Heather Green
This is interesting, via John Battelle. Google has created a new pilot program offering dough to folks who build popular gagdets, Google's name for widgets. Gadgets are Google's fastest growing products, according to a recent Washington Post story. Google is offering grants and seed investments, in which case it will take a stake in the venture making the gadget.
No surprise, right? Of any company that gets the distributed world that is widgets, it's Google.
There seem to me to be a few ways to play the widget game. One is to be a platform where people plop down their gadgets, like Facebook has shown so beautifully. Another is to be a distributor of those gadgets (and the ads that go with them) as they are flung across the Web. Either way, there is an ability to control some part of the ad sales. What, though, about folks who simply make the gadgets or the content or services that are widgetized? That's where I am trying to figure out how much value there is.
A quick look at the most popular Google gadgets shows a very popular Wikipedia gadget, a driving directions gadget and a sticky notes widget.
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