Google (NASDAQ: GOOG) had a killer product years ago after launching the awesome Google Earth software product for free to the masses. Many of us wondered (again) how the company was going to make money while giving away such great products. Recently, Google launched an enhanced, fee-based version of Google Earth that answered this question.

It comes as no surprise that one of the world's largest advertising companies (yes, Google) would leverage the globally known YouTube video-sharing site into many of its other properties as it experiments with adding advertisements into videos hosted there (in them, before them, etc.). YouTube has to be worth its billion-dollar asking price, after all, and it seems natural to let Google Earth users enjoy video clips from areas across the globe. Visit Africa on Google Earth, for example, and you may see links to YouTube videos on safari expeditions.

Google Maps already has this kind of integration. Search for an address, and you'll be presented with text links to nearby hotels, eateries, etc. The same goes for Google Gmail users. If Gmail senses that an incoming email deals with travel, it will supply travel links next to that email as you read it. Integrative and context-sensitive advertising is where the future of marketing is, and Google knows this. Video integration is only the latest step.

Starting tomorrow, according to the New York Times [registration required] at certain Starbucks Corp. (NASDAQ: SBUX) stores, owners of Apple Inc. (NASDAQ: AAPL) iPhones will be able to hear a song while sipping their coffee and immediately purchase and download it to their iPhones.

This reminds me of an episode from Seinfeld in which George Costanza says: "Food and sex, those are my two passions. It's only natural to combine them." Here, the two needs are a little different -- overpriced coffee (Starbucks) and music on a phone (Apple). Before these companies came along, people didn't realize they had these needs. But now, they realize they need both and appear poised to pay to have them combined.

Specifically, anyone with an iPhone or iTunes software loaded onto a laptop will be able download the songs they hear over the speakers at these Starbucks stores directly onto those devices. The price will be 99 cents a song. The concept is being introduced in around 600 cafes in New York and Seattle only. Users sign onto the cafe's WiFi network to discover what song is playing over the Starbucks speakers. With a few taps, users can download the song onto their iPhones.

Unlike George Costanza's twin passions, this combination of two services will be something that is apparently OK to do in public. Whether it's profitable for both companies remains to be seen.

Peter Cohan is president of Peter S. Cohan & Associates. He also teaches management at Babson College and edits The Cohan Letter. He has no financial interest in Apple or Starbucks.

Either publishers are out of touch with the market, or the market doesn't know what a good business book is. I suspect it's the latter but, either way, I've been coming across a lot of really amazing, but tragically out-of-print books lately. This is in addition to the myriad terrible bestsellers -- chief among them Donald Trump/Robert Kiyosaki's Why We Want You to Be Rich. And I won't tempt you with a link to the Amazon page.

Anyway, the latest, greatest out-of-print business book I've come across is The Funny Money Game, written by a very young Andrew Tobias, who later became famous for The Only Investment Guide You'll Ever Need. The Funny Money Game tells the story of Tobias's time as a an executive at National Student Marketing, a high-flying momentum stock during the 1960s. The company crashed quickly, mired in overly-aggressive expansion, mindless acquisitions, and fraudulent accounting. Tobias's options were left worthless. Seems an option to buy a $6 stock for $38 is of little value.

But what emerges from the damage is a delightful story of a chaotic corporation, more stock promotion than business venture. There is even a reference to options-backdating at the company -- a scandal that would grab headlines about 35 years after the publication of Tobias's first book. The company's efforts to portray itself as a cutting-edge, youth-oriented company when its profits, such as they were, came from old-line businesses like insurance are reminiscent of a more famous financial fiasco: Enron. We also learn about the most dangerous word in the history of mergers and acquisitions: synergy.

If you've read Tobias's work before, you know what to expect: The writing is breezy and often funny, and definitely the most enjoyable, light-hearted book ever written about a corporate train-wreck. And while it's out of print, you can get a copy used on Amazon for 41 cents.

Today's Newsweek has a piece on eBay and Skype, noting that this week "At its annual 'eBay Live' convention, the company will announce plans to integrate Skype into its U.S. marketplace for the first time. Sellers can choose to include Skype buttons in their auctions for a few carefully chosen product categories, such as cars, real estate and diamond solitaire rings."

The article begins with an optimistic anecdote suggesting that adding Skype functionality improves the results of big-ticket item sales--although the article also cautions that introducing direct voice connections raises new possibilities for buyers and sellers to conclude their transaction off eBay and avoid fees.  Meg Whitman repeats that she sees the big pay-off in the Skype acquisition as synergies with eBay and PayPal.

Jeffrey Bewkes, president of Time Warner, told his Sports Illustrated magazine division to go take a flying leap when they wanted to partner with AOL's sports channel to build a giant sports web site. Synergies, he told the Wall Street Journal, are bullshit.

As someone who made part of her career not just believing in synergies but putting solid numerical values to them and offering them up, like holy sacraments of PowerPoint, to the strategists at gigantic corporations: this is a hard pill to swallow. And though I see it not working more often than not, I also see so many areas -- yes, within Time Warner, where I work today -- where it does work. Heck, everyday I make my bucks on the back of the synergy.

But instead of calling them "synergies," now, Time Warner is calling them "adjacencies." Sumner Redstone split up Viacom and CBS because the "clout" he was supposed to get from his company's huge size "got us nowhere." Is the day of the synergy over and done with?