This is my final post on Google Watch. So Google will move from the center of my coverage galaxy to somewhere on the periphery. The company continues to ply its trade versus Amazon in platform-as-a-service (PAAS) and Microsoft with Google Apps. These are solutions CIOs must consider as they seek to cut costs and offload resource management.

Depending on your perspective, this could be Google's most exciting time, or it's most dreadful time. It's certainly been painful for me to watch Google of late, all prefaced by some serious highs and lows.

I remember thinking back in 2007 when Google's stock crashed the $1,000 mark, thinking as I did at the time that the bloom was off the rose. Once Google attracted that kind of attention, it was all downhill from there.

Despite the economy, Google kind of flourished in 2008 and 2009. There was Chrome in 2008. Android began to show promise on the Motorola Droid and HTC Droid Incredible. Google was getting Chrome OS ready.

Then icky stuff started happening in 2010. Google Buzz, the first Facebook/Twitter challenger, blew the privacy quotient, pretty much beginning the product's slow, tortured end-of-life process.

Then the Street View WiSpy scandal erupted, giving Google another big black eye. It's hard to enjoy covering tech when all you read about is how the company is skewering user privacy and must be regulated.

But Google settled with Buzz and appeared to appease the FTC and state AGS over WiSpy. Things began to look better in 2011. Google made a lot of buys, and Google+ launched. All was well.

I was wrong. Google is hounded by regulators and privacy muckrakers looking to make their careers on taking down a giant the way they and their predecessors did for Microsoft. You pundits know who you are. Shame on you.

And shame on Google for putting itself in this position, for trying to be all things to all people on the Web. Google Wave was too amorphous and too early.

I enjoy Google TV, but few others do, which means I'm sweating, wondering when the product will be committed to the Google Dead Pool like so many other services Google put down in 2011.

Did you really need to launch a me, too social network, a Groupon clone, an unoriginal streaming music service missing the largest label in the free world?

Of course you did. You couldn't help yourself. On the other hand, Android remains awesome despite the handwringing about fragmentation, and there is no better browser than Chrome. Gmail and Google Docs remain two of my best business friends.

Google isn't alone. Just the other morning I awoke to see this story (via Google Reader and my Droid X) that Amazon had hired a VP for Original Programming. That leaves little to the imagination, especially after Google launched original programming on YouTube. What? Are we going to get more implausible cruft like Lilyhammer? No thanks.

It reminds me of the consumerization joke from Fight Club, where the main character comments on the IBM Stellar Sphere, Microsoft Galaxy and Planet Starbucks. Google, Apple and Amazon are becoming like online shopping malls.

I hate shopping malls. I don't want to buy goods from Google or watch new TV shows at Amazon. Maybe there was never separation of church and state in this digital realm, but there certainly never will be.

On a more serious note, Tim Wu, the Columbia Law School professor, summed up the state of affairs among the tech giants when he told the New York Times:

There was a time when people building things on the Internet didn't have a dream to be one of the biggest companies out there; their goal was not to be the next General Motors. But that is all changing. Now you have a battle of cultures on the Web where fun is being chiseled away.

So, yes, watching Google makes me think of what it must have been like watching Microsoft getting larger. The fun has been sucked out for me.

Anyway, farewell to all of the Google contacts who have been helpful. I suspect given my new role in focusing on the CIO I will be working with many of you folks again in the near future.

Most importantly, farewell to you, gentle readers. It's been fun these last four-plus years.

Catch you on the flipside.

The Google-watching world has been abuzz since yesterday about Google Play.

No, it's not a new streaming music service from the search giant, though you'd be forgiven for thinking so.

Actually, the irony is that the moniker is indicative of how Google is trying to rationalize some of the confused branding and marketing its content services have suffered from in the last two years.

Google Play is, simply, the Android Market application store, the Google Music streaming service, Google's Movies service and the Google Books service rolled into one cohesive platform.

All this content will be accessible via Android smartphones and tablets from this Google Play Store application, which will replace the Android Market app on users' devices soon, according to Jamie Rosenberg, who as director of digital content at Google reports to Android creator Andy Rubin. Rosenberg noted:

Today we're eliminating all that hassle with Google Play, a digital entertainment destination where you can find, enjoy and share your favorite music, movies, books and apps on the Web and on your Android phone or tablet. Google Play is entirely cloud-based so all your music, movies, books and apps are stored online, always available to you, and you never have to worry about losing them or moving them again.

This video demo shows how seamless the experience is supposed to be, allowing users to start content on one device and move it to the next. It's the cloud baby!

Given how poorly Books and Music have been received to date, it's no wonder Google didn't try this sooner, but better later than never, one supposes.

And that's the rub. I certainly applaud the idea of consolidating all of these services under one umbrella. It's not unlike what I already enjoy from Amazon's Website, where I can flit from Instant Videos to books and other digital services from one destination. Apple's iTunes is similar in this regard.

Rosenberg acknowledged as much when he told The New York Times "that Google was aware that shoppers were "aligning around ecosystems" and that the company hoped this new effort would help entice people to stay within the Google realm for a much longer period of time."

Importantly, the content enabled via Play is all stuff users can pay for using Google Wallet, formerly Google Checkout. Again, this recalls the millions of iTunes and Amazon accounts streamlined in their own purchase funnels.

That's the way digital content should be served. I think Google has long realized it, and now it's doing it. I wonder, if people going to Play to download apps, will they also buy songs, movies and books?

That bears watching.

Far be it for me to throw cold water on the prospect of exciting new software from Google, but the Google-is-building-a-Siri-rival meme is wearing thin on me.

I noted last year how the smart speech-recognition service would be called Majel. Now TechCrunch says that name has changed to, simply, Google Assistant. Check out these other bullet points from the report, which said Assistant's goal is to:

• Get the world's knowledge into a format a computer can understand.
• Create a personalization layer: Experiments like Google +1 and Google+ are Google's way of gathering data on precisely how people interact with content.
• Build a mobile, voice-centered "do engine" ('Assistant') that's less about returning search results and more about accomplishing real-life goals.

This doesn't tell us beyond what we already knew, guessed or expected. In fact, TechCrunch's reporting reads like a bullet-point list of something public relations people would leak to a favored publication. That's a fact.

Also a fact is that Apple's iPad 3, iPad HD, or whatever it's name is, is set to be unveiled March 7. The new iPad may be Siri-enabled. We may also hear about a Siri-laced Apple TV.

It's only good and well that Google's PR team would launch a preemptive strike to avoid another bad glut of press about how much better Siri is than Google Voice Actions -- despite these tests by Motorola.

If you want to read a great take on this competitive positioning, see this Search Engine Land piece from Monday:

If Google manages to build an effective assistant, which it's certainly capable of, it will need to balance its delivery of "answers" or trans-actionable responses (e.g., the OpenTable scenario) with its continuing need to monetize mobile. Marginalization of the SERP will potentially diminish Google's mobile revenues, which the company does not want and cannot afford to do.

Accordingly, it must balance the "answers not links" mobile imperative with the need to protect and grow mobile search-ad revenues. In this way Google confronts its own version of the "innovators dilemma."

Indeed, it's not about Google's new offering besting Siri in an Android phone voice-off, if you will. It's a matter of Google providing actionable but personal (through Alfred technology) speech assistance without cutting into its mobile search sales.

I would think Google could pair speech recognition with voice-based ads as a new ad revenue stream, but haven't seen it yet.

The stakes are high at a time Google's mobile ad business appears poised to grow 80 percent to $4.5 billion this year.

On a personal note, I'd much rather Google create something unique rather than just a me-too to Siri.

Google likes to position Google+ as unique to Facebook, but at the end of the day, it's another garden with walls where people can share content.

Can Google Assistant offer the mobile market something unique?

Google's Chrome browser adoption can be counted in the 200-plus million download range, but it helps to have big organizations embrace the browser.

This is super challenging at a time Microsoft Internet Explorer remains the de facto browser for the Windows PCs that orgs and businesses buy.

To wit, Google scored a coup with Chrome when the U.S. State Department, responsible for international relations and diplomacy, greenlit Chrome for its employees last month. It's the first U.S. cabinet to enable Chrome across its entire department.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton made the announcement Feb. 14 that her agency would allow Chrome to a smattering of cheers from State employees.

Why are we hearing about this two-plus weeks later? Well, allowing Chrome is one thing. Getting people to use the browser is quite another.

It wouldn't do for the State Department to enable the browser, only to have people remain with IE or anything else.

Two weeks in, the results are pretty good: Some 58,000-plus workers in the cabinet, or 60 percent of the enterprise, downloaded Chrome worldwide. I'd say Chrome has a solid reputation at this point.

Indeed, it also seems the department is embracing Google's easy upgrade cycle. While the department previously tested browser compatibility with business apps before launching agency-wide, the group noted:

Offering Chrome as a browser option allows us to take full advantage of Chrome's speed--from quick start up to rapid Website loading--plus the ability to access the full range of modern Websites, and will allow our employees to be more productive in their work. When a new release of Chrome is made available with enhanced functionality or added security, we can release it into production immediately, bypassing cumbersome testing.

I'm quite sure that approach won't work for, say, the National Security Agency, but this department gets to sit back and relax while Google pushes out upgrades over the cloud.

Now, if Google can only transform those Chrome browser users to Chromebook users, the search giant could start a nice enterprise business.

I'm skeptical of this, though it's not because I think Chromebooks are bum machines; it's that big companies have been slow enough to embrace Google Apps in the cloud five years in.

Chromebooks aren't challenged by hardware, but by fair-to-middling cloud computing traction. People are going to the cloud, just not as fast as they could. These things take time.

"Do Not Track" presents some interesting obstacles for Internet giants that rely on Web advertising, with Google poised to be significantly impacted in the display ad market.

A quick refresher: Do Not Track will allow Internet users to add a Do Not Track header from browsers such as Chrome, Apple Safari, Mozilla Firefox and Microsoft Internet Explorer. This will tell Websites not to track them across the Web.

Google agreed to support the header in Chrome by the end of the year, following Mozilla, Microsoft and Apple. There are, of course, caveats. The basic one is that there is still tracking going on.

Google's adoption of Do Not Track doesn't preclude cookies, small computer files online ad providers use to track users' travels around the Web, from existing in Chrome.

As I noted last week, cookies will not be used to build targeted ads, or those tailored to users based on users' past surfing and other online behavior.

However, the more "personal" users want their experience with Chrome or other browsers to be, the more info can be tracked about those users, according to Susan Wojcicki, senior vice president of advertising for Google.

"For example, if users have requested personalization (such as by signing up for particular services) or visit Websites that use "first-party" cookies to personalize the overall experience (for example, a news Website recommending articles to its readers, or a video site remembering your volume preferences), then browsers will not break that experience," Wojcicki wrote.

In other words, users will still be tracked and will see ads targeted to their behavioral tastes online.

The New York Times dug a little deeper to divine what exactly is going on, and while Google has the latitude Wojcicki mentioned, it could also find its display ad business a bit handicapped.

That's a big deal, because ad formats for mobile and display, which includes spending on online video, sponsorships, rich media and banner advertisements, are the next two truly big green fields for Google.

As it happens, third-party sites, or ad networks like DoubleClick that collect and use data to serve users online advertising tailored to the user are restricted in the data they can collect on users who select a Do Not Track option.

The Times piece noted:

"[Google's] display advertising business, driven largely by its DoubleClick ad network, representing some $5 billion in revenue, is considered third party and could be affected."

What's interesting about this to me is that eMarketer has Google surpassing Facebook in display advertising in 2013, with the search giant grabbing nearly 20 percent of the market in 2013, compared with less than 18 percent for Facebook.

My question to you all is this: If Google implements Do Not Track as promised, and DoubleClick's ability to trade in user data to improve ads is impinged, what happens to Google's display ad business? Is YouTube enough to carry it alone?

Or does Do No Track set Facebook up to retain its market share lead? Just wondering.