, by giving journalists the tools to better access these databases, it can help them to be better equipped to put statements by politicians into context.

But why confirmation bias may still triumph

In the end, though, you have to wonder if tools like this will make a difference given human nature, since people tend to judge things through their own filters. As people become more educated about issues, even when they are presented with facts, often their own political positions harden.

Take climate change. Studies have shown that as people become more educated about math and science, it only hardens their positions on climate change, on both sides of the issue. Why? Because even in a world where even fact-checked statements, statements can be used to support both sides, and humans tend to only take into account those statements which support their presuppositions. In other words, this is confirmation bias at work, which is the tendency of people to seek out information which supports their own preconception.

Expect more “truth goggles”

Still, even as human nature and political spin will still present significant challenges to the use of technology to discover the truth, it’s likely we’ll see more of this trend. Using technology to dig through mountains of data to validate statements can indeed be useful, particularly as journalists who write about what politicians say become — like all of us — busier.  There might even be a time when politicians themselves may start to rely on tools to better validate their statements in real-time, given that much of what they are saying or writing is based on their own recollection of the “facts.”

Image courtesy of Flickr user ĐāżŦ

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Book on fire

Of all the markets I’ve followed in my decade-plus as a consumer analyst, I’ve never seen a market changing faster than the digital publishing market of today, where the sudden love of e-books has created a “digital backdraft” that has set the entire publishing industry value chain aflame.

In a report I just published for GigaOM Pro, (subscription required) I analyze this rapid disruption by outlining six areas in which market players are leveraging large-scale shifts to advance their competitive positioning, all of which will, over time, result in a U.S. e-book marketplace that exceeds $5 billion by 2016 (growing from just under $2 billion in 2011).

So what are these areas of disruption? Below, I outline three:

The Collapse of Distribution

In traditional book distribution, retailer/storefront are not one and the same as book distribution. In digital publishing, Byzantine distribution chains simply collapse.  While publishers still exert enough market influence through control of the lion’s share of digital publishing rights (for now) of many popular authors to force Amazon and others to accept agency pricing, over time, this influence will wane, particularly as authors themselves increasingly choose to publish through those places that own the customer, which will be, in the end, the big storefronts.

Book Discovery Goes Social

Until about just over a decade ago, finding a good book for most meant either a word of mouth recommendation from a friend or librarian, or reading what preordained “tastemakers” from the New York Times  or Oprah told you to read. But starting in the ’90s, both algorithmic and crowdsourced recommendations became the new bestseller list, and today, we’re back to word of mouth, only in the form of social recommendation. Whether readers are learning about new books from friends on general-purpose social networks like Facebook or through reading-centric networks like Goodreads, social recommendation is becoming increasingly important in the age of e-books, and this leaves the door open for companies that can leverage this disruption shift into a competitive opening to monetize e-book content.

Multi-platform/Multi-screen Access

While many in the book industry dismiss lessons learned from other types of entertainment by saying “books are books,” there’s no doubt all types of digital content are becoming increasingly multi-screen.  In other words, with apps and browser-centric consumption, consumers expect on-demand access to their libraries of music, movies and, yes, books anywhere at anytime.  Those players that make usage “friction” lowest will continue to have a competitive advantage as more consumers move from the paper to the digital book.

These shifts are resulting in the biggest change in publishing since the time of Gutenberg.  Some publishers are adapting as fast as they can, while others sit idly by while the book industry burns.  This is the face of true disruption: It can be ugly, but also create massive opportunity for those that move fast.

To read about the other areas of competitive disruption as well as see my e-book forecast for revenues, e-book consumers and e-book units, see my new report at GigaOM Pro.

Image courtesy of Flickr user J. Ronald Lee

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Voting Booth

Another presidential election year is a month away, and just as with every election cycle, technology will play a critical role in determining who the next President of the United States will be.

Have your doubts? Just look at the last two elections.

In 2004, the rise of blogs opened the door to an influential new source of political commentary outside the traditional press,while in 2008, we witnessed the rapid rise of social media (and the Obama campaign’s early embrace of it), which played a big role in dissemination of messaging as well as fundraising.

In both elections, the growth of online video proved important; 2004 saw mainly short-form political entertainment/commentary from the likes of JibJab, but by 2008 both parties saw online video as a real competitive weapon, and YouTube became the testing ground in efforts to find a “Daisy”-like message to sway voters.

Just how will technology be part of the story in the 2012 election?  Here are four possible ways:

Mobile

Since money is, for better and for worse, the lifeblood of American election politics, it seems there are always new ways to utilize technology to raise money.  Just a few years ago, it was novel to have a website as a central way to raise money for an election on the Internet, and more recently, social media has become an important part of fundraising for any campaign.

So what technology could play an important role in fundraising in 2012?  The simple answer is the mobile phone. We’ve already seen Square being used at political fundraisers and multipurpose mobile apps like Mobilecause for fundraising and communication, and as I’ve written previously,  there’s no reason in-app payments couldn’t be extended to apps such as enhanced e-books.  Expect all the major candidates to make mobile a big part of their fundraising and messaging efforts throughout the year.

Twitter Mistakes

If 2008 was the year Facebook wagged the dog in terms of social media’s impact on politics, 2012 might be the year in which Twitter could prove decisive.  Over the past few years, Twitter has become the new real-time newswire for influencers and the media, and it has emerged as a way for candidates to connect directly to constituents without the filter of campaign managers and media experts.

However, Twitter has also shown why a filter is sometimes necessary.  The unfortunately (and appropriately) named Congressman Anthony Weiner got his own “gate” as a result of accidentally tweeting lewd photos of himself, and other politicians in the States and elsewhere have shown it’s all too easy to hit that tweet button.

With more politicians tweeting and at greater frequency, there’s no doubt Twitter could play a big role in 2012, and in possibly unforeseen and unwanted ways.

Big Data Analytics

While Facebook proved significant in 2008 as a way to build a following for a candidate, it was early days for social media and big data analytics in general. Four years later, it is likely savvy use of analytics by a candidate to sift through the mountains of data made available through social, mobile and other types of profiling and behavioral data could give them a significant advantage over their opponent.  Political campaigns have already proven themselves to be  fairly advanced users of polling analytics and there is no doubt that campaigns will only double down this election cycle on data scientists to possibly squeeze more advantages out of the huge cache of new data available from a variety of new sources.

Internet activism

In 2010 and 2011, one of the biggest political stories of all had nothing to do with traditional political establishments, but instead was about the rise of a new form of political activism on the Internet.  Wikileaks showed how by releasing huge caches of documents about political actors online could destabilize traditional political establishments, while new groups such as Anonymous showed that the Internet is the new frontier for civil disobedience.

How will the use of Internet political activism take shape in 2012?  It’s impossible to predict at this point, other than to say there’s a high likelihood that new and existing groups will likely try to make their voices heard in new and unforeseen ways, making this new frontier of Internet activism perhaps the biggest x-factor of all in next year’s Presidential election.

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And while some channels of communication — such as cable TV, print news and talk radio — are fairly mature, history tells us early mastery of any new medium can give a candidate a discernible advantage in a given election cycle.

For example, it’s commonly accepted that Kennedy’s performance in his televised debate with Nixon helped him win in the 1960 presidential election, while Obama’s more evolved social media strategy gave the Democrat a competitive advantage that, in the end, helped deliver him the presidency.

But what about the book?  Judging by Obama’s success with The Audacity of Hope in 2008 and the rush by the current crop of 2012 candidates to push tomes out this primary election season, the book, while perhaps the oldest of all the mediums outside of speaking in the public square, is still one of the most effective ways for candidates to inject their messages into the stream of conversation.

As publisher Peter Cosnos puts it in this NPR piece, “If you can get somebody to buy it, a book has a great virtue. It’s just you and the reader. There is no interviewer; there is nobody to get in the way.”

However, while books can certainly be effective, the paper book is the product of an inarguably antiquated distribution model. To push a book out through traditional publishing means putting your message on the slow train to the voter; a book usually gets to the reader months after the final draft was written.

But just as the Internet (and in particular YouTube) has reshaped the way campaigns use video to get messages quickly out to the voter, is it possible e-books could create a similar disruption in how candidates reach voters through the written — and electronic — word?

If early e-book pioneers who were able to bypass the byzantine and slow-moving world of traditional book publishing are any indication, than yes.  John Locke, Bob Mayer and other authors have been able to go direct to consumer — with the help of Amazon — and reach a much wider audience.  So why couldn’t presidential candidates, or politicians in general, do the same?

In order to do so, candidates would need to change the way they think about the book today. Instead of viewing a book as a brute-force, one-size-fits-all message delivery vehicle it drops in one big package every election cycle, candidates need to instead think about how they could instead deliver a stream of targeted messaging throughout the long election cycle with electronic publishing.

Imagine for a moment if Obama or the prospective GOP candidate were able to publish e-books in advance of major debates, or to convey certain messages to address voter concerns.  One month a candidate could focus on national security, the next he or she could convey his or her personal story through a media-rich e-book with photos and video interviews.

Or, looking back, ponder how things might have been different last election cycle if, for example, McCain released an e-book with his plan for economic stability in the face of the financial crisis that assuaged concerns of those who thought he may not have had a plan, while also giving the faithful talking points to distribute by word of mouth.

Candidates also need to maximize what’s possible in this new medium.  By releasing enhanced e-books, they can create highly personalized messages rich with video and audio; they can become more humanized to the voter.

Lastly, with the traditional book model, candidates are often their own biggest enemy as they seek high book advances and try to climb the bestseller lists to put more money into their pockets.  This traditional approach to the traditional model only serves to create expensive books the vast majority of voters never buy.

But what if a candidate looked at the e-book as an interactive application complete with fundraising capabilities built in?  Would they possibly consider distributing all their e-books for free if they could, somehow, garner campaign contributions through an in-book (or in-app) payment model? E-books and enhanced e-book apps could become the main way in which candidates could come into many voters homes and, in a sense, fill their campaign coffers.

Book and e-book purists may be moaning at the thought of a flood of campaign e-books filled with talking points and calls for contributions. But that is, for better or for worse, what campaigns are about, and if these same messages are flooding every other medium during campaign seasons, it was only inevitable that the campaign would eventually come to the e-book.

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Except that Barnes & Noble kinda got it right before Amazon.  OK, sure, so maybe the Nook Color is technically categorized by B&N as an e-reader, but in reality it was a low-end Android tablet, priced cheaply with a curated approach to content.

But that’s all just a technicality now, because while B&N may have been ahead of Amazon with the Nook Color, the Fire will still blow every other Android tablet out of the water, including the Nook Color and the new Nook tablet, which B&N introduced last week as an answer to the Fire.

So what’s more interesting with the Fire is not where it leaves B&N, which is in a fairly predictable second-place position among high-end e-readers and Android tablets, but where the Fire leaves Google. After all, the Fire is Amazon’s audacious attempt to introduce another tablet upon Google’s platform, while taking away many of the advantages that Google has gained through investing in the Android platform.

What do I mean? Well, sure, technically the Fire is built upon Android, but Amazon’s curated approach will no doubt be more about Amazon than Google, which is best exemplified by the fact that Amazon puts its own browser on the device, displacing Google’s browser. By taking the browser away and giving the consumer a server-assisted browsing experience with Silk, it will be Amazon, not Google, gathering all the data about consumer purchase and social behavior.

So what should Google do? Well, there’s not much they can do, other than continue to push hardware providers like Samsung, HTC and, of course, Motorola and others to utilize a version of Android that has all the Google services that Google was intending for consumers to use with the release of Android.

Nothing to do, except maybe…

Why Google Should Buy Barnes & Noble

Yes, Google should acquire Barnes & Noble. Wait, you ask, didn’t Google just buy Motorola, another hardware company? Of course, but the thing is, B&N isn’t a hardware company. What B&N is is a content retailer.

Like Amazon.

And content is something that Google, as much as it likes to think it is, doesn’t get. At all. The examples are numerous. The failure of Google TV.  Google’s no-show in the music space despite making noise with Google Music. And finally, there’s Google eBookstore, which, from what I can tell, is even more of a non-factor than Google Music.

Why? Because Google, for all its efforts, just hasn’t done well in content sell-through. Compared to Amazon, which is a company with content retailing in its DNA, to say Google is clunky and uncertain in this regard is putting it kindly.  And now, with the Fire, it’s likely that Amazon will show Google — and even possibly Apple — what the dominant online content-retailer can do with its own tablet device.

So how would B&N help Google? First, it would give them a division that understands how to merchandise content, both online and offline.  It would also possibly help them revive their moribund Google eBookstore as well give them an answer to the Kindle business, which is much more than just the hardware line. The Kindle is an entire ecosystem, or book industry in a box, including a growing publishing services. B&N has many of these same offerings, such as its PubIt platform, which Google could simply make its own.

Lastly, Google could also put B&N’s network of physical storefronts to good use.  Sure, Google lives in the cloud almost exclusively, but as Apple has shown, it often pays to have stores where consumers can “touch the company,” and for Google this might be even more important given that it’s hard for a company that is almost all-cloud to build trust as a lifelong content partner. Other benefits, such as encouraging adoption of Google Wallet and selling other Google hardware like the Nexus smartphones, are fairly obvious ones.

A few closing thoughts. Some would argue that buying B&N would mean Google would be competing with its partners, but that concern was put to rest with the Motorola acquisition.  And the cost of B&N would be just a fraction of the Motorola buy, given the book retailer’s sub-$1 billion market cap. Lastly, Kobo’s acquisition by Rakuten for $315 million took maybe the only viable alternative to B&N off the market, and is another reason that Google would be wise to snatch up B&N quickly.

So what are they waiting for?

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
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