Cal Lectures with Google

While UC Berkeley has been sharing a limited stream of its lectures as public videos since 2001, it is stepping up the effort with a dedicated Cal page in Google Video. In fact, sharing the valuable access is part of its curriculum strategy, part of the wave of 'coursecasting' as Reuters notes. Currently more than a dozen college courses and symposia are available, with more to be added in the coming months.
(Very much in the spirit of public education, I might add. w00t, alma mater!)

• Posted by Melanie Colburn at 5:49 PM
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The Search In Paperback, With New Chapter

Well, I'm stuck in Atlanta, waiting for a delayed flight. My wife and I hit the bookstore and what does she find but the paperback edition of The Search, the one with the new chapter. I'm mildly surprised, as it's not supposed to be out till Monday, but there it was. I've been meaning to post some teasers from the new chapter. Thanks to Delta's utter hopelessness, here is the first of a number of installations I'll post over the next few weeks.

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Barely a year has passed since I finished final edits on The Search, which was originally published in September of 2005. I sent the final manuscript to my editor in April of 2005 (yep, it takes nearly six months to get a book out once the manuscript is finished; books, like democracies, are deliberate and plodding beasts). Since then, an awful lot has stayed constant. Google remains the undisputed king of search, Wall Street, and the Internet, and a host of Google’s competitors continue to wring their hands over what do to about it.

But an awful lot has changed, and the pace is quickening. Put mildly, it’s been a busy year in the world that search impacts. Which is to say, pretty much the entire world, from the executive suites at Amazon and Microsoft to the governments of France, Germany, China and the United States.

Google Dances With Dragons
So let’s start in China, with a nod toward the US Department of Justice. If you’ve read this far, that means you read Chapter 8, a chapter starring, among others, Sergey Brin and his company’s tortured decision process as it relates to entering the Chinese market. Well, regardless of the sleepless nights, in the past year Google has entered China with gusto. It not only opened offices and poached staff from Microsoft (prompting an unsuccessful lawsuit from Redmond), it also launched a Chinese native site (Google.cn) and agreed to the rules of the Chinese government (in short, the site is censored).

Now, as I pointed out earlier, this is not a new development for US Internet companies – Yahoo, Microsoft, and many other information services had already submitted their products to Chinese censorship. But when Google made the move, well, that got some attention.

On January 23 Google announced the launch of Google.cn. In a prepared statement defending the move, Andrew McLaughlin, senior policy counsel for Google, wrote: "Google.cn will comply with local Chinese laws and regulations…In deciding how best to approach the Chinese--or any--market, we must balance our commitments to satisfy the interest of users, expand access to information, and respond to local conditions."

In other words, Sergey Brin and Larry Page had argued themselves into entering the world’s largest developing market, just as it seemed they would when I spoke to Brin a year before in Davos. And while Yahoo and Microsoft can go into China without arousing the passions of the US government, Google apparently can not.

Two days after Google announced its service, US Congressmen Chris Smith, a Republican from New Jersey who chairs a House subcommittee on human rights, called immediately for a hearing. His goal: To explore the “operating procedures” of Internet companies who operate in China. Clearly Smith smelled blood: because of its towering profits and seemingly contradictory “Do No Evil” motto, Google was an easy target.

Smith was also spurred into action by disclosures in the press that on multiple occasions Yahoo had cooperated with Chinese government requests for information on suspected dissidents. As a result, at least two Chinese citizens, including a researcher for the New York Times, ended up incarcerated. And Microsoft piled further fuel on the fire when – at the request of the Chinese government - it summarily deleted the online journal a prominent Chinese dissident had kept on Microsoft’s blogging service.

On February 16, 2006, representatives from Yahoo, Cisco, Google, and Microsoft found themselves on the hot seat, but the warmest bum belonged to Eliot Schrage, newly installed VP of Corporate Affairs for Google. Congressman Smith called Schrage and Google out on the company’s informal “Don’t Be Evil” motto, at one point stating that Google had “become evil’s accomplice.” Representative Jim Leach of Iowa went so far as to call Google “a functionary of the Chinese Government.”

Coverage of the hearing dominated the news, and stories around the world showed pictures of Tibetan monks and angry Chinese students protesting Google and imploring the company to “not be evil.” The decision to go into China was clearly damaging Google’s once pristine consumer brand.

Schrage and others admitted that China represented a conundrum, and during the hearings and afterwards there was vague talk of a “coalition” effort – an industry pact of sorts that might actually voice an opinion about China’s attempts to censor its businesses. But such ideas seemed doomed to remain just that – ideas. Were Google, Yahoo, or others to actually voice a strong opinion about Chinese policies, well, Beijing would not look kindly on such moves. Not to mention Wall Street, of course – there’s profit to be made in China, if everyone just keeps their heads down.

While no one has declared the idea of a pact dead, in practical terms it's really not sensible to expect that such an effort will ever take root. After all, this is a group of companies who can't even agree to interconnect their instant messenger networks. To think they might change US policy without the support of, well, the US government, is pretty silly. It seems to me that when it comes to China, only one force can provide leadership: The US government itself.

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A note: It's odd how much a story can change in a few months. I finished this chapter in May, and just four months later there is serious talk about how Google has lost its mojo in China - not one year after it entered the market.

The next installation will focus on the DOJ and Google's software distribution plans.

• Posted by John Battelle at 5:11 PM
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Google Reverses on Releasing Orkut to Brazil

Despite spelling out compliance to Brazil's standing demands for Orkut user data earlier this year, Google today appeals. The timing of the appeal coincides with the deadline for complying with the demand of the Brazilian authorities, placing Google in a spot that risks fines of up to $23,000 a day.

Google indicated it had and would continue to comply with requests to the full extent allowed under US law and which "are issued within the country in which the information is stored," But a Brazilian federal judge earlier disagreed, saying "all the photographs and messages being investigated were published by Brazilians, through Internet connection in national territory. (sic)" From the AP story, "The Sao Paulo federal prosecutor's office said Google was in clear defiance of the judge's order and could be fined at any moment.

Also this week, Business Week notes that Google took down eight Orkut communities at the request of the Brazilian government, in a case it says is unrelated. "The company says those communities, which advocated drunk driving by minors, the pirating of cable television, and illegal drug use, did not comply with Orkut's terms of service, which state it is prohibited to "promote or encourage illegal activity."

• Posted by Melanie Colburn at 4:49 PM
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comScore Revvs Local Search Data

comScore released new, in depth data on local search.

A summary of highlights from the full release:

Among comScore respondents, 41% of searches were directed near the home, rather than as research for travel. And among those local-to-residence searches, 59% were related to media and entertainment, and 52% focused on a specific businesses. "Two out of five local searchers (41 percent) were looking for information on a local service in their home area, including car rental office, dry cleaner or lawyer."

Further, and perhaps most significantly, comScore found that "performing a local search drives consumers to take action. During the second quarter of 2006, 47 percent of local searchers visited a local merchant as a result of their search behavior, while 41 percent made contact offline. More than one-third (37 percent) made contact online as a result of conducting a local area search."

SEW points out that Google (30%) and Yahoo (29%) together dominate the local search field--- which this July's figures described as 63% of US internet users (109 million individuals).

• Posted by Melanie Colburn at 4:16 PM
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Searchmob Roundup

Matt Cutts' Evil Twin Revealed

AdWords Optimizer Review: Use With Caution

NY Post Online Joins Web 2.0

How to Steal Your Competitor's Google Traffic

Is Push Back? Again? Real Networks and Feedster Launch

• Posted by Melanie Colburn at 3:21 PM
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Travelin'...

I'm in the air today and OOP Friday, posting will be light...

• Posted by John Battelle at 7:40 AM
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Searchmob Roundup

Yahoo Acquires Online Video Editor, JumpCut

Have Blogs Replaced Newspapers, and Should We Care?

Using a Blog to Track Down a Missing Retainer

Dynamic, Realtime Travel Planning Info

Behind the Scenes in the Search Engine Labs

Australia via Google Earth

• Posted by Melanie Colburn at 9:29 PM
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Shit Howdy.

Ten years ago, if a Martian from the future visited me at the offices of Wired, and told me that Microsoft would be announcing this, I'd have run him out of the building. No, wait, I would have interviewed him and put him on the cover, come to think of it.

Sure, not surprising to us at the moment, but really, think about what Microsoft was back in the 90s, and what this means now. From the LiveSide post:

At Advertising Week 2006 in New York, Microsoft is set to unveil a new unified global advertising initiative. Under Digital Advertising Solutions, advertisers will be able to more easily reach customers by packaging Microsoft's products, including Xbox, MSN, Windows Live, Office, Windows Mobile, and Microsoft TV under one advertising solution....Clearly Microsoft is not only targeting Google and Yahoo with this advertisement push, but also TV and print media as well.

Recall the days when Microsoft was a software company? Recall that Wired cover when we claimed they were, in fact, a media company? Ah, good times.

• Posted by John Battelle at 8:21 PM
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8 Years Old

My daughter is eight. Google is eight. Somehow, it all makes sense to me now.

• Posted by John Battelle at 8:12 PM
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Merchant Full Circle

Earlier today an odd thing started to happen - new comments started pouring in on a months old post I wrote on MerchantCircle, a local business search play. Apparently today the company started automatically calling merchants in its listings database, and what MerchantCircle had to say really upset any number of business owners. Apparently in the call MerchantCircle informed the business owners of their relative rankings and reputation in the system, regardless of whether or not the news was good. As one might expect, if your entire livelihood is in your small business, and an automated system leaves you a voicemail telling you that there is an "unfavorable review" of your livelihood, why, you take that personally.

So what do you do? Well, you fire up Google and do a search for "Merchantcircle," of course. After all, you want to know what is up with this company, which you've never heard of, and Google is always your first stop. And who has the third link on Google, and the first non MerchantCircle related link? Yup, Searchblog. You read my (not very deep) thoughts on the company, and then notice there is a comments section. AHA! A chance to take action is born, and action is taken.

As more and more comments pile on, the site author (that'd be me) takes notice, and I sent an email to Ben Smith, the CEO, alerting him to the issue. Ben has responded that he's on it.

What I love about this story is how search becomes the connective tissue between cause and action, conversational stitching in real time. Magic.

• Posted by John Battelle at 5:49 PM
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Ning. I Likey The Idea

Om has the scoop on the first look at Ning's new services, backed by Marc Andreessen and run by CEO Gina Bianchini. I was there today getting a demo of the service, which will be showing itself off at Web 2 later this Fall. In short, they are launching open, free, customizable versions of YouTube, MySpace, and Flickr. At once. And that's just the start....it does not lack for ambition.

I really liked the philosophy behind this company and its platform. It has the potential to change the game that major first wave Web 2 companies (like MySpace, Flickr, and YouTube) defined. In short, it's not about one company owning a space - video, or social networking, or photo sharing. It's about letting anyone have these kinds of services. That's biting off a hell of a lot, and there is much to prove, but if the planets align, I have to say, it's an impressive play. More as soon as I can....

From Om's post:

The company, if you ask CEO and cofounder Gina Bianchini, has built a web platform that allows users to clone, and modify many social services that can allow you to share bookmarks, or have your friends help you create a little recipe site. Even your own Hot or Not!

The company is about to launch a new video and photo sharing applications based on the Ning-platform. I can hear readers groaning and saying, not another “something” sharing service. The key difference is that unlike YouTube or Flickr, these new add on are about creating a private space, where you can share family videos and photos. You can make it private and limit access to these spaces.

But most importantly, the Ning Video (and Photo) can help you pull in and organize videos from across all video services like YouTube and Google Videos. If you so desire, you can embed the videos in your blog, or MySpace page.

You can customize the look and feel of your video player. I tried it - its pretty simple actually. In other words, if I could find time to exhale, I might be able to do GigaOMtv. No that is not happening anytime soon, but the power of Ning platform makes it possible.

• Posted by John Battelle at 9:46 PM
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Google Clarifies Philosophy Re: Content

Last night I had a chance to speak to a rep at Google about this post: Google is clarifying and stating, for the record, it's approach to that big, wild world known as Content. From it:

The Internet has broken down many of the barriers that exist between people and information –- effectively democratizing access to human knowledge. By typing just a few keywords into a computer you can learn about almost any subject. Google is one of many organizations that work to make this possible.

But today only a fraction of the world’s information is available online. Our aim to help organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful means working with a lot of information – newspaper articles (many written over a century ago), books (of which there are millions), images, videos (including all of the new footage users are creating), websites, important financial information and much, much more.

Because we don’t own this content, over the years we’ve come up with three primary principles to ensure that we respect content owners and protect their rights:

* we respect copyright;
* we let owners choose whether we index their content in our products;
* we try to bring benefit back to content owners by partnering with them.

There is a lot to say about this, and as regular readers know, I have been somewhat vocal about Google's role in the world of media for some time. While this post might seem rather DBI (dull but important), it comes at a very interesting time for the company. Primarily, it's important for folks at Google to have something to point to when they are in the endless business development meetings with the music, publishing, and entertainment industries. It's clear that scores, if not hundreds of such meetings have ended with a frustrating chorus of "Really, trust us, we swear we aren't out to undermine your business!!!" A post like this helps Google demonstrate to their potential and current partners just that.

This is not a new issue. I wrote in my book about the first complaints from webmasters when Google went live - threats of lawsuits from online museums and the like.

I sense that Google is starting to truly declare its position relative to content creation companies, and it's this: we're not in your business, and won't be. We might impact your business, and in significant ways, but you can't sue us for that, brother. Now, let's go make tons of money, together....and if our margins are higher than yours, well, that's not our fault....

• Posted by John Battelle at 9:28 PM
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Google Plugs In

Google is pushing for more efficient power cords for PCs. Totally random, seemingly, but a fine idea.

From the Times:

The Google white paper argues that the opportunity for power savings is immense — by deploying the new power supplies in 100 million desktop PC’s running eight hours a day, it will be possible to save 40 billion kilowatt-hours over three years, or more than $5 billion at California’s energy rates.

Is there a Mac version? I HATE HATE HATE the way the Mac handles power.

• Posted by John Battelle at 9:20 PM
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Reader John Writes...

• Posted by John Battelle at 8:49 PM
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A Brief Interview with Google's Matt Cutts

Matt is the man who the SEO/SEM world looks to for answers around most things Google related. Over the past month Melanie and I have been having a wide-ranging email exchange with him on spam, the role of humans at Google, and other things. Here's the result:

Let's say you decide to leave Google and are asked to write an exact job description for a replacement to do exactly what you do now. What does it say? (We told Matt to be honest, or his options will not vest!)

My official job is to direct the webspam team at Google. Webspam is essentially when someone tries to trick a search engine into ranking higher than they should. A few people will try almost anything, up to and including the mythical GooglePray meta tag, to rank higher. Our team attempts to help high-quality sites while preventing deceptive techniques from working.

As a result of working on webspam, I started talking to a lot of webmasters on forums, blogs, and at conferences. So I've backed into handling a fair chunk of webmaster communication for Google. Last year I started my own blog so that I could answer common questions, or to debunk stuff that isn't true (e.g., inserting a GooglePray meta tag doesn't make a whit of difference). These days when I see unusual posts in the blogosphere, I'll try to get a bug report to the right person, or to clarify if someone is confused.

As you pointed out, you've become the human voice between Google and webmasters/SEOs. We've heard Google needs to manually remove spam sometimes. And even the algorithm-based feed for Google News requires an editorial gatekeeper for selecting sites. Do you think there is a growing role for human presence in Google's online technologies?

Bear in mind that this is just my personal opinion, but I think that Google should be open to almost any signal that improves search quality. Let's hop up to the 50,000 foot view. When savvy people think about Google, they think about algorithms, and algorithms are an important part of Google. But algorithms aren't magic; they don't leap fully-formed from computers like Athena bursting from the head of Zeus. Algorithms are written by people. People have to decide the starting points and inputs to algorithms. And quite often, those inputs are based on human contributions in some way.


The simplest example is that hyperlinks on the web are created by people. A passable rule of thumb is that for every page on the web, there are 10 hyperlinks, and all those billions of links are part of the material that modern search engines use to measure reputation. As you mention, Google News ranks based on which stories human editors around the web choose to highlight. Most of the successful web companies benefit from human input, from eBay's trust ratings to Amazon's product reviews and usage data. Or take Netflix's star ratings. This past week I watched Brick and Boondock Saints, and I'm pretty sure that L4yer cake and Hotel Rwanda are going to be good, because all those DVDs have 4+ stars. Those star ratings are done by people, and they converge to pretty trustworthy values after only a few votes.

So I think too many people get hung up on "Google having algorithms." They miss the larger picture, which (to me) is to pursue approaches that are scalable and robust, even if that implies a human side. There's nothing inherently wrong with using contributions from people--you just have to bear in mind the limitations of that data. For example, the three companies I mentioned above have to consider the malicious effect that money can have in their human systems. Netflix doesn't have to worry much (who wants to spam a DVD rating?), while eBay probably spends a lot more time thinking about how to make their trust ratings accurate and fair.

Google recently added user-tagging to photos. it's an interesting way to sort search, adding a personal and human dimension yet opening up a can of worms for syntax and keyword variation. Is this social training of human-input going to be applied to other dimensions of search at Google? Requiring labels to gain a critical mass before they become official is clever step, but of course its not immune to automated spamming. From your perspective on quality control, is this going to open up doors for more abuse of Google as a platform?

I personally would love to see more human input into search at Google. But the flip side is that someone has to pay attention to potential abuse by bad actors. Maybe it's cynical of me, but any time people are involved, I tend to think about how someone could abuse the system. We've seen the whole tagging idea in Web 1.0 when they were called meta tags, and some people abused them so badly with deceptive words that to this day, most search engine give little or no scoring weight to keywords in meta tags.

Google took a cautious approach on this image tagging: the large pool of participants and their random pairing makes it harder to conspire, and two people have to agree on a tag. Users doing really weird things would look unusual, and image tagging is easy for people but much harder for a bot. As tagging goes, it's on the safer end of the spectrum.

I think Google should be open to improving search quality in any way it can, but it should also be mindful of potential abuse with any change.

W3C Schools is listing its supporters' websites on Page Rank 9 and PR7 pages in exchange for donations, $1000 a pop in cash or trade (http://www.w3.org/Consortium/sup). Speculation on this is buzzing because though W3C is a well respected educational resource many SEO blackhats endorse similar tactics. Does Google consider link selling a type of webspam against Google's TOS? And if so, should we expect to see some kind of a censure on W3C? Or how does it differ from what Google considers webspam?

I've said this before in a few places, but I'm happy to clarify. Google does consider it a violation of our quality guidelines to sell links that affect search engines. If someone wanted to sell links purely for visitors, there are a myriad number of ways to do it that don't affect search engines. You could have paid links do an internal redirect, and then block that redirecting page in robots.txt. You could add the rel="nofollow" attribute to a link, which tells search engines that you can't or don't want to vouch for the destination of a link. The W3C decided to add a "INDEX, NOFOLLOW" meta tag to their sponsor page, which has the benefits that the sponsor page can show up in search engines and that users receive nice static links that they can click on, but search engines are not affected by the outlinks on that page. All of these approaches are perfectly fine ways to sell links, and are within our quality guidelines.

Did the W3C decide to add the metatag on their own, or was that the result of talks between you and the W3C?

We were happy to talk to people at the W3C to answer questions and to give background info, but I believe they made the decision to add the metatag themselves.

Thanks for the considered responses, Matt!

• Posted by John Battelle at 6:59 PM
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Class Action Against AOL Search History

TechCrunch has the scoop, I have to say, this ain't just AOL, folks. I'm sure counsel at Google, Yahoo, et al are watching this one closely.

• Posted by John Battelle at 9:13 PM
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The Internet Ad Market Is, Well, Healthy to Be Sure

The IAB reports:

Today, during the MIXX Conference and Expo, the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) and PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) released Internet Advertising Revenues covering Q2 and the first six months of 2006. Internet advertising revenues (U.S.) for the first six months of 2006 were approximately $7.9 billion, a new record and a 37% increase over the first half of 2005. Internet advertising revenue totaled nearly $4.1billion for the second quarter of 2006, exceeding the $4 billion mark, representing a 36% increase over same period 2005. Q2 2006 revenues represent a 5.5% increase over Q1 2006.

• Posted by John Battelle at 8:57 PM
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News: Froogle Ain't Dead, Google Says

Over the past few days, blogs and the news media has been buzzing with reports (started by Robert Peck at Bear Stearns) that Froogle is being de-emphasized as Google begins to implement shopping listings into its main index. I read the coverage with interest - it's rare that Google actually admits defeat in any category, preferring instead to let the pasta drip off the wall on its own, so to speak. So I sent an email to folks in corporate communications, and here's what I got back:

Me: Over the past few days, a Marketwatch story and coverage of recent news about integration of shopping features into the main index has stirred up speculation that Froogle's days are numbered. Are they?

G: Froogle is alive and well. We are continuing to integrate shopping and product search features into Google.com to make it as easy as possible for users to find product information through Google. We don't have any more specifics to share publicly on how this will look down the line but we will make sure to let you know about any developments.

Now, you might read this as having it both ways - but that's to be expected, I'd warrant. Froogle isn't dead, but that doesn't mean Google won't leverage Google.com (and Google Base) to make shopping search more profitable and more useful for consumers....

(also see Read/Write on this issue....)

• Posted by John Battelle at 8:13 PM
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Reader Salman Writes...

• Posted by John Battelle at 12:46 PM
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BB: NSA Legislation Is Nigh

If you want to stop ill conceived legislation that will overrule EFF's case against AT&T, take action now, BB says.

• Posted by John Battelle at 8:43 AM
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Relevancy Vs. Targeting

An interesting rumination from Joe, who first wrote this on his blog...

We all know that targeting is important, but the core of what Google provides is relevancy--namely, relevancy of search results and relevancy of advertisements.

There are infinite reasons why Google has been successful, but the most basic is that it has always focused first on relevancy.

• Posted by John Battelle at 7:51 AM
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Google: What Are The Interesting Questions These Days?

Google's on the cover of Fortune again, this time with the come on that the company is in chaos! No, wait, maybe that's a good thing...yeah, in fact, it is a good thing! Fortune turns it into a cover package on "managing chaos" that might well have been a Business 2.0 cover....three years ago. Funny that B2 has as it's cover "The New Disruptors" (just got it in the mail, not online yet)- Google, apparently, is the old disruptor, as Fortune represents the status quo, and B2 the upstarts.

I dunno, but after reading the piece, which was reported as well as is possible given the access given, I felt like I had read the same story I've been reading about Google for the past three years - the piece turns on the interesting question of "Do They Have a Plan?" and then fails to answer it definitively (Marissa says Google has a plan, but the evidence ain't overwhelming). I'm starting to think that maybe we are all asking the wrong question. I've been asking that one for some time now, and now I'm thinking there are more interesting ones out there. (There are good tidbits in the piece, for more see Read/Write Web's write up...)

With that in mind, Eric Schmidt has agreed to be the first keynote interview at this year's Web 2 conference. I'll be interviewing him, and I'd love all of your input on what you think I should ask him. What are the interesting questions to ask Google these days?

• Posted by John Battelle at 7:18 PM
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Weekend SearchMob

Top stories:

Nokia Adds Microsoft Live Search

Search Engine Bias and the Demise of Search Engine Utopianism

BusinessWeek Cover Story and Investigation on Click Fraud

Over 30 Domain Names Transferred to Google Inc.

FORBES: 400 Richest American$ , Their Details

New AOL Search Beta Test Available

Save the Forbes story (what is it with lists of rich guys?), I've been really pleased with the quality of the stories sumitted to SearchMob. What I wish I had was more voting from readers - in general, the voting has been pretty anemic - 4-6 votes for top stories, usually. I'm not looking for Digg numbers (1000 diggs is not unusual), but my logs tell me there are thousands of readers each day at Searchblog. So...is SearchMob working, or not?

• Posted by John Battelle at 6:25 PM
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BusinessWeek Covers Click Fraud

Literally - it's the cover story this week. Gary has a great round up here.

• Posted by John Battelle at 4:26 PM
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ClickPrints

Clickstreams - the essential building blocks of the Database of Intentions - may have characteristics unique to each person - a "Clickprint", as this report from Wharton calls it. From Gary's post excerpting the paper:

“We address the question of whether humans have unique signatures - or clickprints - when they browse the Web. The importance of being able to answer this can be significant given applications to electronic commerce in general and in particular online fraud detection, a major problem in electronic commerce costing the economy billions of dollars annually. In this paper we present a data mining approach to answer this ‘unique clickprint determination problem."

The paper is reviewed in Wharton's online publication. What I find rather irritating in the coverage (I have not read the paper yet) is there is precious little discussion of privacy issues, and none of government abuse. It strikes me that at the end of the day, these are the two most important issues facing the deployment of such a technology. Who knew your keyboard and mouse, in essence, are transferring your fingerprints across the web?

• Posted by John Battelle at 10:46 AM
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Sterling Riff In New Scientist

Bruce Sterling, a prolific sci-fi author who I've had the honor to know since the birth of Wired, has a great riff on being a teenager in a rather dim future in the current print edition of New Scientist. It's online, but only for a while, as the magazine seems hell bent on a subscription model. (Memo to New Scientist: Join the Point to Economy). From it:

It's not that we can't do it: it's that all our social relations have been reified with a clunky intensity. They're digitized! And the networking hardware and software that pervasively surround us are built and owned by evil, old, rich corporate people! Social-networking systems aren't teenagers! These machines are METHODICALLY KILLING OUR SOULS! If you don't count wall-graffiti (good old spray paint), we have no means to spontaneously express ourselves. We can't "find ourselves" - the market's already found us and filled us with map pins.

At our local mall, events-management sub-engines emit floods of locative data. So if Debbie and me sneak in there, looking for some private place to get horizontal, all the vidcams swivel our way. Then a rent-a-cop shows up. What next?

(thanks, BIll)

• Posted by John Battelle at 12:27 PM
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Looking for Short Videos

A new feature at the Web 2 conference this year will be "Shorts" - I'll be showing off videos that are emblematic of where our culture's video grammar seems to be headed. I've been writing about the idea of video as cultural grammar off and on here, and I think this year will mark an axis of sorts - the year video was reborn as a native web medium.

To that end we've issued a call for submissions. From the submissions page:

Have you seen a video clip or short film that you think is Web 2.0 worthy? We're looking for fun and telling viral videos (less than 3 minutes in length) to feature at the conference in November. Submit your nominations below. Submitters of the chosen shorts will be thanked from stage.

If you've seen something great, I'd be indebted if you could point it out to me. Thanks!

• Posted by John Battelle at 12:20 PM
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NYT Integrates Answers.com Content

A portion of NYTimes.com inline links will now serve Answers.com's reference content. With a single Alt-key selection, Answers will allow online NYT readers to stay on page while accessing a pop-up of contextual material on key terms, selected by NYT editors. Answers will also now feed a reference search box on the NYT homepage. The goal of the integration is to help online Times readers "understand current events in historical perspective."

• Posted by Melanie Colburn at 5:19 PM
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Google Registers Political Action

Google Registers Political Action Committee Domains

The Oldest Websites Still Alive

Big News Join Mobile Web Growth

Interview with Google Webmasters on Sitemap conception and Recruiting Women

Zillow Home Database Opens to User Data

• Posted by Melanie Colburn at 2:28 PM
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TiVo's captivated research audience

TiVo launches a new research service, called the IRI TiVo Consumer Insights Suite(TM), to help marketers enter the mind of the ad-free viewing audience. TiVo boxes will become a passive data sponge for user viewing habits--opt-in Nelson Ratings-style--offering advertisers unprecedented insight into this group of serious TV viewers who are also at once an uncaptive audience. In particular, TiVo is marketing the research pool to-be to advertisers as a "link [between] consumer DVR viewing patterns [and] purchase decisions."

The goal? "making it possible for brand purchase results to be traced and compared to the actual viewership of commercials." But how many homes with a digital video recorder will willingly enable auto-monitoring equipment to feed information directly back to the advertisers who they've bought the TiVo precisely in order to escape?

• Posted by Melanie Colburn at 1:17 AM
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Now, If We Buy You, Can We Lose the Deal with Microsoft?

WSJ says (reg required) Facebook and Yahoo are close to a deal. OF course, Microsoft won't like that much....

People familiar with the matter say the company has held separate acquisition talks with Yahoo Inc., Microsoft Corp. and Viacom Inc. over the past year. Now, say some of these people, the start-up is in serious discussions -- again -- to sell itself to Yahoo for an amount that could approach $1 billion.

Update: Free WSJ link.

• Posted by John Battelle at 6:33 PM
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Searchmob Top Stories

Learning Searchles Rolls-out New Features

Google Adds News Archive to Search Results

Yahoo Partners with CurrentTV

Google Web Hosting ahead?

Zebo Profiled - List What You Own

• Posted by Melanie Colburn at 4:31 PM
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Mostly Offline for Next Few Days

I'm taking a whirlwind trip to Norway over the next few days, and will be mostly offline. Melanie will be posting, lightly, but forgive my absence for a bit...

• Posted by John Battelle at 7:48 PM
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SearchMob Top Stories

As of this evening:

Google Adds Text to Shopping Cart Icon

Local Matters and Mobile People Partner

Battelle Media Blog Worth $1,011,091.14 (oh really....)

Top 5 alternative search engines

Google Receives Several DMCA Requests From Around the Globe

Now guys, remember you can vote on new stories here, and post new stories here...

• Posted by John Battelle at 7:24 PM
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JG Writes...

• Posted by John Battelle at 4:23 PM
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Meanwhile, Over at Yahoo...

Not good news, a warning on ads, and a serious drop in the stock to boot. From the Journal email alert (on the public home page):

Yahoo shares plunged more than 10% after Chief Executive Terry Semel warned that online advertising growth appears to be slowing in some categories. Mr. Semel, speaking at an analysts' conference, said the company has seen growth weaken in ads from automotive and financial services companies, and said it's too early to tell if the slowdown will spill over into other areas.

Update: Safa at Piper says this is "a buying opportunity." I uploaded his report here.

• Posted by John Battelle at 9:03 AM
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Calla Lilies Choking a Silt-shallowed Lake

I used to love reading Fortune magazine, back when I was a magazine guy trying (and failing) to build a business magazine empire. But while I still get the paper edition on my doorstep every two weeks, I've found the thing increasingly irritating. Why? Today, for no particular reason, it struck me. The content is gone, or more specifically, it's buried under a blizzard of ads, and most irritatingly, "advertising features." If this is the future of magazines, the future is bleak. From my experience in the business, these "features" are never welcomed by editors, they are pushed by sales people who are worried about making quota. Furthermore, the net per page on them is well below what traditional ads yield - like calla lilies choking a silt-shallowed lake, they are a sign of a permanent change in the landscape.

Of the 256 pages in last week's Fortune (including the cover, but not including the ad-driven mini insert "bonus section", which I didn't bother to count (or read)), 108 or so were "normal ads" - full, half, or spread ads. But another 47 or so were advertorials - editorial material I really could care less about, written not by influential editors, but by marketing departments. If you add the two together - 108 plus 47 - you get 155. That leaves 101 pages for actual editorial. In other words, Fortune's ad/edit ratio is 155/100, or roughly 40% edit to 60% ads. Of course, the magazine doesn't look that crowded with ads, because a third of them are masquerading as editorial.

This stuff is nearly 50 pages - half again the amount as the real editorial. For every two pages of edit, I'm getting a page of marketing edit. Who reads this stuff? Why do people pay to run it? I looked back at a few recent issues of Fortune, and the same is true - it's crammed with bad editorial.

Could you imagine if every third post in a blog was written not by the blog's author, but by a marketing department?

Given this, it's not a surprise to read David Carr's recent piece in the Times and IHT about Time Inc. reeling. I love magazines, and all they stand for, but the economic model of print is getting tougher and tougher to justify.

• Posted by John Battelle at 8:42 AM
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Google Search Share: Back Up

Earlier market reports from Comscore, which are watched by Wall St., showed a decline in share for Google, which some analysts said is the reason shares fell in late summer. A new report from Comscore shows growth again, and Google's stock seems to rise right alongside it (it's down this morning, but up over past five days). From a report emailed to me (I've uploaded it here) by Robert Peck at Bear Stearns:

Following the loss of domestic market share in July 06 from June 06, Google has regained (and surpassed) the lost share in August 06, according to the data released by comScore. We note that this followed a similar pattern in the corresponding months of 2005 where Google lost share in July 05 but regained share in August 05. We view this as a mild positive for Google given the negative reaction in the stock following the news of the lost share for July 06. In addition, this brings to light our thinking that investors should not place too much emphasis on month-to-month fluctuations in market share for the online search cos.

• Posted by John Battelle at 7:53 AM
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Searchmob Top Stories

MSN's Ajaxed Image Search Engine

AOL Developer Program for Video Search Engine

First Arabic Search Engine

Hack: See If You Are in Google Supplemental Results

Government Waste Database

Quigo - The Next Google?

BiggerBoat Beta music search

More on: Google Testing Disappearing Top Ad Results
More on: Google's new PAC

• Posted by Melanie Colburn at 3:20 PM
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Cuban: YouTube Be Doomed

Mark Cuban likes to toss bombs, and this one I am sure has the PR folks at YouTube in full battle mode.

Udpate: YouTube has some counter news of its own, B2 reports.

• Posted by John Battelle at 12:57 PM
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Google Not Showing Ads at Top For Those Who Don't Click

Via Digg, news from Barry Schwartz:

A WebmasterWorld thread reports that the top blue AdWords ads have been removed from the Google search results page. But in fact, it seems to be a user by user setting. Some users will see the top blue ads and some users will not. What does it depend on? It seems it is based on your ad clicking behavior.

• Posted by John Battelle at 8:13 PM
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Reading Byrne? Worth the Journey

I've been a follower of David Byrne's site for quite some time, but it took a recent weekend jaunt to Vegas with an old pal to jar me into re-reading his stuff. And check this out - his prognostications on the future of music search:

Soon enough a site will open that is like a Google search for music downloads — downloads that are not copy-protected but you still pay for. eMusic tracks have no copy protection, for example, but their catalogue is limited. Eventually a meta search will turn up the tracks you want, wherever they live, on whomever’s site. Consumers don’t care who they buy them from if the interface is easy and intuitive. Soon enough iTunes consumers will find they have reached the 5th authorized player on their tracks and the frustration will set in when they can’t listen to the music they paid for. They’ll start to look elsewhere.

Byrne is riffing on SpiralFrog, an ad-supported model for free (but rather DRM crippled) downloads of music. In general, I find his site refreshing and worth the journey.

• Posted by John Battelle at 8:02 PM
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Innaresting: A Google BD Fellow Invests in PhotoBucket

Wonder what the Picasa team is thinking? Chris, who's a nice fellow, likes PhotoBucket.

Link.

• Posted by John Battelle at 7:52 PM
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Search, Search, Search....Mail

Remember the web's killer app before search? Yeah, it was mail. I've been catching up on my reading this weekend, and noticed this fine review of Yahoo's new mail app from the B2 blog. Worth reading, just to remind yourself how important mail is to the ongoing portal warfare we all love to watch....

• Posted by John Battelle at 7:48 PM
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The Times (via Cnet) Does the Big Baidu Story

In case you missed it, here's the NYT Sunday story (written by a Cnet staffer) on Baidu, the "Chinese Google." Recall we covered this earlier in the week here.

• Posted by John Battelle at 3:08 PM
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Google NetPAC

Google starts a Political Action Committee, SFGate reports.

Google filed paperwork Thursday to register its political action committee, Google NetPAC, with the Federal Election Commission. The company intends to use the committee "to support candidates who promote an open and free Internet for our users," according to Alan Davidson, Google's Washington policy counsel.

• Posted by John Battelle at 2:19 PM
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SearchMob Top Stories

At present:

Search engine to track how U.S. money is spent

Home Depot Begins Selling Electronics

Yahoo signs search deal with Acer

Digg dealing with the same problems as Google?

Hitwise Says Google, Ask Gain Search Share in August; MSN, Yahoo Slip

• Posted by John Battelle at 11:51 AM
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Google Hosting Services?

With Base, Video, Mail, and other hosted services, it already feels like Google is in the hosting business, but Gary notes that Google has reserved http://www.googlehostedservices.com/. Innaresting.

• Posted by John Battelle at 1:13 PM
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HitTail: An Interesting Service

Interesting news from a PR agency, Connors Communications. They've created HitTail, a service that "reveals in real-time the least utilized, most promising search terms hidden in the "long tail" of a Web site's natural search results." The short of it: It promises to teach you the words that might get your site better ranked in organic search, so you can use those words on your site. Is this a good thing? Well, nothing bad about having more information. But....something about it strikes me as...well...inorganic. I recall fondly how editors would respond to surveys we'd do telling them what to write about....What do you think?

• Posted by John Battelle at 9:43 PM
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Yahoo To Craigslist (Oh, and the Entire Newspaper Industry): List This!

Yahoo is starting a classifieds listings business. Now that makes sense.

As local search, online classifieds, and Web business directories continue what seems to be an inevitable merger, Yahoo has planted a stake firmly at the crossroads. The firm announced today a new classifieds and listings division and the appointment of newspaper industry veteran, Hilary Schneider, to steer the U.S. unit.

• Posted by John Battelle at 5:01 PM
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Top Stories on SearchMob Right Now...

Are....

New Technology Allows Searchers to Scour Online Audio, Video to Target Advertising

Mobissimo First to Bring Comprehensive Travel Search to Netvibes' Five Million Users

beRecruited.com - Social Networking for Sports Recruiting

TV Guide and Yahoo Announce Deal

Google Checkout Competing with Affiliates

I'm pretty pleased with the focus and quality of the stories that are being posted on the site, but I do have some issues with the whole thing. I have no idea if you, the readers, are checking it out, or find it very compelling. I'm adding a navigation link, so you can find it in the first place, which I guess would help (Ren: Iiiiiiiidiot). And I want a widget that pulls the top five stories and rotates them over on the right or the left. That would be really cool. Any ideas?

• Posted by John Battelle at 4:54 PM
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China Is One Tough Nut To Crack

This item on Poynter Online caught my eye: Google Losing Traction in China. From the post:

In Beijing, the only city for which detailed results were made available, Baidu's market share rose by 13 percent from one year ago to 65.4 percent, the survey showed. Google fell by 12.3 percent, from 32.9 percent to 20.6 percent.

That is a rather dramatic drop -- and bad news for a company that only started to invest seriously in China at the beginning of this year. Moving into China had brought the US company only bad news, as they are losing the strong position they had before they were present in China.

Billsdue correctly points out that other U.S. giants, Yahoo and eBay, have similar bad records in China.

Google recently sold off its stake in Baidu as it girded for a full blown assault on the checkered country. Ouch.

• Posted by John Battelle at 4:10 PM
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In Software, It's All About Distribution - And Inventory

Yesterday came news that Google has struck a major deal with Intuit. Today comes news Yahoo has struck a deal with Acer. Both are distribution deals - Yahoo and Google are using their partners as channels to get their software and services into the hands of customers. In short, they are buying new business.

So what are they distributing? That's where it gets interesting. In Google's case, the deal with Intuit gets AdWords in from of small businesses and encourages those traditional Yellow Pages customers to try Google instead. And of course, the deal includes Google Desktop and Maps integration.

But perhaps the least reported portion of this deal is the fact that QuickBooks also purchased StepUp, a small SF-based firm that helps local businesses get their inventory into search engines. In short, StepUp is the automation software needed to virtualize all that small business inventory and make it easily consumed, and therefore searchable, in Google Base, Froogle, and the main Google index.

If you recall my scenario about the transparent shopping society, this is one significant component in getting us there.

Yahoo's deal with Acer is a bit more mundane. It's Yahoo toolbar pre-installed, and setting Yahoo as the default search engine at the factory. This is good for the company, but it's the kind of deal Google was cutting nearly two years ago. The difference here is YPN - with no play to speak of yet, Yahoo can't compete with Google for deals like Intuit. Yet....

• Posted by John Battelle at 8:45 AM
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Google Earth Adds Featured Content

Google today announced a "showcase of multimedia overlays" for Google Earth. I see this as Google's first step in making the world digital, location driven, and on demand, and it has implications for many of Google's other products, like maps, local, IM/Talk, etc. For now, Google is saying the content is educational. But I see a time not far off when this is rip roaringly commercial.

Ars Technica has more.

(release in extended entry)

Pilot partners include United Nations Environmental Program, Discovery
Networks, and National Park Service

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. - Sept. 13, 2006 - Google Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG)
today released Featured Content for Google Earth, a new showcase of
multimedia overlays in Google Earth that connect users to information
about the world around them from a variety of premium content
providers.

Users can access these informative overlays by clicking on the
"Featured Content" checkbox in the Google Earth sidebar. In doing
so, icons for each Featured Content provider will span the globe,
enabling users to click on individual locations and learn about the
area's significance. The Featured Content showcase will be routinely
updated to include innovative and diverse contributions from additional
content providers.

"We are excited to provide users with the opportunity to learn more
about the natural wonders and manmade landmarks of the world with
Featured Content for Google Earth," said John Hanke, director, Google
Earth and Maps. "We believe Google Earth is an excellent medium for
organizing and sharing the world's geographic information and we
continue to explore opportunities to bring visually compelling and
informative content into Google Earth."

Initial Featured Content for Google Earth partners include:

· United Nations Environmental Program - The UNEP overlay for
Google Earth includes successive time-stamped images illustrating 100
areas of extreme environmental degradation around the world. From the
deforestation of the Amazon to the fallout of raging forest fires in
Sub-Sahara Africa and the decline of the Aral Sea in Central Asia, this
before-and-after imagery spanning the past 30 years offers users an
online resource for learning about the environmental crisis zones
around the world.

· Discovery Networks World Tour - The Discovery overlay enables
travel enthusiasts and armchair tourists alike the opportunity to
virtually visit major world attractions, cities, and natural wonders
through Google Earth. Featuring streaming Discovery video segments,
users can learn about the history and significance of various world
landmarks, national parks, American and European cities, and African
locations. These multimedia vignettes introduce users to the wonders of
King Tut's tomb in the Valley of Kings to the history of the gate of
the Itsukushima Shrine in Japan.

· National Park Service - The National Park Service overlay enables
users to learn more about the natural recreation opportunities in their
own backyard. This includes detailed park descriptions, information on
visitor facilities, and more than 10,000 miles of trails within all 58
US National Parks.

· Jane Goodall Institute - With the Jane Goodall Institute overlay
users can visit Fifi and the other Gombe preserve chimpanzees and
follow their daily exploits with the Institute's "geo-blog" in Google
Earth. Updated daily, this geo-blog captures the work of the Jane
Goodall Institute, illustrating the Institute's research on
chimpanzees and the effects of deforestation in Africa.

· Turn Here - This overlay features free city video guides for
travel, restaurants, hotels, local events and music around the globe.
Told from an insider's perspective, these short films connect users
to information about the best pizza shop in New York's Little Italy
to Pablo Picasso's favorite hang-out in Halmstad, Sweden.

About Google Inc.
Google's innovative search technologies connect millions of people
around the world with information every day. Founded in 1998 by
Stanford Ph.D. students Larry Page and Sergey Brin, Google today is a
top web property in all major global markets. Google's targeted
advertising program provides businesses of all sizes with measurable
results, while enhancing the overall web experience for users. Google
is headquartered in Silicon Valley with offices throughout the
Americas, Europe and Asia. For more information, visit www.google.com.

• Posted by John Battelle at 10:56 AM
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Top SearchMob Stories This Morning

Still working on a number of tweaks to SearchMob (including navigation, I know...) but here are the top five stories so far today:

Mobile Sites for Information

Apple Launches 5 New Products

More Cool Stuff from Clusty and Visivimo

Weebly launches private-beta

Ask worst, MSN best says McAfee SiteAdvisor study

• Posted by John Battelle at 8:46 AM
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Top Sites, August

UBS issued a report this week analyzing Comscore data on the top ten web destinations. It's not on the web, so if you are interested, you can download it here (pdf).

The top sites by page views are:

1) Yahoo!
2) Fox Interactive Media
3) MSN-Microsoft
4) Time Warner Network
5) eBay
6) Google
7) FACEBOOK.COM
8) Craigslist
9) Viacom
10) Comcast

Interesting to see Comcast on the list, they are getting serious about being an advertising player on the web. Fox jumps to #2 thanks to MySpace.

When you change the metric to uniques, the list changes in some interesting ways, and looks like this:

1) Yahoo!
2) Time Warner Network
3) MSN-Microsoft
4) Google
5) eBay
6) Fox Interactive Media
7) Ask
8) Amazon
9) New York Times
10) Verizon

I wonder if that's just Ask, or IAC as a whole.

The report has some details on MySpace's growth, showing 17.7mm uniques in June of 05, and nearly 56mm in August 06. There's also a fun (but a bit difficult to grok) chart showing minutes/session, pages/day, and days/month for each site (it's at right as well).

• Posted by John Battelle at 8:35 AM
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SearchMob Top Stories

Reader-driven SearchMob is up and running, and many of you have already begun posting stories. Here are the top five vote getters so far:

A social news service for free advertising

Dirty trick to get inbound links from Slashdot.org

An Investment Approach to Marketing

deliSearch - feed your own search engine from delicious

Does valid markup affect search performance?

I've already learned a lot from this experiment, and will be working to improve the service over the week. Keep on posting, thanks!

• Posted by John Battelle at 8:16 AM
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round up

Officially Live in the UK
Windows Live, Live.com and Live Local Search officially graduate from beta in the UK. And now, Live Search will power MSN. Though, the company informed Danny Sullivan, that the beta moniker will linger as the update rolls-out through the entire network. (Meanwhile, ResourceShelf offers a list of Microsoft's registered 'Live' domains.)

On demand ads, for low demand impressions
Right Media's new Publisher Media Exchange (PMX) tool allows sites to bulk together non-premium impressions and sell them in a real-time auctions. Fox, Tribune, LookSmart, Tickle, and Six Apart, will be among the major sites using the customizable PMX to sell extra impressions to advertisers and ad networks on their sites.

Send a wire to Congress, before one's set on you
Warrantless domestic wiretapping seems to be illegal, as well as widely unpopular. The due process from Congress? According to legislation proposed separately by Senator Arlen Specter (R-PA) and a group of Representatives (including Chairmen of the House Intelligence and Judiciary committees) ...the response is to grant retrospective legal sanction to Presidential free reign, handicap Congressional and Judicial oversight and, to top it off--- further expand the warrantless domestic wiretapping program.

Those who fail to follow this logic might consider contacting their representatives---as Congress may act on both these bills this week. Center for Democracy and Technology

A disgruntled AdSense user
An ousted AdSense user turned litigant is now charging that Google infiltrated and then deleted evidence in her Gmail account. Theresa Bradley's litigious history (also suing Yahoo, with a trail of suits in other states) and the amusing details surrounding the claim (she says it took her staff 100 hours to finalize the placement of the AdSense code) have caused some to doubt the accusation.

Social search, in the news
Garrett French shares a handy reading list and other resources he's amassed, as he finishes up his latest article on social search. 30 Boxes considers the application of social search to personal organization. And on Monday, The New York Times discovered social search for shopping.

Jatalla
Jatalla launches the prototype of its "100%" human-powered search engine. Though still in double-digit user base, Jatalla aims for its results, created by user keyword tags on websites, to one day becomes "an easy way to interview the whole world through a single search query." Founder, Shelley Harrison says foregoing automated corrections to pluralize and synonymize tagging was a planned inefficiency, to better reflect the mind of its human algorithm. Jatalla will present at MIT's Emerging Technologies Conference, where it hopes to attract the investment needed to push the proof of concept into a developed beta.

User-friendly skies
Track the movements of any flight in real-time at FlightAware. At FlightStatus, gain a multi-sourced preview of flight hassles and helpers (like promotions) per airport, flight or route. If you aim higher, keep tabs on NASA shuttles. Via ResourceShelf

Q&A with Greg
SEL shared an interview with Greg Linden, who developed Amazon's recommendation engine, Findory, and writes Geeking with Greg.

A happy blogging ending
Last week, the blogging enterprise SixApart acquired Rojo.

• Posted by Melanie Colburn at 3:01 AM
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Site News: SearchMob Is Live!

Remember when I asked you all what you thought about the idea of turning over the reins and letting you post technology, search and media-related stories to Searchblog? Inspired by Piers Fawkes, an FM author, who used Pligg to do Marktd, I've been working on a new feature at Searchblog I've come to call SearchMob. Ok, maybe not the best name, but at least there's alliteration. The idea is simple - you can register and submit stories to the site. Then readers vote the stories up the ranks, similar to Digg, Reddit, and Newsvine (yes, all FM sites).

While I'd love to work with one of those sites, making Searchblog better isn't their focus (though Reddit does help other sites, like Lipstick.) For this test anyway, I'm going with Pligg, an open source application. No doubt there will be bugs and incomplete features, but I've found the platform pretty reliable so far. I've asked a few folks who send me mail suggesting links to use Pligg and play around with an early version, and so far it's been a lot of fun. So take a look. I'd love for you all to bang on it, read it, and tell me how to do it better.

Many thanks to Jonathan Schreiber, FM's amazing author services engineer, for helping me make this happen.

SearchMob.

• Posted by John Battelle at 9:57 PM
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Note to Brands: Mind Your Wikipedia Entries...

Steve notes the connection between major brand advertisers and their Wikipedia entries.

Wikipedia articles on the top 100 advertisers in the U.S. are consistently among the most highly ranked pages in Google on direct searches. This is according to an informal study I have conducted over the past week. The study was compiled by simply taking the largest 100 advertisers from AdAge, entering them into Google and then tallying the results....

....Consider the following examples. Febreeze’s Wikipedia entry (#2 on Google) notes that the product may be harmful to household pets. Or the article on McDonald’s (#4 on Google), which basically summarizes the critical movie Super Size Me. Even advertising icons like Snap, Crackle and Pop aren’t exempt. The trio’s Wikipedia entry notes the team once had a short-lived adventure as super heroes in the UK.

• Posted by John Battelle at 12:44 PM
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Future of Web Apps

I've been pretty quiet here lately, and I'm sorry for that, between work and travel....you know the drill. I will be at Ryan Carson's The Future of Web Apps this week (Sept 13-14) in SF, if any of you are going to be around for that, please come say hello. It looks like a good event, speakers include Kevin Rose, Jeff Veen, Evan Williams, and many more.

• Posted by John Battelle at 10:22 AM
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Ask To Open German R&D Center

More over at SEW.

Meanwhile, check out the Ask Blog. It's showing Gary Price's touches, and has lots of news...

• Posted by John Battelle at 9:25 AM
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Details on New MSFT Live Search

Over at LiveSide. From an excerpt of a memo sent to them:

Goodbye MSN Search, Hello Windows Live Search!

The beta, or pre-release, testing of Windows Live Search is nearly over so if you've used it or sent us feedback we salute you - don't worry no group hugs or anything, just a genuine thanks from the team.

The new Windows Live Search allows for far more customisation, control and accuracy than ever before and is now a lean mean searching machine with many new features such as the ability to determine how much information you want displayed on your query results and the new in-site search.

• Posted by John Battelle at 1:22 PM
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AdWords On Your Phone

Inevitable. From ClickZ:

Google is testing ads on its mobile search interfaces in the U.S., U.K. and Germany a spokesperson has confirmed. The deal is similar to a pilot the company began testing in Japan earlier this year.

Love Boing Boing's (visual) take on it.

• Posted by John Battelle at 1:17 PM
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Google News News

I remember going down to see Eric early in the process of reporting the book, when Google News was just starting. He asked me how I liked the new service, and I said it was cool, but my chief complaint was that it had no memory - it was all about the present, and you could not slice the news by date.

Looks like Google is finally addressing that issue with the release today of an archive version of Google News, created in cooperation with major news outlets like the Post and Times, and folks like Lexis Nexis. This announcement strikes me as consistent with a new tone at Google with regard to media companies - "we're your partner, we'll help you make money."

I'm looking forward to using this. WSJ has a public story on this. From it:

Google News Archive Search includes articles that have been difficult or impossible for users to find through search engines. Google's regular news service, for example, includes content only from the previous 30 days. Consumers can access some archival news databases free online through libraries, but not everyone is aware of how to do that.

Google declined to say how many content owners were included or exactly how many articles would be available.

I still wish for a real archive of Google News as it stands today, but this is a start.

• Posted by John Battelle at 8:23 AM
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ChaCha: Guided Search

I sense we've seen this movie before, at least a variant of it. But then again, plenty of last decade's ideas are flowering again. From SFGate:

The value of a service like ChaCha lies in its ability to connect users immediately to a knowledgeable guide, who has experience or background a particular field. Think of it as calling 411 directory assistance on the Web.

"When people try us, they're blown away," said Jones, the founder and chief executive officer of ChaCha. "The results are significantly better because we're incorporating human intelligence into the mix."

Users will connect to a live guide via instant messenger from the ChaCha home page.

ChaCha's CEO has been around the entrepreneurial bend a few times, with Gracenote and early voicemail technology. Worth watching.

• Posted by John Battelle at 4:42 AM
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GigaOm Expands

WebWorkerDaily will track the world of working the way, well, most of us work these days. Congrats, Om.

• Posted by John Battelle at 8:42 PM
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Mohr Calls Out The Newspapers

Tom Mohr, who used to run Knight Ridder's digital efforts and is now ensconced at ASU and Charles River Ventures, calls out the newspaper industry in a major piece in Editor & Publisher. He posits that the newspaper industry needs the equivalent of a "Marshall Plan" and needs to get over its internal disputes and work together.

It is instructive that after twelve years of the consumer web, not a single example of breakthrough online innovation has emerged out of a newspaper company. Not in recruitment. Not in auto. Not in classifieds. Not in shopping, directory, new ad models, or content aggregation.

He imagines a company, Switzerland Inc., that works on behalf of all newspapers.

But what if 2/3 or more of the U.S. newspaper industry sits on one platform, managed by Switzerland Inc.? What if Switzerland Inc. decides to deny Yahoo! and perhaps Google access to newspaper industry content for three months, followed by a negotiation for better terms?

That’s the power of a network.

I can't imagine it ever happening, but Mohr's got a point. Federation is the way to go....

• Posted by John Battelle at 8:19 PM
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Google's Brazilian Test

Earlier this month the news broke that Brazilian officials have demanded very specific information on suspected criminals who have been using Google's Orkut service (it's very popular in Brazil, who knows why...).

Google's initial defense was to say that the data in question was stored in the US (both quotes from the first link, a Reuters story):

Google officials in Brazil have said all clients' data is stored on a server in the United States and is subject to U.S. laws, which makes it impossible for them to reveal the data in Brazil. They also said the local affiliate only deals in marketing and sales and has nothing to do with Orkut.

But a Brazilian judge disagreed:

"The fact that the data are stored in the United States has no relevance as all the photographs and messages investigated by the prosecutors' office were published by Brazilians using Internet connections on the national territory," the judge said in his ruling.

I find this interesting because it might potentially set a standard for other international cases where data is stored in the US but originates in what we might call less than democratic countries - China comes to mind. And lo and behold, today brings news that Google bowed to pressure and will provide the data to Brazil.

One of the first to cover the story is the People's Daily in China. A banner day, for them.

• Posted by John Battelle at 3:55 PM
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Shameless Promotion: Searchblog Classifieds

Some of you may have noticed the new classified/text link ads on the right side. I'm experimenting with them, now that FM has the ability to sell them via its platform. I have a sense that readers of this site might have things to say to each other in a commercial voice, and this is a way to do it, pretty darn cheap ($140 a week, for a permanent ad). If it works out, we'll make a marketplace section on a second page, for now, we've limited the number of ads that can run to seven. Check it out!

• Posted by John Battelle at 3:02 PM
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The Fat Belly

Over on Om's site, contributor Robert Young mulls the Fat Belly. I like the idea, it sums up nicely the space I think where businesses like FM live. I call it "mid tail" when pressed, but hey, Fat Belly is catchy. I'm going to guess this is a top Digg today....

• Posted by John Battelle at 2:48 PM
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Random Idea/Question: Flickr News?

I am new to Flickr, and have not used it enough to avoid asking stupid questions. But Jeremy's recent post about Burning Man made me wonder. Is there a place where the news is organized via flickr? I'd love to see a site that takes top headlines and showcases them via Flickr.

Now, I'm not talking about Top CNN headlines, but rather, top news events that might be big on a site like Flickr. Like Burning Man, or MacWorld, or Web 2.0, or Katrina (that was huge as I recall). I'd love a Flickr front page of news related shots, edited by someone who had a news editor's sensibility. Does it exist and I'm just a moron? Man, I'd love to check that page everyday.

• Posted by John Battelle at 2:35 PM
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Reader Narendra Writes....

• Posted by John Battelle at 1:30 PM
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Google Image Disambiguator

Why does Google hate the word tag?

Google Image Labeler is a good idea but a terrible name - it sounds like a product Dymo might have created. Google has licensed "The ESP Game", invented by Luis von Ahn, and is harnessing collective intelligence to tag images in its image database. This is just an experiment, of course. But it's a clever one - -if a critical mass of images are tagged, Google will have solved a very intractable problem for itself.

I just wish Google would use the terminology the rest of the web has already settled upon. It's not a label. It's a tag. "Tag" means something - an intentional attribute given to an object on the web. That's what we are doing here. How about we help Google come up with a new name?

If tag is off limits because of competitive issues (after all, Yahoo owns Flickr), I vote - with only a slight portion of my tongue in cheek - for "Google Image Disambiguator."

Or maybe, Google Metadata Maximizer.

Or...what do you guys think?

(Also, you can earn points for tagging on GID. But what can you do with the points?!)

• Posted by John Battelle at 10:25 AM
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Google Personalized Search: Who Owns the Profiles?

Continuing on my theme of worrying about the Database of Intentions and its use as a potential privacy trap, Greg Linden reports on insights gleaned from reading a Google paper on Bigtable, a distributed storage system.

One tidbit I found curious in the Google Bigtable paper was this hint about the internals of Google Personalized Search:

Personalized Search generates user profiles using a MapReduce over Bigtable. These user profiles are used to personalize live search results.

This appears to confirm that Google Personalized Search works by building high-level profiles of user interests from their past behavior.

Greg goes on to say that he worries this approach will not work so well for the task at hand, and I agree with him, but that's not my topic for this post. What I want to point out is simply this: what rights do you, I, or anyone else have to edit, delete, or own these profiles?

Anyone from Google care to answer that one?

• Posted by John Battelle at 10:17 AM
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TrackMeNot - I wonder...

This nifty little tool "periodically issues randomized search-queries to popular search engines, e.g., AOL, Yahoo!, Google, and MSN." (via Infoworld)

Now, who will be first to make this illegal or against TOS? The search companies, or the government?!

• Posted by John Battelle at 9:53 AM
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Quick, Name the #1 Video Site

Nope. (hat tip to Tweney)

• Posted by John Battelle at 9:49 AM
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