- Google: Fate tied to the Web
- Google PageRank to stem staph infections?
- Google adds facial search
- Google-DoubleClick: Dangerous monopoly?
- WikiSky: Google Earth for the Heavens
- Office Live: Microsoft's gateway drug?
- Google Maps for mobile does Windows
- Google, Yahoo gain search share
- Amazon's Bezos backs 'human powered' search
- Wiki founder to launch search engine
February 26, 2008 | Comments: (0)
Why would a search engine company like Google participate in social networking? Because of the indirect benefit the company derives, a Google official said at the Adobe Engage conference in San Francisco on Monday.
"Google really does believe that its fate is directly to the Web," said Joe Kraus, director of product management at Google. He is working on Google's OpenSocial social networking initiative to develop API standards for social networking platforms.
The more time people spend on the Web, the more likely they are to do a search and that is where Google makes money, Kraus said. Thus, Google is involved in social applications, he said.
"As goes the Web, so goes Google," said Kraus.
He also said Google would love participation in OpenSocial by Facebook, which has not been involved. Kraus also said he had no idea when the Google-backed Android mobile applications platform would support Adobe's AIR (Adobe Integrated Runtime) for running Internet applications offline. AIR was the star attraction at the conference.
Also during the conference Monday, Salesforce.com Chairman/CEO Marc Benioff stressed how the company is firmly in the Adobe camp and is not pondering Microsoft's rival Silverlight browser plug-in software software - at least not at the moment.
"We are not looking at Silverlight today, so we have not really had the demand," Benioff said. If that changes, Salesforce.com of course would look at Silverlight, he said.
"Today the action and the excitement, especially interactive user interfaces on the the Web, remains in kind of the Flash, Flex, AIR area," said Benioff.
Adobe at Engage announced Force.com Toolkit for Adobe AIR, to add offline capabilities to the company's Force.com platform for third-party applications.
Posted by Paul Krill on February 26, 2008 06:23 AM
January 04, 2008 | Comments: (0)
Google PageRank to stem staph infections?
Just as Silicon Valley insiders are calling for a qualified scuttling of Google's PageRank algorithm in sussing out Web page relevance, U.K. researchers are turning to Google's golden formula to combat the spread of treatment-resistent infections in hospitals.
According to a report in New Scientist, a Bradford University research group headed by Clive Beggs believes that PageRank could provide the key to understanding how superbugs, such as staph infections, are transmitted through the wards.
Viewing transmission routes -- by hand, through the air, or otherwise -- as what amount to "infectious networks," Beggs and associates are attempting to build a matrix similar to Google's page-relevancy tool to rank infection paths.
Simon Shepherd, a mathematician on board with the endeavor, believes that by observing normal daily activity in a hospital, a matrix of interactions among people and objects can be expressed and then analyzed to better understand where "nodes in the network" maximize the transmission of infections.
"Obviously nurses move among patients and that can spread infection, but they also touch light switches and lots of other surfaces too," Shepherd told New Scientist. "We sussed out in one ward that the chief node was a light switch. It could potentially distribute infection to the rest of the ward very quickly."
With such knowledge in hand, hospital administrators could then put policies in place or make alterations to hospital infrastructure to disrupt the infection network, targeting those nodes that the BugRank algorithm identifies as the most problematic.
Posted by Jason Snyder on January 4, 2008 04:42 PM
June 01, 2007 | Comments: (0)
Google's popular image search has quietly added a feature that picks out facial images from the sea of graphics on the Web, allowing Web searchers to better zero on in pictures of individuals. As noted by the great folks over at Ars Technica and first reported by Google Blogoscoped, the popular Google-centric blog. The new features are unofficial and allow anyone to narrow a search to facial images or news related images by appending the terms "&imgtype=face" or "&imgtype=news" to any Google image search.
For example, a generic image search for "InfoWorld" yields a hodge podge of different Web images, heavy on the InfoWorld cover art. The same search with the facial search suffix added on turns up a rogues gallery of people who have passed through InfoWorld, or been depicted in our magazine, from founding editor Allan Lundell, to current editor in chief Steve Fox to current and former contributors like Jon Udell.
Adding the imgtype=news modifier narrows the search results to images that have been attached to news stories.
One thing that's particularly powerful about the feature is the way that it creates an ersatz network of individuals who have associations with the search term. For example, the InfoWorld search ended up cobbling together a list of InfoWorld alumni and countless other contributors through the years from all across the Web. You can see the same effect searching for Microsoft faces.
In their review, Ars Technica notes that the facial search features likely came from the company's 2006 purchase of Neven Vision and could one day be used to locate all kinds of different items on the Web -- akin to the kinds of features that startups like Riya are working on for the retail/e-commerce sector.
Cool stuff. Eerie -- but cool. One does wonder whether the new feature might make it a tad easier to ferret out images of individuals by scouring Web sites of organizations they're affiliated with. In that sense the feature could be misused, though it seems the onus falls on Web site owners to beware of what kinds of data is getting crawled on their site.
Posted by Paul Roberts on June 1, 2007 09:39 AM
April 13, 2007 | Comments: (0)
Google-DoubleClick: Dangerous monopoly?
Google already scares the pants off many Web site publishers. Yes, the sites love the traffic -- can't live without it, in fact. But they compete with Google for advertising dollars, often chasing the same ad dollars. To add insult to injury, it is those same Web sites' ever-expanding content base that allows Google to do what Google does.
And now, the crushing blow: Google buys DoubleClick, the service that serves up ads on a fantastically high percentage of major web sites. DoubleClick has a stranglehold on the digital advertising market, just as Google owns the search market.
I smell monopoly here, one that could be disastrous for many Web site publishers --and ultimately bad for Web consumers as well. Here's the danger: Google already knows a tremendous amount about the traffic it sends to individual Web sites -- where it comes from, what people are looking for, even some basic demographics. With DoubleClick in the fold, they will also know what ads are being served on any given page. That gives Google unprecedented insight into publishers' business. And remember, those publishers may be partners, but they are also competitors, often trying to woo the same advertisers as Google.
Web sites live and die based upon ad revenue and on charging advertisers a certain rate based upon the number of pages served and the quality of their readership/user base. I could imagine a not-entirely-paranoid fantasy in which Google can run the numbers, turn around, and offer better rates to advertisers for a similar audience. Let's say you run a fashion site and charge $100 CPM, or cost per thousand, meaning an advertiser would pay you a hundred bucks for every thousand page impressions. Google/DoubleClick may not know your CPM (though they could take a good guess based upon your traffic). But they will know who they've sent your way and how many ads you've served. With a bit of calculation, they could easily offer a slightly better deal to a fashion advertiser, offering up $90 CPMs to anyone who types in "fashion," "couture" and "Prada." Long-standing rumors that Google will soon enter the banner ad market further fuel these fears.
An ad ops guy I know who chooses to remain anonymous notes that DoubleClick has been exploring a product that would establish auctions to sell surplus ad inventory. DC wants to open an auction for those transactions. Google has also expressed interest in the remnant ad market, making Google potentially a full service media buying agency -- picking the audience, buying the ads, etc. As a combined entity, Google and DoubleClick could undercut publishers' ability to set their own CPM base, "allowing the market to set those prices."
Clearly this prospect would terrify publishers because it commoditizes advertising and ultimately makes it hard for sites to compete. That might sound great to advertisers for a while -- at least until sites started folding because they could no longer afford to stay in business.
DoubleClick has assured customers in a memo that a "change in ownership will not affect your ownership of your data. Your data remains your property and subject to the terms of your contract." That's a lovely sentiment, but I am by nature suspicious. I'm thinking many publishers will be as well.
I would not be surprised to see this one smacked down by antitrust law. Or at the very least, I'd expect DoubleClick customers will insist that a firewall be put in place that will keep the two sides of the Google/DC house from merging and mining their data.
When one company owns the railroad tracks, the trains, and the ticket office, customers may benefit in the short run. In the long run, monopolies are bad for everyone, unless you happen to own stock in the monopoly.
Posted by Steve Fox on April 13, 2007 04:22 PM
April 06, 2007 | Comments: (0)
WikiSky: Google Earth for the Heavens
We all know how useful tools like Google Earth and Microsoft's Virtual Earth have been to understanding what's out there on our lovely planet earth, most of us are just lost when it comes to the heavens above. First of all, depending on where you live, light pollution might make seeing the night time sky impossible, unless you count the moon and maybe Mercury and Venus. Thankfully, though, the folks over at the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) have put together wikisky.org, which is kind of like Google Earth for the heavens above. Using a cool graphical interface, visitors can zoom in or out on stars or constellations, pulling up detailed astronomical data collected from SDSS's survey.
SDSS is an ambitious sky mapping project that wants to create detailed optical images covering more than a quarter of the sky, and a 3-dimensional map of about a million galaxies and quasars, according to the Wikisky Web site.
Check it out.
Posted by Paul Roberts on April 6, 2007 11:28 AM
March 15, 2007 | Comments: (0)
Office Live: Microsoft's gateway drug?
The news that Microsoft is offering financial incentives to enterprise customers that adopt its new Live Search engine seems to be about data.
As part of the arrangement, companies using Live Search agree to send search data (presumably anonymized) to Microsoft, which should help Ballmer's boys figure out how to optimize the platform -- and maybe even make some money from it. That kind of continuous data flow has worked well for Google, which offers users advanced features in exchange for sharing their data when they install the Google toolbar.
But I suspect that this move isn't about search per se. Let's be realistic: Microsoft isn't going to unseat Google, which holds a massive lead in the search market. This is more about gaining a toehold for the fledgling Windows Live services. Think of Live Search as a gateway drug that will give potential customers a taste of a whole new MS portfolio of products.
Live Search, though it can be run in standalone mode, is part of the Windows Live platform of online apps and services. You can personalize it (see MyYahoo) and use it to search your desktop (a la Google Desktop or the search that's built intoVista). Many users will also be tempted to run their search from the Live Toolbar, which is offered as part of the larger Windows Live ensemble. It's only a small step from Live Search to getting the whole shooting match.
So this is about paying for exposure, which ultimately can lead to habituation. Microsoft's engineers have built a passel of handsome, modern looking Web-based applications. It even has "gadgets" (an answer to OS X's widgets). These offerings may not be best of breed -- going up, as they do, against Google's online office apps -- but familiarity is a powerful force. People tend to stick with whatever makes them comfortable.
The hosted online applications business could ultimately dwarf the search market, since people use search on occasion, but they live in their apps. MS has made a fortune selling desktop apps; if even some of that user base moves to the Web, Microsoft must be there to capture the business. Live Search is just one more way to lead them gently to that promised land.
Posted by Steve Fox on March 15, 2007 06:38 PM
February 01, 2007 | Comments: (0)
Google Maps for mobile does Windows
Wayward U.S. travelers wielding wireless Windows devices now have a new option for finding their bearings (or a place for dinner). Google announced today that Google Maps for mobile now runs on Windows Mobile 2003 and higher.
With Google Maps for mobile, users can view interactive maps and satellite imagery, find local businesses, get driving directions, and view live traffic updates, according to Google.
Further, the Windows Mobile 5.0 version of Google Maps for mobile is GPS-enabled, so users can view their current location on the map, and the service can take that location into consideration when users search for local businesses or request driving directions.
Google's move means the company is gaining some ground against rivals like Yahoo and Microsoft in the increasingly lucrative mobile-search space.
Microsoft has offered both a J2ME and .Net version of its Windows Live Search for Mobile for some time. The WLS for Mobile service provides white and yellow page searches, maps, driving directions, traffic conditions, and other features.
Meanwhile, Yahoo recently announced version 2.0 beta of its own mobile suite, which provides features such as local maps, news tickers, a mobile version of the Flickr photo management service, and e-mail.
To download Google Maps for mobile, go to www.google.com/gmm.
Posted by Ted Samson on February 1, 2007 03:44 PM
January 17, 2007 | Comments: (0)
Google, Yahoo gain search share
Google remains the sultan of search in the U.S., leaving even second-place search engine Yahoo in the dust, according to the comScore Networks monthly qSearch analysis. Meanwhile, despite heavily pushing its revamped Windows Live Search service, Microsoft lost ground in December.
Google captured 47.3 percent of the U.S. search market last month, gaining 0.4 share points from the previous month. Yahoo picked up 0.3 share points, giving it 28.5 percent of U.S. searches. Microsoft, meanwhile, dropped from 11 percent to 10.5. Ask Network holds just 5.4 percent; Time Warner Network holds 4.9 percent.
Translated into actual searches, Americans conducted 3.2 billion on Google; 1.9 billion through Yahoo; 713 million using MSN-Microsoft; 363 million on Ask; and 335 million with Time Warner Network.
All told, U.S. Internet users conducted 6.7 billion online searches last month, 30 percent more than the same period last year, according to comScore.
Posted by Ted Samson on January 17, 2007 09:21 AM
January 08, 2007 | Comments: (0)
Amazon's Bezos backs 'human powered' search
Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos became a billionaire by using technology to automate a task (buying books) that used to be intensely intra-personal. Now he's plunked down millions of his own dough to fund a human-powered search engine: Chacha.com.
According to this announcement, Bezos's personal investment firm, Bezos Expeditions, led a $6 million round of funding for ChaCha, with help from Rod Canion, founding CEO of Compaq Computer, Silicon Valley investor Jack Gill of Maven Ventures.
So what is ChaCha.com? While the logo might make you think you've discovered the Web site for a new condiment, ChaCha is actually a user-assisted search engine that allows searchers to chat with "guides" who help them find what they're looking for.
My chat with my guide, in response to my search "What is SOA" looked something like this:
AmandaR: Welcome to ChaCha! Please wait a moment while I search for your results.
You: ok.
[At this point, three SOA related links pop up: one from Wikipedia, a "What is SOA" whitepaper from Systinet and an article from javaworld.com appear ]
AmandaR: Are these results sufficient?
You: Hmm...
You: Yes. Those will do.
My session ends, and I get an opportunity to rate Amanda's performance ("Excellent" imho).
Now, mind you, this is all pretty odd, given the anonymity that most of us are used to enjoying with Google, Yahoo and the like. Of course, as AOL showed us last year, just because nobody's chatting with you when you search, doesn't mean companies like Google and AOL don't look at what you're looking for.
Of course, those folks looking for edible underwear might choose to use ChaCha's unassisted "ChaCha Search." And on that score, the company is a step down from Google and the like. In fact, my ChaCha search for "edible underwear" turned up a slew of sponsored links from online vendors of naughty apparel, compared with Google's, which at least contained this useful Wikipedia entry on the whole edible underwear phenomenon.
There's also some question about how well ChaCha will scale, should the hordes of Google users, speaking a virtual Babel of languages decamp, en masse, for ChaCha's user assisted search. ChaCha leverages an army of home workers to help searchers with their queries and claims to have 20,000 such guides so far. Certainly the population of "work from home" folks is large -- but is it large enough? Still, human powered search engines are all the rage, with companies like Google experimenting with "human in the loop" searching, and socialnetworking style search startups like efamily.com, which launched today at CES.
Posted by Paul Roberts on January 8, 2007 11:03 AM
December 26, 2006 | Comments: (0)
Wiki founder to launch search engine
Google and Wikipedia are two of my favored tools for finding quick information. Thus, I'm rather intrigued by the announcement from Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales that he's stepping into the search arena, spearheading a new Google competitor called Wikisari.
For those of you who missed the news, which Wales first announced last Saturday, he is seeking volunteers to help develop Wikisari, "a new kind of search engine, which relies on human intelligence to do what algorithms cannot."
Slated to launch during the first quarter of 2007, the project, according to reports, will be funded Amazon.con and Silicon Valley financiers. The named Wikisari, by the way, is a melding of wiki and the Japanese word asari, which means "rummaging search.”
The reason for Wikisari, Wales writes, is that search as we know it is broken: "Why is it broken? It is broken for the same reason that proprietary software is always broken: lack of freedom, lack of community, lack of accountability, lack of transparency."
According to the aforelinked article in The Money Times, Wales said that "Google is very good at many types of search, but in many instances it produces nothing but spam and useless crap. Try searching for the term 'Tampa hotels,' for example, and you will not get any useful results."
He went on to say, "Essentially, if you consider one of the basic tasks of a search engine, it is to make a decision: 'this page is good, this page sucks.' Computers are notoriously bad at making such judgments."
Wales is certainly correct: There are times when algorithms may not provide you the links you need to find the information you're looking for. However, he's also not the first person out there to realize the shortcomings of purely computerized search results.
Consider what happened around the time Hurricane Katrina struck earlier this year. Anyone going to Google to search for katrina ended up with links to trivia about the name Katrina and to a Virginia-based company run by a Web designer named Katrina Blankenship. Not very helpful, and a certainly a ding against letting a search engine deliver links sans human intervention.
Meanwhile, Yahoo demonstrated that it was aware of potential shortcomings of strictly-computerized search. As the hurricane approached, Yahoo editors (i.e. human beings) had tweaked search results to generate pertinent news articles and hurricane information when people typed in katrina.
Other search companies are learning, too. A relatively new search engine called ChaCha, for example, calls on human expertise to deliver personalized results in real-time, via IM, to meet the needs of individual users. (I haven't used it enough to assess just how good it is.)
So the big question is, will Wikisari be a success? Well, Wales certainly has Wikipedia's notoriety working in his favor. Also, some people who accuse commercial sites like Google and Yahoo of bias in its rankings might be lure to the (somewhat vague) promises of openness the Wales is offerings.
But on the other hand, it's bound to be an uphill battle for Wikisari. Google remains the king of search, despite the hiccups we saw during Katrina. The company presumably has learned from the experience and continues to adjust accordingly. Meanwhile, Yahoo and other engines have demonstrated that they can and do use human power to supplement algorithmic drawbacks.
Really, though, we'll have to wait and see how the business and search model of Wikisari shape up. Stay tuned. I know I will.
Posted by Ted Samson on December 26, 2006 02:33 PM
December 21, 2006 | Comments: (0)
Bebo tops 2006 Google searches
MySpace, beware: You were outGoogled in 2006 by another social-networking site.
Bebo was the No. 1 searched term on Google in 2006, according to Zeitgeist, which provides search trends information about Google. But social networking wasn't all the dominated the minds of Googlers. 2006 also witnessed a rise in interest about technology topics such as AJAX, podcasting, and Web 2.0.
Back to the top 10 Google searches, though: Myspace followed Bebo as No. 2, followed by, in order: world cup, metacafe, radioblog, wikipedia, video, rebelde, mininova, and wiki.
Interestingly, there's a striking difference between the top 2006 searches reported by Google compared to those reported by Yahoo, almost all of which were celebrities, starting with Britney Spears. The exception was the No. 2 ranked WWE (World Wrestling Entertainment).
On Google News, paris hilton was the most highly sought topic, followed by orlando bloom, cancer, podcasting, hurricane katrina, bankruptcy, martina hingas, autism, 2006 nfl draft, and celebrity big brother 2006. (Steve Irwin's death was the top sought news article on Yahoo.)
Zeitgeist also lists some of the top-searched inquiries. The individual Googlers wanted most identified was Borat (as in who is borat), followed by Hezbollah and EU. (No. 4 four on that list: who is hot.)
Highest on the list of "What is ..." queries was hezbollah. Of the remaining nine, eight are various types of medication, except for No. 6, which is ajax. (Hopefully InfoWorld has been able to assist in clarifying that last one.)
Tech-related inquiries also popped up on the top "How to ..." inquiries and "Define ..." requests, including wiki how to, how to podcast, how to blog, define web 2.0, and define ajax.
To see all of the top searches on Google for 2006, go to here.
Posted by Ted Samson on December 21, 2006 08:50 AM
December 19, 2006 | Comments: (0)
Seems searchasaurus Google has an eye on every business opportunity under the sun. We've already learned that the company is shooting for the moon; now, according to Guardian Unlimited, the company is in talks with mobile-phone maker Orange to spawn a mobile device primed for performing search from anywhere.
According to the report, in which anonymous sources are cited:
"their plans centre on a branded Google phone, which would probably also carry Orange's logo. The device would not be revolutionary: manufactured by HTC, a Taiwanese firm specialising in smart phones and Personal Data Assistants (PDAs), it might have a screen similar to a video iPod. But it would have built-in Google software which would dramatically improve on the slow and cumbersome experience of surfing the web from a mobile handset."
Neither company would confirm or deny the report, though it's no secret Google has an interest in the wireless world. The company, along with EarthLink, recently won a bid to blanket San Francisco with free and paid Wi-Fi service.
Moreover, YouTube, which Google bought earlier this year, has teamed with Verizon to bring some of its content to mobile phones.
Additionally, the company just scooped up Endoxon, a developer of Internet mapping technology, to boost its own mapping services in Europe. Pair mapping with GPS with mobile, and you've got a real potential money-maker.
Google has surely come along way from its simple search-engine roots, and I can't help but wonder where it might end. It's already dishing out search results, news feeds, productivity apps, e-mail, streaming video, ads to various media, and now it may be seeking to deliver the aforementioned hardware and connectivity to access that stuff. My colleauge Mike Barton anticipates Google could also dip into VoIP with a targetted acquisition.
That all makes for quite an impressive resume. At what point does it raise monopolistic alarms?
Oh, wait: It already has.
Posted by Ted Samson on December 19, 2006 12:05 PM
December 13, 2006 | Comments: (0)
Blogger gets request to de-Google
Suppose you're an online vendor who's displeased with the ranking of your business Web site on Google. Well, you could try tweaking your ad words. Perhaps you could consider better marketing. Heck, maybe you could contact Google for answers or guidance. You might get lucky.
Or you might conclude that the best approach is to ask that people with higher-ranked sites de-Google themselves immediately.
Astonishingly, an unnamed e-merchant out there in cyberspace has taken the latter approach, sending threatening letters to blogger Dean Hunt. (Hunt's blog, by the way, is called "Deano's World - Internet Marketing, Madrid, Life, SEO & More." It appears to cover all types of topics.)
Anyway, the first odd e-mail he received, sent Dec. 8, reads as follows:
"My name is [edited] and I run [edited].com""I have been running the site for over two years and we have been ranked very highly for the search term [edited]."
"On Thursday morning I checked our google positions and your site is now above us for this term. I haev checked your blog and it has nothing to do with [edited], so I think it would be best all round if you remove your blog from google for this search term."
I know what you're probably thinking: What's the search term? Well, Dean hasn't shared that bit of info in his posts, nor the name of his adversary's business. Maybe he doesn't want to give Mr. Whacky extra publicity -- or maybe he's just trying to further protect his Web ranking by shielding his super-secret search term.
Dean did reply to the letter, though, essentially telling the sender that: a) he never attempted to rank for the mystery term; b) the fact that he does may be more of a commentary about the quality of the complainer's site; c) there's nothing he can do to remove himself for Search Term X; and d) the angry Web vendor should probably spend more time tweaking his site than e-mailing ridiculous requests.
Lo, Dean received a reply from the mystery merchant -- one with a more threatening tone:
"You have to understand Dean that an online business should be higher in Google than a blog.""Don't forget that Google is a business as well, they obviously make more money from other businesses than they do from blogs, so it is in their interest that I am higher than you for certain searches."
"I have also contacted my lawyer about this issue, so you should expect a letter in the post very soon."
While we wait to hear from Mr. Nutjob's attorney, how about we speculate on just what search term he wants to claim as his own? My co-worker Stephanie suggested it's SEO, which is in the title of Hunt's blog. SEO stands for search engine optimization, and apparently, Hunt knows a thing or two about that subject -- at least relative to others out there.
Also, have you ever received (or sent?) similarly odd requests to anyone?
Posted by Ted Samson on December 13, 2006 01:12 PM
December 05, 2006 | Comments: (0)
Celebrity dirt tops Yahoo searches
A Web site featuring gossip about blonde wrestling pop stars could amass a remarkable following, considering the top search terms of 2006 on Yahoo.com.
The Yahoo Buzz Web site posted a host of top 10 search subjects for the year, including overall searches as well as breakdowns by category such as blogs and bloggers, news stories, and politicians.
Following Britney on the overall top 10 list was wrestling, er, sports entertainment empire WWE. No. 3 was singer Shakira, followed by fellow blonde crooners Jessica Simpson and Paris Hilton. American Idol was No. 6, then Beyonce Knowles, Chris Brown, Pamela Anderson, and Lindsay Lohan. (I can't help but suspect this list is filtered, given the absence of terms such as sex and porn.)
Blog-readers appear to be drawn to celebrity gossip and politics. The top 10 blogs/blogger searches on Yahoo for 2006 were as follows:
1. Perez Hilton (Celebrity gossip)
2. The Superficial (Celebrity gossip)
3. Pink Is the New Blog (Celebrity gossip and mockery)
4. Huffington Post (Politics)
5, TMZ.com (Celebrity gossip)
6. Daily Kos (Politics)
7. Jossip (Manhattan-centric news and gossip)
8. A Socialite's Life (Celebrity gossip)
9. Little Green Footballs (Politics)
10. Gawker (Manhattan-centric news and gossip)
Other top searches:
News story: Steve Irwin's death (Iraq was No. 3, following the death of Anna Nicole's son.)
Politicians: George W. Bush
Sports team: New York Yankees
Baby searches: Suri Cruise
You can see the entire set of lists right here.
Those of you interested in search trends might also find this article by Danny Sullivan over at SearchEngineWatch handy.
Posted by Ted Samson on December 5, 2006 01:59 PM
November 07, 2006 | Comments: (0)
Already the master of Internet advertising, Google now appears poised to extend its reach to other media, including traditional newspaper and radio, and perhaps beyond.
Google's dominance of Netvertising is difficult to dispute: Its ads are as prevalent on the Web as Starbucks are on city street corners. (In San Francisco, at least, you can find them across the street from one another.)
Anyway, Google has reaped $150 billion in Internet ad revenue in its relatively short existence, and it's moved to make its AdWords program even more accessible to anyone with a blog or a Web site via its recent do-it-yourself search engine, Google Custom Search Engine. If the program picks up, expect to see even more Google-driven ads on all types of Web sites.
And now in the past week, the company has revealed plans to extend its advertising reach offline, both to print media and radio, according to reports.
The search behemoth announced this week a trial plan to allow advertiser to buy space in popular print publications such as The New York Times and The Washington Post, according to reports. Participating advertisers can go online to see what space is available in their publication of choice, then purchase that space and upload the ad artwork. Thus far, 100 advertisers are eligible to participate, buying space in a total of 50 publications. Those numbers will increase if the program proves successful.
Also this week, the company announced plans to start testing Google Audio Ads, aimed at radio stations -- and likely podcasters. The program will allow "advertisers ... to go online and sign up for targeted radio ads using the same AdWords system they use to buy Web search ads," Reuters reports.
Notably, Google picked up radio ad company for dMarc Broadcasting earlier this year. Google was to pay $102 million in cash for all outstanding equity interests in dMarc, and agreed to make up to $1.136 billion in additional payments when and if certain performance goals were met.
Moreover, according to reports, the company is now aggressively hiring sales people at a rate of 50 percent more than the going salary for radio sales people.
So let's see: Online advertising? Check. Print ads? Check. Audio ads for radio and perhaps podcasts? Check.
What's next? Well, I'd say the company is in a great position to cash in on delivering advertising through another increasingly popular medium: streaming digital video.
Reports note that more and more people are turning to their computer as source of video entertainment in lieu of television, and lo, Google just recently scooped up YouTube.
Notably, some skeptics have scoffed at the Google-YouTube deal, noting that Google plopped down too much money ($1.65 billion) for a startup that's not only a potential magnet for infringement lawsuits, but also one that has no discernable means of generating revenue.
Well, perhaps Google knows what it's doing. I envision Google starting a Google Video Ads program by which advertisers will be able to buy ad space at the beginning of all types of video clips throughout the Net, including YouTube -- which has tons of users and millions of daily hits, and it may very well be a good testing ground for a video-ad program. Oh, and according to reports, YouTube is in talks with Verizon to bring its clips to users' mobile devices, which means more eyeballs on YouTube clips -- and thus on ads.
How might it work? Well, bear in mind that YouTube clips are all tagged. Thus, a purveyor of pet products might have an ad attached to a YouTube video tagged as "cat" or "lemur." Sony, Microsoft, or Nintendo might put ads for their next-gen game consoles before a video-game related clip on a popular gaming site.
And perhaps the NBCs and Comedy Centrals of the world will decide they want to play nice with Google when they find that they can reap some advertising dollars by running sponsored TV clips on YouTube -- or incorporating Google-delivered video ads into TV clips on their own Web sites.
I do believe Google has devised a very powerful and impressive advertising program that leverages the broad reach of the Internet to encompass various types of media, both online and offline. There's a lot of potential here.
Search rivals needn't only be the ones feeling threatened by Google's seemingly unstoppable growth and momentum; the company is now encroaching more deeply into the territory of traditional ad brokers.
As for user: Who knows where else the next ad delivered by Google will show up. A billboard? Your cell phone? Your cerebral cortex? Or maybe on the cozy of the cup for your next latte at Starbucks -- no matter which side of the street you bought it.
What do you think of Google's ever-expanding ad program?
Posted by Ted Samson on November 7, 2006 09:59 PM
November 07, 2006 | Comments: (0)
Say what you want about Google's various entries into the application space, the company understands advertising. For now GOOG owns almost 50 percent of the Web search market, and an even bigger slice of online ads. In the truest sense of the word, AdSense is the Goose that Laid Google's Golden Eggs. So while Google fine tunes its Software As A Service strategy, it's not hesitating to use those stuffed coffers to double down in an area it knows well: advertising. According to a report from Reuters, Google is planning to purchase a big chunk of advertising inventory from industry leader Clear Channel, just days after announcing a program to expand ads to 50 print newspapers, as well.
And, with rumors swirling that Google plans to gobble up ClearChannel, the company's investment in "old line" advertising models could become even larger.
As with many of Google's moves (though maybe not YouTube), the print and broadcasting play makes sense. Google is already the platform of choice for the most dynamic and sought after form of ad purchasing: online, while newspapers and the radio industry are still decentralized and encumbered by old models of selling ads and measuring audiences. Google's already made a substantial investment in radio advertising, buying dMarc Broadcasting in a deal that could cost up to $1 billion -- but that was a technology play.
It remains to be seen whether Google can reinvigorate these declining mediums, at least as far as advertising dollars or concerned, or whether Google is just spreading its bets around the table.
https://mt.infoworld.com/mt-bin/mt.cgi?__mode=view&_type=entry&blog_id=2&id=8788&saved_added=1#
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Posted by Paul Roberts on November 7, 2006 04:05 PM
October 31, 2006 | Comments: (0)
Robert David Steele, a former clandestine services case officer for the CIA, has accused search behemoth Google of being in bed with the intelligence agency and government departments. Steele aired these views on Alex Jones's nationally syndicated radio show, according to reports.
"I think that Google has made a very important strategic mistake in dealing with the secret elements of the U.S. government -- that is a huge mistake and I'm hoping they'll work their way out of it and basically cut that relationship off," Steele said, claiming to have confirmed his allegation with his ties in the CIA.
He also said that "Google was a little hypocritical when they were refusing to honor a Department of Justice request for information because they were heavily in bed with the Central Intelligence Agency, the office of research and development."
An MP3 recording of the Steele interview is available to Prison Planet.tv subscribers.
In addition to working for the CIA, Steele is a former Marine Corps infantry and intelligence officer for twenty years and was the second-ranking civilian in U.S. Marine Corps Intelligence from 1988 to 1992. He's also the founder and CEO of OSS.Net, an organization committed to furthering international understanding of the importance of open source intelligence.
This isn't the first time Steele, or anyone else for that matter, has suggested ties between Google and the government. A Web site called HSToday.us reported in January:
"Google's alleged secret relationship with the U.S. intelligence community (IC) was divulged by an IT contractor and confirmed by U.S. intelligence authorities familiar with the matter during the OSS.Net IOP conference near Washington, DC. The contractor, who spoke on a not-for-attribution basis, said that at least one U.S. intelligence agency he declined to identify is working to 'leverage Google's [user] data monitoring' capability as part of an effort by the IC to glean from this data information of 'national security intelligence interest' in the war on terror."
Of course, none of these allegations have yet to be proven, and the fact that the aforementioned report came from an unnamed source at a conference sponsored by Steele's own company adds a few grains of salt to the story.
Still, given the power Google wields with its data-mining abilities, it's interesting -- and perhaps unsettling -- to contemplate the implications of ties with intelligence organizations.
What do you think? Is this simply baseless fodder for conspiracy theorists, or something that warrants deeper investigation?
Posted by Ted Samson on October 31, 2006 02:29 PM
October 30, 2006 | Comments: (0)
Google to MS: Let users choose
McAfee and Symantec aren't the only companies asking Microsoft to play fair with its forthcoming Vista OS. Searchasaurus Google today urged Big Red to ensure that with its future products, users can easily choose among search tools and apps.
This request was made in Belgium by David C. Drummond, senior vice president of corporate development at Google, according to reports, after a meeting with antitrust regulators for the European Union. "It's been our view that any new version of Microsoft products that include search, that that be done in a way that preserves user choice for search and other applications," Drummond said, according to the Associated Press.
Microsoft, which has been hankering for a piece of the profitable search market, has been pushing its Live search engine.
The EU expressed competition concerns to Microsoft in a letter last March, citing the company's "plans to bundle in an Internet search function, a digital rights management program and software for creating fixed document format comparable to PDF, and security features," the IDG News Service reported.
"We are concerned about the possibility that Vista will include software elements which are available separately -- either sold by Microsoft or by other software companies," commission spokesman Jonathan Todd said then.
Todd added last March, "There is also the possibility that we won't have all the technical information needed for competitors to make their software interoperable with Vista."
The latter sentiment was rather prophetic, as McAfee and Symantec, along with other security ISVs, have cried foul that Microsoft hasn't given them what they need to ensure their security wares run correctly on Vista.
Microsoft continues to deny any wrongdoing.
As for Google, the company spokesman said that it's too early to tell whether it has cause yet to make antitrust allegations.
Posted by Ted Samson on October 30, 2006 05:16 PM
October 05, 2006 | Comments: (0)
The Top 10 Google Book Search Books
Google's at the Frankfurt Book Fair this week and is using the occasion to publish their own literary "Top 10 List" based on the Google Book Search. The list, which is based on searches done between September 17 and 23rd is lefty geek-chic at its best and, as Google's own PR points out, bares absolutely no resemblance to other book lists like the New York Times Bestseller List or Amazon's best sellers. What are the Googleati searching for? How about a tome on evolutionary biology and tropical flowers, the Holy Qur'an, that Noam Chomsky book that Hugo Chavez was toting around at the U.N. and a guide to building all terrain robots. Anybody who can tease some kind of zeitgeist out of this list wins the antivirus company shwag gathering dust on my desk.
So here it is: Google's Top 10 Books, with links:
Diversity and Evolutionary Biology of Tropical Flowers By Peter K. Endress
Merriam Webster's Dictionary of Synonyms
Measuring and Controlling Interest Rate and Credit Risk By Frank J. Fabozzi, Steven V. Mann, Moorad Choudhry
Ultimate Healing: The Power of Compassion By Lama Zopa Rinpoche; Edited by Ailsa Cameron
The Holy Qur'an Translated by Abdullah Yusuf Ali
Peterson's Study Abroad 2006 (Thomson Peterson's)
Hegemony Or Survival: America's Quest for Global Dominance By Noam Chomsky
Merriam-Webster's Dictionary of English Usage
Perrine 's Literature: Structure, Sound, and Sense By Thomas R Arp, Greg Johnson
Build Your Own All-Terrain Robot By Brad Graham, Kathy McGowan
Posted by Paul Roberts on October 5, 2006 02:23 PM
September 26, 2006 | Comments: (0)
Litigants to AOL: Thanks for nothing
Some former users of AOL have filed a lawsuit against the one-time ISP king in reponse to it sharing users' personal search data with, well, the world.
Perusing their lawsuit filing may better illustrate just why they're resorting to litigation. Seems some AOLers did complain to the company. And according to the filing, all that AOL offered to appease them was a month of free service.
Free service, huh? Is it anything like the free service AOL is already providing? And a whole month's worth, no less!
Nice, guys. If that's true, it's like a restraunteur offering a food-poisoned patron complementary bread and tap water with his next meal. Your offer is pathetic to the point of being insulting, and odds are, he's not coming back to take you up on it.
I suspect even the paid subscribers -- those doling out as much as $25.95 a month for "premium" dial-up service or $14.95 for DSL -- weren't particularly dazzled by the offer.
Notably, AOL does offer a "Privacy Wall with as much as $10,000 ID Theft Insurance coverage" with its premium services. Is there "We Won't Share Your Personal Search Data With the World Again Insurance" coverage?
Posted by Ted Samson on September 26, 2006 12:44 PM
September 26, 2006 | Comments: (0)
Yahoo imposes unpaid winter break
Yahoo employees looking for a good excuse not to visit the in-laws in Bumpass, VA this holiday season won't be able to claim they'll be stuck at the office.
First revealed on Valleywag, Yahoo has told its 10,000-plus employees that it's closing down its U.S. offices for the week between Christmas and New Year's and that workers are required to burn unused vacation time for the duration.
According to the internal memo sent around to Yahoos, those who have the vacation time accrued will automatically have it docked from Dec. 26 through Dec. 29. Those who don't are permitted to borrow future vacation days.
Following are excerpts from the memo:
"This makes good business sense and is common practice for many media and technology companies during what is traditionally a quiet work week. ... This will allow many US Yahoos to enjoy guilt-free time-off while helping Yahoo! reduce unused vacation time. ...""Taking a little time-off during a work week when so many of our partners and advertisers are also closed is the prudent thing for Yahoo! to do. Please contact your manager or human resources business partner for additional information and please enjoy the time off!"
Yahoo has since confirmed the accuracy of the memo, according to AP: "Yahoo spokeswoman Joanna Stevens confirmed the e-mail's authenticity, as well as the company's closure plans. 'This will make sure everyone has time to recharge their batteries,' Stevens said."
The move is likely indicative of the stiff competition that Yahoo faces in the race among search engines for online ad revenue. Stevens described the savings of the forced break as "minimal."
So here's my two cents on the subject: If the savings are minimal, why bother? Yahoo is undoubtedly frustrating a lot of employees by imposing this vacation on them -- particularly those who don't really want or need time off between Christmas and New Year's.
Maybe Yahoo should have made it optional, encouraging employees to take time off for the good of the team. Or perhaps the company could have offered a little incentive. But dictating to employees how they're going to use their hard-earned vacation time, then trying to frame it as some great benefit, doesn't strike me as an optimal HR or managerial manuever.
Plus when companies start making sudden and rather unorthodox budget cuts like this, you know that at least a few employees are going to start updating their resumes, and some stockholders might be a little less enthusiastic about your company's future.
What do you think? Was this a prudent move on Yahoo's part? How would you feel about getting unpaid vacation time during the last week of December?
Posted by Ted Samson on September 26, 2006 10:43 AM
August 21, 2006 | Comments: (0)
Blowback on the AOL search-query scandal reached high up the corporate ladder today, as the company announced CTO Maureen Govern has decided to leave the company immediately.
According to Bloomberg, the position will be filled by President of AOL Digital Services John McKinley, whom Govern replaced as CTO in September 2005. The company also plans to create a task force to improve privacy practices, a much-needed PR move, if anything, in the wake of the recent privacy scandal, which included The New York Times' outing of 62-year-old Thelma Arnold of Lilburn, Ga., as AOL searcher No. 4417749.
Two other AOL employees have also been dismissed.
AOL's technology department has not been the only thorn in Time Warner's side as of late. Last week Time Warner announced it would restate earnings going back 6 1/2 years to fix accounting errors in response to a 2005 SEC settlement, which required Time Warner to review transactions with 17 companies during 2000 and 2001.
Add to this the current drag AOL is perceived to be having on Time Warner's overall financial performance, and it appears more changes may be in the offing.
Posted by Jason Snyder on August 21, 2006 12:51 PM
August 15, 2006 | Comments: (0)
With Tuesday's announced purchase of Neven Vision, Google has positioned itself one step closer to creating an indexable visual simulacrum of reality on the Web.
And though early estimates suggest that Google's acquisition of the biometric and photo recognition company has accelerated the search giant's projected deadline for parsing and cataloguing the entire breadth of experience by half a generation, luckily for the paranoid among us, the announcement represents a mere molecule on the pin of sweat and ingenuity it will take to render the full breadth of what we see and ever have seen anyone's mere mouse click away.
And yet where was I after the Chicago Bulls completed their second three-peat, having blacked out wandering Grant Park only to find myself in Wisconsin at the Kenosha dog track the next day with a half-eaten bratwurst in hand? Who was the girl dressed as Agent Scully at the Halloween party when I threw up inside the cardboard Sylvia Plath oven I had fashioned over my head before falling down the stairs and ripping my dress? Was that a person or a tree I was yelling at that time I fell off that bike I, well, borrowed from the PX just outside Frankfurt, Germany, in 1997? And so on.
Perhaps one day, with a world's worth of social networking and a few choice keystrokes, I'll find out.
In the meantime, Search Engine Journal provides some intriguing insights into the possibilities this deal presents, annotating a number of the image-based patents Neven Vision holds, including an image-based inquiry system and a search engine that tap the camera capabilities of mobile phones, as well as an image-based biometric system for identifying individuals , requiring a "single digital image depicting a human face as source data."
Posted by Jason Snyder on August 15, 2006 05:15 PM
July 31, 2006 | Comments: (0)
Glitch sends Google stock tumbling
The Nasdaq is looking into an incident that sent Google's stock plummeting by $350 a share last week, The New York Sun reported Monday.
The report said:
The incident, which some Street pros contend is a blunder of major proportions by Nasdaq, surprisingly managed to escape the eyes of the financial press and was never reported even though the decline -- an astonishing drop of nearly $350 a share in a mere 10 minutes -- was the greatest ever in the history of the stock market in after-hours trading -- and undoubtedly in regular trading, as well.Here's what happened. On Thursday, trading in Google wrapped up the day at $387.12 a share at the usual closing time of 4 p.m. A minute after the close, Google announced its second-quarter results: better than expected earnings, but decelerating revenue growth from the prior quarter.
At 4:02 p.m., in after-hours trading, Google's shares got creamed, initially tumbling to as low as $364, down more than $23 a share from its close, but then rallying back to $391, for a gain of nearly $14.
At about the $391 price point, an order originated on Instinet-ATS (a Nasdaq company) that triggered trades between 4:10 p.m. and 4:12 p.m. at a price as low as $38 (representing a drop of almost $350 a share from the close). In brief, someone from a Nasdaq member firm punched in an erroneous figure to commence a trade.
That led to a host of subsequent trading at $38, as well as at $37.81, $37.82, $37.99, $38.02, $38.03, and $38.05.
Posted by Mike Barton on July 31, 2006 03:17 PM
July 06, 2006 | Comments: (0)
The recent announcement that "Google" will be added to the next edition of the Merriam-Webster dictionary as a verb raises interesting questions about the future of everyone's favorite search brand. For many Internet users, "to Google" is already so synonymous with the act of searching the Web that you might as well use a lowercase G, but lawyers at the search engine might see it differently.
Trademark law in the U.S. requires companies to defend their marks against unauthorized use or else lose exclusive control over them. For example, if you don't work for the Xerox corporation your document equipment makes photocopies, not Xeroxes. In one of the more famous cases of trademark neglect, the word "aspirin," once a trademark of the Bayer corporation, has long since lapsed into public-domain status.
Will inclusion of capital-G "Google" in the dictionary bring the company's brand one step closer to becoming lowercase-G "google"? It's entirely possible. In fact, Google actually raised the possibility of losing protection for its trademark in last year's annual report. To prevent unauthorized use, Google will ultimately have to take legal action -- but can you really sue the dictionary and still not be evil?
Posted by Neil McAllister on July 6, 2006 05:07 PM
June 27, 2006 | Comments: (0)
Version 4 of Google Desktop is out, but more noteworthy with the news is that it is out of beta.
"We're post-beta!", Google writes.
That gold feeling is lost quickly with the news that follows in the same paragraph: "Plus there are now beta versions of Google Desktop in 27 languages (up from 16)."
And the desktop wars have ramped up a notch against Yahoo and Microsoft (Vista)with Google Desktop Gadget Designer, which lets developers customize apps.
Google is giving away $8000 in a contest for developers to come up with the best gadget. "The contest is only open for the next month, so put on your coding hat and start churning out those cool gadgets you've always wanted."
Does this news of Desktop coming out of beta portend Gmail may be next? Geez, I've used it for years. But would you trust Google to handle payments with its GBuy (PayPal killer) in beta form?
And what's the next big widget/gadget must-have? I turned it off in Vista right away, until someone convinces me with a clever one that I'll use every day.
Talk back to us below.
Posted by Mike Barton on June 27, 2006 04:46 PM
June 07, 2006 | Comments: (0)
I was surprised in my conversation with Google Spreadsheet product manager Jonathan Rochelle that he was working out of Google's New York City development group. Err...New York City? Wasn't aware there _was_ a wing of the GooglePlex in the Big Apple. Turns out the answer to that question has a lot to do with where Google Spreadsheet came from. While much of the product development comes out of Google Labs, the guts of Google Spreadsheet is an application formerly known as XL2Web by 2Web Technologies which, unbeknownst to most of us, Google bought last year. There's not much out there on XL2Web, though eWEEK's Jim Rapoza did a fine write-up of the company's first release back in July, 2004. His review touches on a lot of the key features that Rochelle, formerly XL2Web's CEO, highlighted in his conversation to me and a lot of other journos this week: the impossibility of using and sharing spreadsheets online.
That's the main strength of Google Spreadsheet, at least for the time being: you can import your data from Excel, then modify it in realtime online and share it with others using your (free) Web browser. Of course, back then XL2Web wanted $100 a month to host spreadsheets, and $35,000 for "companies deploying a server internally for unlimited use." Now, presumably, the cost is $0. Thanks, Google!
The weaknesses? There are lots -- including an inability to work on your spreadsheets offline, and an inability to lock cells or worksheets when two or more people are working on a spreadsheet simultaneously, meaning the last one in wins when it comes to joint edits. GOOG's going to be working on that and presumeably a lot more, including links between all the different pieces they're putting together: mail, word processing, spreadsheet, collaboration, Rochelle said.
Stay tuned!
Posted by Paul Roberts on June 7, 2006 08:02 PM
May 15, 2006 | Comments: (0)
In a closely watched move, Snap has unveiled its pay-to-play search.
The Associated Press report sums up the move for consumers: "Snap will lump together search results financed by advertisers in the same column as Web links drawn from algorithms programmed to disregard financial incentives and find the most relevant response to a user's request."
The Merc reports that marketers are drooling at the idea, from the entrepreneur who first showed Google how to spin cyberspace searches into real-world gold, Bill Gross. It "sounds like a dream come true," said Jinenne Sutherland, a manager at Organic.
That's because the $16 billion market for online advertising has a secret. The small text-based ads that made Google a Wall Street superstar do not seem to be working as well as they used to.
Gross said he thinks his new company can be as powerful an idea.
With Snap, advertisers decide how much they are willing to pay if a customer completes a certain action -- like buying a product or filling out a form. Advertisers submit their bids and create a keyword campaign.
If a Snap user visits an advertiser's site and completes the desired action, the advertiser pays Snap. Otherwise, the only cost is a $50 non-refundable sign-up deposit.
"For the advertiser, it's the ultimate," said Snap Chief Executive Tom McGovern. "They only pay when they ring the register."
Snap originally intended to place a light gray "sponsored result" disclaimer next to the Web addresses of all the ads that crop up. Just hours before the new site's debut, Snap decided to make the disclaimers even more prominent by changing the coloring to bright orange and increasing the size of the type. The light gray label wasn't prominent enough to satisfy Gary Ruskin, executive director of Commercial Alert, a Ralph Nader-based watchdog group behind a 2001 complaint that prompted the FTC to issue its search engine advertising guidelines.
I think the whole online advertising market's click-centrism is leading to more than blurred lines in advertising. Web site that make editorial decisions obsessed with clicks are getting downright blurry editorially.
CNET's News.com, which used to be pretty tight and reliable, has become one I can't grasp. Sure there is not as much tech news compared to the late 1990s, but general science stories such as global warming on an IT Web site? And how many fluffy blog posts can we handle?
The job of responsible journalism is to filter all the garbage to present news that matters. Now that News.com has dropped its "News of change" branding does that mean we'll get even more from anything under the sun with the hope of clicks.
The big question is this: Why are online publishers being held to a different standard than print media? You can't click on a page of printed paper, but a full-page ad may affect your purchasing decisions. Same goes online for me. I hardly ever click other than by mistake. But I do remember ads and brands and associate them with Web sites.
And how does a click differentiate between a CEO and a teenager? That question highlights how the current ad thinking hasn't even evolved to modern publishing practices. Magazines, which are getting ever more vertical, simply cannot work under this model with becoming blurry.
Talk back to us on the big blur -- ads and editorial -- below.
Posted by Mike Barton on May 15, 2006 11:34 AM
May 11, 2006 | Comments: (0)
There are a number of reasons a site can be banned from Google's increasingly make-or-break indexing.
The worst thing is not knowing why? SEOJunkie.com has made freely available its web crawl/analysis tool Google Ban Checker, of which author Sufyan writes:
While modding over at SEOChat, I posted a tool Is Banned By Google? Much to my surprise, it became quite popular and I received tons of emails / IMs from people requesting me to improve it some more and to add a couple of features that were not present then. Also, I read many threads at numerous forums people discussing about this tool and asking for an update.So I continued working on this tool whenever I had time to. Now, it is finished up and ready to be used. Since it is quite simple to use, I’m not bothering writing a documentation or how-to.
InfoWorld is having some trouble with Google News picking up our news stories from our main news page, while Tech Watch is picked up apparently as our primary news source.
The biggest problem is we cannot get a straight answer from Google what the problem is, and we cannot find a contact within Google News to resolve the issue.
I don't think this app addresses our Google News problem, what we understand to be a human judgement issue: someone choosing which part of our site to crawl for Google News. But there is no human at Google who will talk to us.
With word from the Google Ban Checker author that it has been popular, one can assume there are a number of people being banned.
Talk back to us and tell if you've been snubbed by the almighty Google. (And if you know anything that might help with our Google News, do share.)
Posted by Mike Barton on May 11, 2006 11:32 AM
May 10, 2006 | Comments: (0)
Webcast - Live now; watch later
Google Inc. Press Day - Agenda
9:30 am Welcome
Elliot Schrage
9:40 am How We’re Doing and Where We’re Going
Eric Schmidt
10:10 am A Search Technology Overview
Alan Eustace
10:30 am Be Global, Act Local
Omid Kordestani
11:00 am Break
11:25 am Innovation: Many Shapes, Many Sizes
Jonathan Rosenberg
Marissa Mayer
12:15 pm Executive Q&A
1:00 pm Lunch
Posted by Mike Barton on May 10, 2006 09:56 AM
May 08, 2006 | Comments: (0)
Google media day in San Francisco on Wednesday will be flooded by, well, media, so of course expectations are running high for product announcements.
RedHerring.com reports:
Some of the speculation has pointed to a new health vertical from the company, which remained tight-lipped on Monday. "Health has been an area of interest at Google for some time. We have been doing a variety of research in the health area, including how to improve the quality of health-related search results. We have nothing new to announce at this time," said Google spokeswoman Jennifer Hakes.Dan Schatt, an analyst at the consultant firm Celent, said he will be looking for more products along the lines of the calendar Google released in April.
Not good enough, I say.
I want some answers on all the rumor of recent years on dark fiber-free national broadband, GoogleOS, and Google Office.
And I don't expect any tough questions for the Web darling. In a new low for CNET's News.com, one of its reporters is gushing on today about Google's new calendar, which does not even sync with Outlook or others yet.
Seems we're all too happy to have a company that simply gives us what we want in a simple package. Enough already.
And just what to make of Google's latest, the free 3D tool SketchUp? Why?
With the huge talent pool at the Googleplex and free time for each to come up with great ideas I hope the wheels are turning on the next big thing.
Or is Google getting comfortable with having no other competitors it can't just buy and Microsoft following its every move on the pedestrian stuff it could have ticked off years ago?
What should Google be doing for the benefit of Webkind? Send your thoughts along and if I can make the media day I'll see if I can get some answers what is really up its sleeve and put forth your wishlist.
Posted by Mike Barton on May 8, 2006 04:41 PM
May 05, 2006 | Comments: (0)
Google a child porn profiteer?
updated | A Nassau County, New York, legislator has sued Google for "putting Child Pornography profits ahead of the well-being of children and community members," reports Chron.com.
Highlights from the report:
"This case is about a multibillion-dollar company that promotes and profits from Child Pornography," the complaint states, adding that Child Pornography "has become an obscenely profitable and integral part" of Google's business model, according to the report.The complaint states that Google's search capability "is so simple and easy that even a child can use it. "Unfortunately," the suit continues, "this is the unabated injury and harm that [Google] has, in fact, facilitated, aided and abetted, in dereliction of its legal duties."
Simple searches on Google not only turn up results that provide easy access to Child Pornography that is readily available for minors to view but also, alarmingly, reveal "sponsored links" that are obscene and illegal from which Google generates sponsorship revenue.
Porn is obviously the Web's dirty little non-secret. (Nielsen//NetRatings says hardcore adult websites regularly rank in the top five for men aged 25-54 in its competition index, which reveals standout trends in web use, I have reported for The Sydney Morning Herald.) But child porn is a far differentt matter, in most states and countries.
China is one thing when it comes to PR disasters for the do-no-evil web giant. Child porn is an entirely more difficult matter when it comes to staunch family groups.
Clearly parents have a duty to tame the Web for their kids.
A Google spokesman said: "Child pornography is vile and illegal and Google prohibits it in our products. When we find or are made aware of any child pornography, we remove it from our products, including our search engine. We also report it to the appropriate law enforcement officials and fully cooperate with the law enforcement community to combat child pornography. In addition, Google offers a service called SafeSearch for our search engine that works to filter out adult content."
He said the company's advertising policy, "which is online, says specifically: Advertising is not permitted for the promotion of child pornography or other non-consensual material."
More information about SafeSearch can be found on its Web site.
Is Google, and the others, doing enough to cleanse the Web of child porn? Talk back to us below.
Posted by Mike Barton on May 5, 2006 11:10 AM
May 04, 2006 | Comments: (0)
Microsoft takes AdCenter stage
The arms race between Microsoft and Google moves to a new level today with Microsoft's splashy launch of its AdCenter platform for search engine advertising.
The rivalry between the companies has been heating up rapidly this week, what with Amazon dumping Google for Windows Live, Google complaining to the EC about the anti-competitive nature of IE7's search link, and speculation swirling about Microsoft mulling a deal with Yahoo to fight Google
Microsoft is taking very seriously its mission to make inroads into Internet services and software, where Google is a leader. As an analyst quoted in the New York Times said: "Microsoft doesn't have to kill Google, but it has to narrow the gap."
AdCenter is Microsoft's most determined effort yet to catch Google. As Steve Ballmer spelled out in a memo last week, "Further growth of AdCenter is key" to taking on the search giant.
Speaking to MSN advertisers on Wednesday, Bill Gates addressed the issue of the companies' rivalry and pledged that his company would "keep Google honest."
I'm tempted to say "Physician heal thyself." What do you say?
Posted by Caroline Craig on May 4, 2006 07:46 AM
April 17, 2006 | Comments: (0)
They say a picture is worth a thousand words, and Microsoft is looking to seize the rich information for its Photo2Search, which it said today will return Web pages with information about the places in the photos sent from cell phones.
Microsoft writes:
Take a photo.That handy gadget you've been coveting is on sale at the mall. How does its price compare to those offered elsewhere?
Snap a picture.
A new, blockbuster movie arrives at your local theater. Thumbs up, or thumbs down?
Point and shoot.
It can't be that easy, can it? Xing Xie, a researcher for the Web Search and Mining group within Microsoft Research Asia, says that, yes, it can...
"At that time," Xie recalls, "the idea was very simple: Use a camera phone to do a Web search. This is very interesting, because inputting images is much more convenient than inputting text queries on a small device."
Photo2Search works like this: Seeking information about something seen, a user takes a photo of the object and sends the photo, via e-mail or Multimedia Messaging Service, to a Web-based server, which searches an image database for matches. The server then delivers database information—whether it be a Web page featuring the object in the photo or information associated with the object—to the user, who can act on the information received: read a menu, enter a gallery, book a hotel room, make a purchase
The move follows the granting last week of a patent to Google for voice-based search.
Posted by Mike Barton on April 17, 2006 03:41 PM
April 12, 2006 | Comments: (0)
Reports say "a recently published patent provides further evidence that Google is developing a voice-activated search engine".
Google Voice Search has been no big secret on the Google Labs Web site for more than a year, but Patent No. 7027987 was filed Tuesday.
The patent involves "a voice interface for search engines. Through the use of a language model, phonetic dictionary and acoustic models, a server generates an n-best hypothesis list or word graph."
IBM was touting voice-in, text-out as the way to go beyond the limitations of ever smaller cell phones in 1999, and the Google is not the only one to be working in the area.
News.com reports a voice-activated Internet system works with speech-to-text conversion software called Maestro was unveiled in Israel in May of last year.
Maestro is said to convert spoken search requests into a text of query-friendly words which are relayed to a search engine and then returned to the searcher audibly.
A Google spokesman told News.com that "prospective product announcements should not be inferred from our patent applications", but this is too huge in terms of general appeal to believe it would not happen.
Just think how awkward it is to use a conventional cell phone for Web searching, or any text input for that matter. And, despite smart phone design advancements, who wouldn't want a smaller phone?
Watch this space, as Tech Watch will be watching for you.
Posted by Mike Barton on April 12, 2006 02:44 PM
March 01, 2006 | Comments: (0)
Little trouble for Google in big China?
News on Wednesday that China had set up its own top-level domain names to snub the U.S. by bypassing its DNS servers probably turned some heads for only a brief while -- it was apparently a false report by an official Chinese newspaper.
However there's no mistaking that Google's snub of the Chinese government by moving its search records for its Chinese site Google.cn to protect users' privacy, could hurt its relations.
Google played by the Chinese governent's rules of censorship to operate Google.cn, but has refused the U.S. Justice Department's January request for search data that Yahoo and AOL have turned over to the government. Google argues that disclosing this information would "undermine" the trust of users and "unnecessarily burden Google."
Company decides to offer censored search services in China, rather than none at all
Google head honcho Eric Schmidt said the decision to censor in China tool more than a year, and would be a lesser evil than boycotting business in the country altogether.
Late last month, Chinese officials investigated Google's permit to operate its newly launched Web site for China, VOA News reported.
The report said that some saw the investigation as a attempt to pressure Google to co-operate even more if it wants to do business in China.
The question lingering in my mind then is if talks have broken down with this latest move to pull search records out of China? If not yet, they might.
Yahoo lost a lot of cred worldwide by releasing search data to China's government, which ended in the jailing of two Chinese citizens for their internet activities. The world of hurt continues with a report on Tuesday saying court papers confirm Yahoo participation in Chinese prosecution of the two people.
China is a huge market for Google, but its do-no-evil mantra, which is the centrepiece of its confidence with consumers, puts it at odds with if the country's government should it, like Yahoo, be asked to turn in people for their Net activities.
Is Google's presence in China a contradiction? Leave us your comments, below.
P.S. If you have something else on your mind, drop us a line at the new Tech Watch Open Mic.
Posted by Mike Barton on March 1, 2006 03:26 PM
January 09, 2006 | Comments: (0)
Google Video Store: We're still closed
Update: They must have heard me, because the "coming soon" message is gone and now there's more content and information on the Video Store. But I don't see the NBA content yet.
Google is still growing into its big corporate shoes.
During the company's much hyped presentation at CES last Friday, the Google Video Store was launched, promising a smorgasbord of TV shows, sports videos, and independent films.
The company did clearly state in its press release that the Video Store would be "available soon," however the tardiness of the store's opening is somewhat of a black eye for Google.
Media coverage of Google's keynote was heavy, not to mention the week of build up and speculation that preceded it. It seems like Google is blowing a major opportunity to capitalize on curious users who have visited the Video Store looking for the new goods. I'm sure that with so many different content partners timing is a difficult thing to peg, but it really does make a difference to kick off a new offering with something to show.
Posted by Cathleen Moore on January 9, 2006 05:15 PM
January 06, 2006 | Comments: (0)