What Will It Take to Make Google Eat Slower…or At Least Take Time Out for a Burp?

Google is obviously searching for new revenue sources—and more often than not focusing on the ad world.

It already owns most of the world of search. Microsoft’s Bing is a good play but its inroads into Google’s main ad business is really just a little ant bite in the side of the Giant’s furry mane.

Then with very little fanfare last year something called Google Voice began offering free telephone service. It had sought to dodge regulation by the FCC arguing that it was not a traditional telecom. AT&T, however, complained when it discovered that Google Voice was blocking calls to rural exchanges. But Google said that “net neutrality” rules only applied to Internet service providers, not to companies that created Web-based software apps, such as Google Voice.

But Google will probably be hoisted with its own petard, because on the one hand it says it wants to ensure open broadband networks, and on the other it is blocking rural service connections because rural telcos add high “termination rates” for calls and partner with adult sex chat lines and conference calling centers.

Google has just revealed more of its plan for next year’s launch of an ebook store, Google Editions. This service will make books the million or so books in its database searchable. Publishers will set the price of books and Google will take in its share of profits and share them with retail partners. The thinking is that Google Editions will initially threaten Barnes & Noble.com’s Nook and Amazon.com’s Kindle, but theoretically it could cut them in on the take.

But the more interesting play is whether Google will have success finding some ways of integrating ads into its book downloads—say through in-text ads or some way to cram code into a home page when users sign on for additional downloads. Michael J. Gyulai, of the Transfer Media Group, sees Google having a wide open field. “In the beginning, it will be too difficult to add ads in a manuscript,” he told MediaPost.com, “but I could see a Google Editions home page that analyzes ebooks bought. When you load up the My Google Editions library, I can see ads on that page from the start.”

Google has major competitors now on both the telco and ebook fronts who are beginning to cry foul to the Obama Administration Justice Department.

But so far, even though lawsuits here and in Europe have occasionally reined in Google, no one has forced it to abandon a business it is intent on developing. Getting Google to “play fair” in these new sandboxes will be a major headache.