Dev Dawn

I’d like to talk about a real estate search web site I have been working with;

http://www.homehound.com or http://www.homehound.com.au

In terms of web technology it is the best in Australia with aerial photos and transparent street map overlays ala Google Earth style satellite photos – except these ones are made with planes I think.

Now obviously a web search site has to work well, and have reliable and comprehensive data ( homehound.com has all the major franchise real estate listings in Australia more or less ) – but there is also value in having fancy features, particularly from the web customers point of view.

I wonder which is actually more important? I mention this because Google has a broader version of the same or at least related issue to homehound . Google of course has to have a good search engine to of got where it is – let’s not debate chicken and egg – but rather which is now more important to users, the fancy features Google now provides on the back of the ad revenue (like Google Earth and GTalk). Personally I appreciate the special features more, I can get a half decent search anywhere but some of these free apps are pretty special.

Google. Like public TV we get content in return for being exposed to ads – a pretty old model really. Although the adtext down the right on GMail that reads your email to give you ads related to the words therein is getting a little scary!

— Adam