Sell Side/Publisher Driven Advertising: A Development

Those of you who thought the idea of sell side advertising was interesting should check out what Ross has found: a French site which seems to be implementing just such a system.

• Posted by John Battelle at 7:17 PM
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Spotlight on Tiger

I'm a Mac guy. That means I pay attention to what Apple does, because it pretty much defines my entire ecology. Yesterday Apple launched Tiger, a new update to its system software. While I realize this does not impact many readers of Searchblog, it's still a big deal, because Tiger has a search feature called Spotlight which, as far as I can tell, is pretty damn cool. Do I have it yet? No. Will I get it? Yup. Stay tuned for more reports. Meanwhile, the strategic importance of search to Apple is summed up in this ComputerWorld piece: "Mac OS X Tiger: All roads lead to Spotlight". From the piece:

"We think that people using Mac OS X Tiger will be in the Spotlight menu all the time," said Brian Croll, Apple's senior director of Software Product Marketing. "You can go there to find documents, pictures, applications or anything else you want. All roads lead to Spotlight."

Spotlight and its ability to create and automatically update "Smart Folders" in the Finder will help users find and organize files on their hard drives. This has become more of a problem in recent years because "hard drives are so big we never throw anything away," said Chris Bourdon, Apple's product manager for Mac OS X.

• Posted by John Battelle at 6:56 PM
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Mo Money From Online Ads

The industry is posting record numbers, quarter after quarter.

From the ClickZ piece:

Online ad revenues for 2004 were up 33 percent to $9.6 billion, the highest level ever, according to the latest report from the Interactive Advertising Bureau and PricewaterhouseCoopers.

New data include finalized revenue numbers from Q3, Q4 and full-year 2004 as reported by interactive advertising sellers. Of the total figure, $2.3 billion was spent in the third quarter; and $2.7 billion in the fourth.

The latter number makes Q4 2004 the most lucrative quarter ever reported for the medium, according to historical IAB/PwC results. That's perhaps not surprising, as the quarter included both the final four weeks of the Presidential campaign and the holiday season. It was the second consecutive year in which Q4 revenues were up year-over-year.

• Posted by John Battelle at 8:22 AM
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GoogleBot

I can't help thinking this is not the best image in the world for Google. On the other hand, I really love the passion and, well, sense of wonder this guy shows in his Google Blog posting.

In essence, he came up with the idea of painting a mural of a massive robot connecting the globe through wires, inspired by Google data centers (the mural hangs in one).

Reminds me of the original, from Paul Ford's classic Google Takes All essay:

• Posted by John Battelle at 8:02 PM
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Media? Search? Technology? Advertising?

Read Jeff here. If you are a long time reader of Searchblog, this will be a nice summary of the long conversation we've been having on this site. Man, things are getting interesing.

• Posted by John Battelle at 7:46 PM
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Tit, Tat

First Google, now Yahoo.

• Posted by John Battelle at 7:38 PM
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Missions and Visions

I had a chance late yesterday to catch up with Jeff Weiner, point man at Yahoo for all things search. Jeff's been a great resource for both this site as well as the book, and it had been far too long since we last caught up. The last time we spoke at length he showed me prototypes for what became Y!Q, so my expectations were high for this chat.

Jeff's always been the kind of guy who not only suffered my fascination with Joints after Midnight topics, he's even encouraged them. This time around he brought one such topic to me: the overall vision statement for Yahoo Search. The statement is not particularly new, Terry Semel referred to it at the beginning of his comments in the last quarterly earnings call, but Jeff wanted to bounce if off me, and by extension, all of you. He also wanted to talk about where search was going, and the implications of the flood of news in this space over the past few months.

The vision statement for Yahoo Search is pretty damn good, if you're into that kind of thing (I'll admit, I am). Here it is, in its entirety:

To enable people to find, use, share, and expand all human knowledge.

Jeff and his team have been testing this phrase at small gatherings and in the press this month, and so far it seems to be well received, if still a bit under the radar. Compare it to Google's mission statement:

To organize the world's information and make it universally accessible.

Interesting, no? Now, I'm mixing my visions and my missions, as many of you may quickly point out. Yahoo Search also has a mission:

To provide the world's most valued and trusted search service.

But that doesn't really have the same ring to it. Google's mission, I think, is really a vision statement in mission clothing, and it feels appropriate to compare it with the Yahoo Search vision.

When you think about Yahoo's search mission as an organizing principle, a lot of what Yahoo is doing - 360, MyWeb, Y!Q, the purchase of Flickr - start to fall into place. Weiner calls his vision FUSE (for Find, Use, Share, and Expand) and it's an apt metaphor - using search to fuse a myriad of services and applications, all of which center on knowledge and its application.

As Jeff pointed out to me, at the center of the idea of FUSE is what's happening to media - how every single medium - music, TV, print, telecom, even our first versions of the web - is being remixed and reordered by Web 2.0. It's an old saw, but mass media really is becoming my media - through RSS, podcasting, iTunes, Tivo, blogs, and many innovations to come. And central to navigating a my media world is search. Hence, the FUSE vision holds water for me - search is not just about a web index. It's about my interface to the world.

I like both Google and Yahoo's visions, to be honest, they both augur a future where control lies with us, through the questions we ask and the tracks we leave across the ever expanding web. Yahoo's focus on sharing, I think, is critical, and perhaps a key area where Google's (stated) vision may be lacking at the moment. But with so many recent innovations in that space - search history, Gmail, increased RSS support, centralized account management - I don't expect that deficit to stand for long.

• Posted by John Battelle at 6:01 PM
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Comments Broken on Searchblog?

We've had a problem with the TypePad registration system in the past day. It seems that no one can comment. If you can, please leave a comment on this post, so we can test this, and tell me what browser and OS you're using. I'll assume if there are no comments, that means either A/no one is reading anymore (sob) or B/I got a real issue here. If you want to email me with bug reports, I'm jbat at battellemedia dot com.

UDPATE: Comments are indeed borked, and folks on my end and over at Six Apart are working diligently to fix it. Thanks for all the email, I appreciate it.

• Posted by John Battelle at 7:34 AM
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The State of Video Search

An interesting round up by Mark Glaser at OJR. I just finished an interview with Mike Homer for my B 2.0 column, and I have to say, this whole space very much reminds me of the early days of search - a new frontier, many new players, lots of enthusiasm, not much understanding (yet) of how this might all play out.

I spoke to the author about all of this and he quotes me as the kicker to the piece:

CBS and other media companies are caught in a tough spot, wanting to exploit the technology and bring in ancillary income from "The Long Tail" -- but are also worried that without DRM their content's value will vaporize in a haze of file-swapping. John Battelle, author of the forthcoming book, "The Search," and the Searchblog, says that at least now the entertainment industry sees the opportunity.

"They didn't see it with Napster, but they see it now," Battelle said. "They know that there are copies of 'I Love Lucy' in the content archives somewhere. Each one of those could become annuities that are worth hundreds of thousands of dollars, because of the power of 'The Long Tail.' But they're afraid that [we'd] be swapping our copies of 'I Love Lucy' on the Web. Most of these solutions claim to do that with some flavor of DRM. But if they cut off the forces of participation and the forces of many, it ain't gonna take."

What I mean is this: video search - and its attendant economies (think paid search but with the upfront) will only work if we have millions of people informing our collective knowledge of what is worth our individual attention, and that can only happen if we can annotate, share, and remix video. I very much hope we don't shoot ourselves in the foot on this one - it could be the start of a massive new industry and cultural shift, or we could be stuck with Web 1.0 approaches. I hope it's the former.

• Posted by John Battelle at 7:40 PM
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Titans of Tech Column: Sky Dayton

I personally can't wait till full 3G nets hit the US. I spent some time with Sky talking this and other stuff over recently, and the result is my current column in B 2.0.

TITANS OF TECH
Surfing the Virtual Wave

EarthLink founder Sky Dayton helped connect our PCs to the Net. Now he wants to put Korea's version of wireless broadband on our cell phones.

By John Battelle, May 2005 Issue

For more than a decade, no matter how you've wanted to connect, Sky Dayton has been there with the hookup. The coffee shop owner turned Net entrepreneur started EarthLink and built the Internet service provider into a billion-dollar business. Then he wove a patchwork of Wi-Fi hotspots into a nationwide network, Boingo. Now he wants to reboot the cell-phone business.

All along he's been guided by two ideas: You don't have to own infrastructure to sell service, and customers care about applications, not technology. That's why EarthLink and Boingo thrived while rivals spent hundreds of millions of dollars on Internet backbones and Wi-Fi routers, only to go out of business.

For his latest venture, true to form, he's renting out space on cell-phone networks to give American customers something that South Korea has had for years: high-speed Internet access over a 3G (third-generation) wireless network and sophisticated handsets packed with the latest technologies. While DSL is fast and Wi-Fi is fun, both tether you to a limited area. 3G truly puts the Internet "in the air," as Dayton likes to say. EarthLink, where he is still a board member, and Korea's SK Telecom are putting $440 million into the new venture, SK-EarthLink, for which Dayton will serve as CEO while it prepares for a launch of service this year. Business 2.0 sat down with Dayton in his Santa Monica, Calif., office to get a preview of the wireless future.

How did South Korea get so far ahead of us in wireless?

Part of it is technical. They bet on Qualcomm (QCOM) technology, which is now the basis of all 3G networks. Lately they've even overtaken Japan as the hothouse of wireless development. Sprint and Verizon (VZ) and Cingular are just now rolling out the high-speed technology that SK Telecom deployed more than three years ago. We've been living in the past. The other part is cultural. Koreans study and work a lot harder. It's no wonder they got so far ahead.

So what do they have that we don't?

The applications that SK has built are a glimpse into the future -- live video on a handset, multiplayer games, and location-based services. To provide those kinds of services, it created a huge infrastructure: billing, video streaming systems, gaming, mapping systems, all that stuff. We're bringing that over lock, stock, and barrel and plugging it into the U.S. cellular infrastructure.

Why aren't you building your own network?

I have a lot of respect for the capital and focus it takes to be successful at building infrastructure. It's just not my core competency. EarthLink already had mobile virtual network operator agreements with Verizon and Sprint, and we contributed them to the joint venture. We have a foundation to build a house on now.

Which applications will draw users to the service first?

There are many I'm not ready to talk about yet. But there's music and video and location-based services. On my first trip to Korea last summer, I was at a restaurant, and one of the guys was late. I asked his colleague, "Can you call him and see if he's close so we can get on with lunch?" He said, "Just hold on a second." So he flips open his phone, pokes around a bit, shows me a little dot moving on a map on his screen, and says, "He's almost here."

(continued in extended entry)

So you can share your location with your instant-messenger buddy list?

Exactly. You decide who can see you. Let's say you go to a conference. People in your network will just show up on your phone.

What about the phones themselves? How will they be different?

Most phones here have a VGA camera. That would be a doorstop in Korea. They're up to 5 megapixels, which is a high-end camera. Processing power, screens, storage -- the whole thing is on a completely different level. Press the fast-forward button on innovation in the United States -- that's what you have in Korea.

You're targeting customers who spend an average of $600 to $700 a year. That's the BlackBerry-toting crowd, right?

We are not going mass-market. Look at EarthLink's customers -- they're younger, more sophisticated, and the Internet is with them all the time. Talking about the wireless market as one market is a mistake. We buy brands we identify with our lifestyles. Virgin showed that you could target a specific customer with a differentiated product, without a network, and succeed.

Considering the struggle EarthLink has had to get carriage on DSL and cable broadband, aren't you worried the wireless carriers will upgrade their own services first?

With DSL, there's typically a monopoly in a particular area. Wireless is more like dial-up, where there are multiple, overlapping nationwide infrastructure providers. And a builder of infrastructure has a fixed cost where profit is determined by utilization. If you help someone who has built that infrastructure to be more profitable, you create a symbiotic ecosystem. I think it was brilliant on the part of Sprint, Virgin's partner, to recognize this opportunity.

If you're just reselling a network, how different can you be?

We're not doing that. We will have everything a carrier has except cell towers. U.S. consumers are underserved by voice-centric operators today. We're going to make the experience better.

Was 3G a disaster, given the billions spent on licenses?

It just took a lot of time for carriers to roll out 3G. They had to spend the money up front. Then Wi-Fi came out and kind of embarrassed 3G. Suddenly there was this broadband network in most of the places you wanted to use it. And so a lot of people took that and wrote, "3G is dead."

Is Wi-Fi better than 3G?

The networks are good for different things. Wi-Fi is kind of an inside technology -- it's in Starbucks, airports, hotels, cafes, bookstores, McDonald's (MCD). Wi-Fi is always cheaper and faster than 3G, but you have to be in a hotspot to use it. Outside, 3G provides DSL speeds today, but it's expensive. You have better Wi-Fi coverage in your house than you have cellular coverage, right?

Of course. But why is that?

Giving people great cellular coverage at home would cost tens of billions of dollars. That's a huge problem for the cellular industry. Half of the broadband households in the United States today have Wi-Fi. So when you get home, you have all this free bandwidth. You get a better signal, and you can download much faster. I don't want to trivialize the quality-of-service problems, but all the pieces are there to integrate Wi-Fi and 3G.

How important is this deal to EarthLink?

The capitalization of this joint venture is nearly half a billion dollars, half of which is coming from EarthLink. It's a big bet.

And how's EarthLink doing?

EarthLink's doing well. Three years ago, dial-up started to decline. Fortunately, we started investing in broadband five years ago, and EarthLink today has the biggest broadband coverage of any company in the United States. A lot of people thought EarthLink couldn't make money because we didn't own the pipes, but broadband's profitable now. And dial-up is incredibly profitable. Dial-up's got a much longer tail than people think.

Does this all feel familiar -- figuring out a better way to connect to the Internet, just like you were doing 10 years ago?

It does feel that way. You hope that we've all learned something along the way.

SIDEBAR:
THE FUTURE OF PHONES
These wireless apps aren't sci-fi -- similar ones are already used in Korea. Here's what tomorrow's souped-up cell might look like.

"THREE FRIENDS NEARBY
(Click to locate)"

Merging instant-messenger buddy lists with GPS will let you find your friends in the real world too.

"IDOL WINNERS -- LIVE!
(Click to watch)"

High-speed networks will carry real-time broadcasts, not just short video clips.

"REMINDER: TIME TO STORM THE CASTLE!
(Click to play)"

Popular online games like Lineage will be ported to cell phones, so you can keep playing anywhere.

John Battelle is program chair of the Web 2.0 conference and author of "The Search" (Portfolio, 2005).

Find this article at http://www.business2.com/b2/subscribers/articles/0,17863,1048993,00.html

©2005 Business 2.0 Media Inc. All rights reserved.
Reproduction in whole or in part without permission is prohibited.

• Posted by John Battelle at 3:39 PM
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Yahoo Launches MyWeb Beta

Man, the pace of announcements is starting to feel overwhelming in the search space. Yahoo today is launching its MyWeb beta, an amalgam and update of many of its personalization features into one service. Yahoo calls it a "personal search engine, " it features improved search history, robust sharing and annotation features, integration with Yahoo 360, and API support. I have not had time to play with it, but I am looking forward to using it.

We're certainly in something of an arms race now, with Google and Yahoo the main perpetrators, and MSN playing catch up to boot. Is this good for the consumer of search and internet services? Surely in the long term, but I worry that the relentless stream of new features and services will start to deaden interest in the space.

• Posted by John Battelle at 6:57 AM
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Also: Google Ads Are Coming to RSS

Says Scoble. From a Longhorn blog he points to:

Q: What is Google doing?
A: I can't talk a whole lot about this yet. I can tell you that this is a pilot program for a new AdSense product that Google is looking into. Like all of their tests, it may disappear for a while, or be discontinued altogether.

Q: Is anyone else currently testing this technology?
A: No. Right now LonghornBlogs.com is the only site running this test. That will probably change in the next few days as their other alpha testers bring their systems online, but for now, we're it.

Q: How are you putting ads in the feeds?
A: I can't talk at all about implementation yet, because the system is not finalized. It's just a test to determine how well the current thought process works, the performance bottlenecks, and to discover any barriers to others using it. I CAN tell you that it isn't using Javascript.

Q: When can I start putting ads in MY feeds?
A: IF Google decides to launch this product, you can expect to see a wider public beta in the next few weeks.

• Posted by John Battelle at 9:54 AM
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Google Image Ads: The Wide SkyScraper and Other Units

In case any of you were wondering what the specs are for Google's new CPM-based image ads, here they are:

We will show the following ad sizes (see examples) on content sites in the Google Network:

* Banner: 468 x 60
* Leaderboard: 728 x 90
* Inline Rectangle: 300 x 250
* Skyscraper: 120 x 600
* Wide Skyscraper: 160 x 600

hat tip: Gary.

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Findory Redesigns

I've started using Findory, finally, so as to grok Greg Linden's well-received service. Findory is a personalized newsservice that watches what you read and adapts what it shows you accordingly. It features blog search and loads of news feeds. This week Greg redesigned the site, his release is here. In it he notes that Findory is growing quickly (traffic doubling every three months) and has crossed a million page views a month. I'll be playing with it over the next week or so...seems like Greg's building some traffic of good intent...

• Posted by John Battelle at 8:47 AM
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TrustRank, GoogleVillage

SEWand now /. have threads on Google's recent trademark applications in the area of "TrustRank" and "Advertise on the Neighborhood Wide Web." TrustRank is interesting because it may represent another approach to solving the vexing problem of spam, the NWW concept reminds us how important local is to the future of search. Gary notes that Google owns the domain "GoogleVillage.com."

• Posted by John Battelle at 8:39 AM
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Open Media Network Launches

Mike Homer, of Netscape and now Kontiki, and Marc Andreessen, of Netscape and now Opsware, have launched the Open Media Network, a free platform for the storage and distribution of public video and audio content. I spoke to Homer about the new network, which uses Kontiki's video serving system on the back end. The system is a mashup of sorts between Tivo and BitTorrent - it has a well considered interface and employes a secure P2P network for file distribution (it doesn't actually use Tivo or BitTorrent technology). Homer has seeded OMN with public TV content, podcasts, and more, but the service is free for anyone to use, and includes a Force of Many recommendation and filtering system. This is similar to OurMedia.org and Google's recently launched video project, but this has a slicker implementation (well, so far Google does not have an implementation!).

The system is not yet fully functional, but Homer seems dead serious about making it so. So is this just a publicity play for Kontiki? Perhaps, but it's an audacious (and expensive) one if so. And OMN is not without a business model, despite its non profit status - Homer plans to incorporate a payment system and keep a small percentage of the revenues to cover operational costs.

Chronicle, Cnet coverage.

• Posted by John Battelle at 7:44 AM
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Another Social Network Search Play

New, interesting engines are coming fast and furious, here's Multiply's launch. Main play: social network search.

• Posted by John Battelle at 11:31 AM
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Doubleclick Goes Private

Coincidence that Google announces its CPM/image play today? Yes, but one hell of one. From Reuters:

Internet marketing company DoubleClick Inc. (DCLK.O: Quote, Profile, Research) said on Monday that it agreed to be acquired by San Francisco buyout firm Hellman & Friedman LLC for roughly $1.1 billion.
.....
"It's a fair valuation, given the company's outlook," said Janco Partners Inc. analyst Martin Pyykkonen. "There's a feeling that general ad serving is somewhat of a commodity business."

• Posted by John Battelle at 11:23 AM
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Brilliant Shopper Launches

SEW has a review of Brilliant Shopper, yet another vertical shopping engine, from folks who know plenty about the space.

• Posted by John Battelle at 9:29 AM
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Google Moves Into Branding Business

Google announced today a "limited beta" for AdWords/AdSense that pretty much declares Google's intentions in the advertising business: The company is going to compete with everyone, on every front. The beta will be taken off in the "coming weeks" Patrick Keane, head of ad sales strategy at Google, told me late last week.

The new program allows advertisers to select where their ads might run and, just as importantly, let advertisers run image ads, a feature that has been in testing, but never as a CPM buy. Advertisers can also run animated gifs.

Not to put too fine a point on it, but this is Google as DoubleClick, Web 2.0 style (ie with an auction and with massive scale). Any pretense this has to do with search should be put to rest. This is an advertising play, pure and simple.

This move also shows Google is growing up, acting more like a business with its own agenda, as opposed to a engineering-driven playground where the coolest idea wins.

The Merc reports.

Update: I now see the Times piece. Well, it sure makes me out as anti-Google. I did say everything that I am quoted to say, however the context is off on the first section. I am quoted as saying:

"This drives the nail into the coffin of the idea that Google is a search business," said John Battelle, the author of a coming book on Google called "The Search."

"It is an advertising business that has nothing particularly to do with search."

In fact, I was speaking of the new AdSense features, not all of Google, when I said that last bit. Just to be clear. Even the Times can miss context.

• Posted by John Battelle at 8:01 AM
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AdMoolah: List your AdSense Results

A reader has started a site for folks to input their AdSense results. Right now it's quite bare, but he hopes folks will fill it up, and the site will become a resource for marketers. Admoolah.com.

• Posted by John Battelle at 9:05 PM
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The Mobile Web S*cks

Russell rants, and he's right. I have my own rant about this, at its core is the open/closed issue. On the one hand you have an open platform, the web, that sports a robust ecology with all sorts of innovation and competition. On the other hand, over in the mobile world, you have this carrier-driven crap that is driven by one thing and one thing only: the carrier's desperate desire to lock you in.

Free the mobile web! Only when it's connected, seamlessly and freely, to the real web will it blossom.

• Posted by John Battelle at 6:58 PM
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Tivo+Google Maps

Matt shows you how.

• Posted by John Battelle at 6:54 PM
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Google = Walmart?

No. But Wired makes an effort to draw a comparison anyway.

• Posted by John Battelle at 6:53 PM
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Vertical Search in the IT Space

Given its subject matter, it's surprising we don't have six of these! IT.com. ClickZ reports.

• Posted by John Battelle at 11:53 AM
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BizWeek Does Blogs

Cove story in BizWeek this week features the impact of blogs. I've covered it over at my FMP site.

• Posted by John Battelle at 11:20 AM
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You Know the Internet Has Come of Age...

When the two highest paid CEOs in business are Barry Diller (IAC) and Terry Semel (Yahoo.). Hummm.

• Posted by John Battelle at 10:44 AM
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GOOG Earnings are In: Big. Big. Big.

Revenues up 93% year over year. Cash from operations was $516 million in the quarter. Crashing on the final, no really, final edit of the manuscript. So here is the story from Reuters.

UPDATE: Safa has raised his price target to $275 on the earnings results.

GOOGLE ANNOUNCES RECORD REVENUES FOR THE FIRST QUARTER OF FISCAL 2005

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. - April 21, 2005 - Google Inc. (Nasdaq: GOOG)
today announced financial results for the quarter ended March 31, 2005.

"This was a very strong quarter for Google. We continue to execute
well and we have been able to take full advantage of the growth in
online advertising" said Eric Schmidt, Google chief executive
officer. "In addition, we performed well across our operations with
our engineering and product teams delivering dozens of new products and
features for Google users around the world."

· Google reported record revenues of $1.256 billion for the quarter
ended March 31, 2005, up 93% year over year. Google reports its
revenues, consistent with GAAP, on a gross basis without deducting
traffic acquisition costs or TAC, the portion of revenues shared with
partners.

· Income from operations, on a GAAP basis, was $443 million, or 35.2%
of revenues for the quarter ended March 31, 2005 compared to $155
million or 23.8% of revenues for the first quarter of 2004.

· Income from operations includes a $49 million non-cash, stock-based
compensation charge compared to a $76 million non-cash, stock-based
compensation charge in the prior year's first quarter.

· Net income on a GAAP basis for the quarter ended March 31, 2005 was
computed based on the following income statement or condensed income
statement line items. Revenues of $1.256 billion less TAC of $462
million, less both other costs and expenses before stock-based
compensation of $303 million and stock-based compensation of $49
million, increased by other income of $14 million and then reduced by a
provision for income taxes of $87 million.

· Net income on a GAAP basis in the first quarter of 2005 was $369
million or $1.29 per share on a basis of a diluted 286.6 million
weighted average shares outstanding. This compared to net income for
the first quarter of 2004 of $64 million or $0.24 per share on a basis
of a diluted 264.2 million weighted average shares outstanding.

· Some Wall Street analysts use non-GAAP measures to analyze our
operating results. For instance, they may subtract TAC of $462 million
from revenues of $1.256 billion to arrive at a net revenues amount.
Also, certain analysts may arrive at net income before stock-based
compensation by subtracting traffic acquisition costs of $462 million,
other costs and expenses before stock-based compensation of $303
million, adding back other income of $14 million and subtracting our
provision for income taxes of $87 million from revenues of $1.256
billion.

· Net cash provided by operating activities for the three months
ended March 31, 2005 totaled $530 million as compared to $208 million
for the first quarter of 2004, an increase of 155%.

· Adjusted EBITDA, which is an alternative measure of liquidity to
GAAP net cash provided by operating activities (and is defined as
income before interest, taxes, depreciation, amortization, the non-cash
stock-based compensation charge and in-process R&D), increased by $293
million or 115% to $ 548 million (or 44% of revenues) in the first
quarter of 2005 from $255 million in the first quarter of 2004 (or 39%
of revenues).

Financial Highlights

Revenues - Revenues in the quarter totaled a record $1.256 billion,
representing a 22% increase over the fourth quarter of 2004 and a 93%
year-over-year increase. This revenue increase reflects strong traffic
and monetization growth in the quarter as well as advertisers'
growing recognition of the Internet as an effective advertising medium.

Google-Sites Revenues - Google-owned sites generated $657 million or
52% of total revenues. This represents an increase of 116% over the
first quarter of 2004.

The Google Network - Revenues generated on Google's partner sites,
through AdSense programs, contributed $584 million, or 47% of total
revenues, a 75% increase over the Network revenues generated in the
same quarter last year.

TAC - Traffic Acquisition Costs, the portion of revenues shared with
Google's partners, increased to $462 million. This compares to total
payments to partners of $271 million in the first quarter of 2004.

Income from Operations - Income from operations in the first quarter,
on a GAAP basis, was $443 million or 35.2% of revenues, and included a
non-cash charge of $49 million for stock-based compensation. This
compares to income from operations of $155 million or 23.8% of revenues
in the first quarter of 2004, when the stock-based compensation charge
was $76 million. This improvement in operating margins was primarily
due to decreases in both stock-based compensation expense and TAC as a
percentage of revenues.

Income Taxes - Google recorded a provision for income taxes of $87
million in the first quarter of 2005, an effective tax rate of 19% as
compared to a $92 million provision for income taxes and a 59%
effective tax rate in the first quarter of 2004. The provision for
income taxes in this year's first quarter was reduced by $49 million
related to ISO disqualifying dispositions. The effective tax rate for
the remainder of 2005 is expected to be less than 30%. However if
future revenues recognized by Google's Irish subsidiary are not as
proportionately great as expected, Google's effective tax rate will
be higher than expected.

Net Income - Net income on a GAAP basis increased to $369 million or
29.4% of revenues in the first quarter of 2005 as compared to $64
million or 9.8% of revenues in the first quarter of 2004. Earnings on
a diluted per share basis were $1.29 in the first quarter of 2005 as
compared to $0.24 in the first quarter of 2004.

Cash Flow - Net cash provided by operating activities increased 155%
to $530 million for the three months ended March 31, 2005 from $208
million in the three months ended March 31, 2004. Free cash flow is an
alternative non-GAAP measure of liquidity to GAAP net cash provided by
operating activities and is calculated as operating cash flows less
capital expenditures. Capital expenditures were $142 million in the
three months ended March 31, 2005 as compared to $86 million in the
three months ended March 31, 2004. Free cash flow for the three
months ended March 31, 2005 totaled approximately $387 million as
compared to $122 million for the same period in 2004, an increase of
217%.

Adjusted EBITDA - Adjusted EBITDA is defined as income before
interest, taxes, depreciation, amortization, the non-cash stock-based
compensation charge and in-process R&D. It is another alternative
measure of liquidity to GAAP net cash provided by operating activities.
Adjusted EBITDA increased to approximately $548 million in Q1 2005 (or
44% of revenues) from $255 million (or 39% of revenues) in Q1 2004.

The reconciliations of free cash flow and adjusted EBITDA to net cash
provided by operating activities, the GAAP measure of liquidity, is set
forth at the back of this release.

Cash - As of March 31, 2005, Google had a cash, cash equivalents and
marketable securities balance of $2.507 billion.

On a worldwide basis, Google employed 3,482 full time employees as of
March 31, 2005, up from 3,021 as of December 31, 2004.

Webcast and conference call information

A live audio webcast of Google's first-quarter earnings release call
will be available at http://investor.google.com/news.html. The call
begins today at 1:30 p.m. (PDT)/ 4:30 (EDT). This press release, the
financial tables as well as other supplemental information including
the reconciliations of certain non-GAAP measures to their nearest
comparable GAAP measures, are also available at that site. A replay
of the call will be available beginning at 7:30 PM EDT through midnight
Monday, May 2, by calling (888) 203-1112 in the United States or (719)
457-0820 for calls from outside the United States. The required
confirmation code for the replay is 1993546.

• Posted by John Battelle at 2:28 PM
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Too Much News, Not Enough Time...

Briefly noted:

A9 rolls out its nifty Yellow Pages in five more cities.

Podscope - search within a podcast - launched Monday. The CEO of TVEyes, which is behind it, pinged me about it. It sounds really cool.

Blinkx launched new varities of its Smart Folders feature, as well as a promotion with the Hitchhiker's Guide movie.

A CS grad emailed me with a new engine, and I'm a sucker for solo projects. it's called DigPeople, another people search engine.

Gross has yet another search company in the news, this time it's Insider Pages, a local play, driving a million dollars in its first month.

My friends at O'Reilly (partners in the Web 2.0 conference) have launched O'Reilly's Radar blog. Cool!

Besides its new search history feature, Google announced upgrades to its Advertising Professionals Program and announced a deal to syndicate local results on accuweather. Watch this space.

• Posted by John Battelle at 11:35 PM
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News: Google Launches My Search History

This is big news, readers know how much I like the concept of search history, pioneered by A9 and others. I spoke to Marissa Mayer about this last night, and I asked her why Google was finally doing this. Her response: "It was overdue."

I totally agree. I'm on deadline right now for the final manuscript of my book, but the site is here. Once you sign up, your search history will be integrated into every Google search you do. This is a major move for Google, and I'll have an essay as to why later.

• Posted by John Battelle at 12:20 PM
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Fortune on Gates and Google

Fred Vogelstein has penned a piece on MSFT and Google for Fortune (sub required) and taken the tack of Google's push into software, generally. A good overview of a subject covered often here - the idea of search becoming the interface to all data, and therefore, the "Windows" of the web platform. He's got Gates on the record on Google, which is a pretty big deal.

From the opening:

He was poking around on the Google company website and came across a help-wanted page with descriptions of all the open jobs at Google. Why, he wondered, were the qualifications for so many of them identical to Microsoft job specs? Google was a web search business, yet here on the screen were postings for engineers with backgrounds that had nothing to do with search and everything to do with Microsoft's core business—people trained in things like operating-system design, compiler optimization, and distributed-systems architecture. Gates wondered whether Microsoft might be facing much more than a war in search. An e-mail he sent to a handful of execs that day said, in effect, "We have to watch these guys. It looks like they are building something to compete with us."

Other tidbits:

All of which helps explain why inside Microsoft, the battle with Google has become far more than a fight over search: It's a certifiable grudge match for king of the hill in high tech. "Google is interesting not just because of web search, but because they're going to try to take that and use it to get into other parts of software," says Gates as he leans forward in his chair, his body coiled as if he could spring to his feet at any second. "If all there was was search, you really shouldn't care so much about it. It's because they are a software company," he says. "In that sense," he adds later, "they are more like us than anyone else we have ever competed with."...

...Forced to watch Google's stock soar the way Microsoft's used to, and Brin and Page enjoy their roles as tech's new rock stars, Gates brings to the fight a ferocity that nobody has seen since the Netscape war a decade ago. Their popularity gets under his skin. "There's companies that are just so cool that you just can't even deal with it," he says sarcastically, suggesting that Google is nothing more than the latest fad, adding, "At least they know to wear black."

...Trying to build a Google killer, however, has turned out to be truly humbling for Microsoft. The effort has taken longer, cost more money, and exposed more big-company problems at Microsoft than anyone imagined.

BTW, I have to say, I HATE the Time Inc. sub wall. I am a subscriber, and it NEVER remembers me, and I always have to re-register. It's deeply lame, in too many ways to mention. Time Inc. folks reading this, get your shit together and join the point to economy, please!

• Posted by John Battelle at 10:35 AM
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Yow. GOOG 250

Safa Rashtchy, whose opinion I value, just came out with a his first report on Google (so far I only have the PDF), setting a price target for GOOG of 250. The stock has been moving up alot, it went up on anticipation of Yahoo's good numbers yesterday, and today it's up again, to nearly 200. But 250? Safa says why:

Initiating with Outperform rating and a $250 price target;

We believe Google will become the segment leader and the must-own stock in our sector, as sustainable growth pattern becomes clear to investors;

We believe there is substantial new revenue opportunity for Google as it leverages its major technology and brand assets, beyond current search revenues;

Google remains the No. 1 company in search with more than 50% global market share;

Global search revenues will reach $22 billion by 2010; growth continues to be robust.

• Posted by John Battelle at 10:18 AM
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Rojo Officially Launches

Chris Alden and his team have been laboring over Rojo for nearly two years, and have learned quite a bit during the site's beta phase, which required an invite. The site is now public.

Rojo is an RSS feed reader with a community twist - it allows its users to search, share, tag, and publish the content they read. Learn more about it here, to sign up head to rojo.com. Congrats to Chris.

• Posted by John Battelle at 7:15 AM
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Yahoo Earnings Jump

It looks like everyone will have a good quarter in the search sector. Google reports Thursday.

• Posted by John Battelle at 2:19 PM
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Read Seth on Media Futures....

It's worth a looksee. Lots of good stuff. I particularly like this part:

Now transpose people for web pages, and you see how the race for the next great search algorithm has less to do with organizing static HTML content than with coordinating the constantly changing expressions of millions of distributed people.

And this, which relates to FM:

The question is, then, whether a PeopleRank algorithm that uses community driven tags as its input, could do to About.com, Gawker Media, and Weblogs what Google did to Alta Vista, namely deliver a superior end-user experience that requires only incremental server bandwidth to scale.

Thanks, Fred.

• Posted by John Battelle at 7:11 AM
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Wondir Launches Revamped Site

I first wrote about Wondir back in November. I really liked the promise of the site - a sort of community based Q&A service, but since then it seemed the site, which was in beta, had been quiet. Well it's back, and I had a chance to catch up with founder Matt Koll recently.

Koll has learned a lot tweaking Wondir over the past few months. The site recently crossed its millionth question and answer, and is doing around 6-7,000 questions a day. Back in the Fall, they were doing 2-3,000, so clearly something is working.

Sure, Google recently incorporated answers into their index, but Wondir is an entirely different beast. Google's (or MSN's, or Ask's) question answering is a very broad and very shallow play, Wondir is the vertical engine of Q&A. And why not? If Koll can manage to get a really useful community working on creating base pairs of questions and answers, he'll have quite a content play on his hand - and that means all sorts of possible business models. For now, he sees AdWords as his friend. His AdWords CTR has been impressive - reportedly 4%. Clearly, answering specific questions is good business.

But Koll has his work cut out: he has a chicken and egg issue with traffic, and he has to determine where to place his resources - should he focus on the syndicated model (placing private label Wondir implementations on other sites like ichef) or pursue a model where Wondir becomes a massive destination? I suggested he try to populate each with the other, creating a kind of Q&A Commons, and he liked the idea, but publishers tend to like to keep their answers to themselves.

There's more to come: Koll has instituted a rating system for answers which has helped him in formulating a ranking algorithm of sorts for his base pairs. Consider it a "helpfulness index" - like PageRank for Answers. It's not quite baked yet, but it should be worth watching. Also, expect some interesting RSS news from Wondir soon, Koll hinted. Net net: I'm going to keep tabs on Wondir. If they can get a full head of steam and create a community of intentional traffic, there's much to learn there.

Release in extended entry.

Wondir Launches Live Question & Answer Engine

 

Wondir Weaves Search and Instant Messaging

to Create Free and Open Answer Communities

 

BETHESDA, MD -- April 19, 2005 – Wondir Inc. today launches www.wondir.com, a free, live question and answer engine that connects people with questions to people with answers.  Wondir has the speed and simplicity of a search engine – and goes beyond search to enable live and personal responses to questions.

“Sometimes it takes a village – or more precisely -- someone in the village who can help you,” said Dr. Matthew Koll, founder and CEO of Wondir.  “There are millions of people in the world who are eager to share their knowledge, experience, advice and opinions – who want to reach out and help other people solve problems and answer questions.  The key is getting the right question in front of the right people at the right time.”

            It takes innovative and specialized technology to connect the villagers.  While Wondir looks like a search engine, it is actually designed for questions that lie beyond the reach of search engines. The search engine model provides three key benefits: speed, ease-of-use and a proven sponsored-search business model.  Wondir integrates advanced search, instant messaging, e-mail, database, categorization, browsing, reputation systems and push and pull technologies to uncover good answers fast and to spark communication.

Anyone can ask.  Anyone can answer.  And everyone can share, since all of the questions and answers are searchable immediately.  Good answers can be found again whenever someone asks a similar question.

The official launch of www.wondir.com follows three years of development and extensive public testing.  The Wondir community has produced more than 1 million questions and answers.  More than 100,000 different people have answered questions, and more than 60,000 people are registered members of the Wondir community. 

"While there are loads of question answering services on the Web, Wondir is different in some important ways,” wrote John Battelle on Searchblog.com.  “First, it feels like a search engine. Second, Wondir aggregates questions and answers through the architecture of participation, essentially getting its questioners to become answerers, and vice versa. Getting people to answer questions is not as easy as it might seem, but Wondir has thought through all of this. I like where this service is going."

Registration is free.  You don’t need to register to use the service, but if you do register, you can take advantage of valuable features.  Registered members can create a profile that points to their homepage or blog, or promotes their business or a cause they care about.  Members can create New Question Alerts, so they are notified whenever someone asks a question that matches their interests.  In addition, businesses of any size can reach potential customers by creating a Wondir profile that points to their business site and then they can offer helpful answers to some relevant questions.

Members also can rate the quality of answers to help promote credibility on the service.  Naturally, the ratings provided by highly rated members carry the most weight.

Wondir is not just a place on the Web; it is also a sharable platform.  Wondir supports business partners who can enliven their own communities with live Q&A and increase their revenues with Wondir’s revenue sharing program.  Blogs, search engines, social networks, organizations – any kind of online community – can add the Wondir question box and Wondir’s unique and addictive stream-of-questions ticker to their own site.  Partners can create private categories – or they can tap into the Wondir community, using Wondir as a hub connecting people on sites all around the web who share an interest.

Vibrant online communities like www.ichef.com, www.theautochannel.com, and www.ratemyteachers.com have incorporated Wondir-powered live Q&A into their sites.   Thousands of new Q&As are added daily.  Partners like www.topix.net and www.pregnancy.org enrich the experience for all Wondir users by being sources of valuable and timely information.

            “Wondir gives our users a chance to interact with an immediacy and personality that draws them closer, bringing them back to the site on a regular basis,” said Michael Hussey, co-founder of RateMyTeachers.com. “We have linked Wondir’s live Q&A to our content related to specific high schools so that current and former students can engage in a live dialogue about their teachers.” 

            Added Dr. Koll: “Think of Wondir as a virtual town square.  And, the more crowded it gets, the easier it is to get the answers you need.”

About Wondir

Wondir is a free, live question and answer engine that connects people with questions to people with answers in a fast and easy way.  With innovative search and instant messaging technology, Wondir puts the right question in front of the right people to get fast, relevant answers.  Wondir’s business model is based on targeted, sponsored-search advertising.  Distribution is through partners who place Wondir’s question box and stream-of-questions ticker on their site and share revenue.  Based in Bethesda, Md., Wondir Inc. was founded in 2003 by a group of senior search pioneers, including Dr. Matthew Koll, who previously founded the search company Personal Library Software (acquired by America Online in 1998), and Laura Horn, former executive at AOL and LEXIS-NEXIS.

• Posted by John Battelle at 9:07 PM
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Snap Does Suggest One Better

While I was away I got a note from Bill Gross, founder of Snap (and Overture, and Picasa, and...anyway). He was brimming with the news of a neat new hack on his home page - a suggest feature that offers searches based on the letters you type in. Sounds like Google Suggest, no? NO! Gross told me. In his words:

Google suggest is awesome, but doesn�t do substrings, just the leading characters of the search term, I believe. Also, Google shows you hit count in the index, not number of searches performed by users. Number of searches by users seems to yield useful results from the �network� of people in a collaborative filtering kind of way. Just try typing in, say PASADENA, or SOLAR ENERGY, or anything, and watch what a relevant list you get because it’s using the collective knowledge of the whole network!

• Posted by John Battelle at 8:36 PM
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The Winning Subtitle

Those of you who have read Searchblog for a while may recall my plea for a better subtitle (I think in fact it was two pleas). You kindly gave me more than 200 possible subtitles, ranging from hilarious (Results 1-10 of about 17,300,000) to the pretty darn good (GETTING EVERYTHING: Search in the Age of Google).

Believe it or not, my publishers read *every single entry* on the site, and were really stoked to get so much feedback. As I said before, I had pretty much given up on the idea of controlling the outcome of the subtitle, it's like the author of a magazine piece arguing about the cover line. The goal is to sell books, and what do I know about that?

So after reading all your input and talking to their salesforce, the publishers have settled on a subtitle:

THE SEARCH: The Inside Story of How Google and Its Rivals Changed Everything

We went, well, big on the promise - "Changed Everything." Well, probably not everything, but certainly everything in the media/tech/culture/business nexus, which after all is what the book is about.

The publication date is early September, but review copies are going to be ready pretty soon. I'm taking this final week to do one last major line edit, and then it's all up to the fates. It's like giving birth in excruciating slow motion. Bleah.

• Posted by John Battelle at 7:15 AM
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TivoSearch

From Cnet, a longish piece on the intersection of search and Tivo, with an emphasis on reporting from anonymous sources claiming something of a competition between Yahoo and Google to do an exclusive deal with Tivo for "bridging television and the web."

From the piece:

A partnership between TiVo and a major Internet search engine would offer expansion opportunities for both. TiVo has long talked about becoming the "Google of TV," eventually enabling its 3 million subscribers to search for and watch any broadcast or broadband media. Though TiVo opened the door for video downloads straight from the Web, it does not yet offer such a feature.

Meanwhile, Google and Yahoo are investing heavily in video services.

For my riff on tv and search merging, head here. For my interview with Tivo CEO Mike Ramsay, head here.

• Posted by John Battelle at 6:49 AM
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The Week That Was

Come with me as I wade through 9 days of back reading...

Google adds feeds to Gmail. About time, and probably just the beginning....

Google also launched Google Local for Mobile. Watch this space as well. The mobile world needs bridges to the web.

Joe Beda (Googler) on his 20% time presentation at CFP. There is one question - Why 20%? - which I can answer - Sergey did a math proof showing that to be the most efficient percentage. Don't ask me to verify his math.

Yahoo launches its beta of its redesigned News site. Oh, and gives out free hosting to small biz. All in a day's work.

The WaPo take a mainstream look at clickfraud (not a lot of ground broken here...for a riff on media coverage of clickfraud, head here)

Josh's funder reveals himself to be Fred...

Oh to be a fly on the wall for this conversation...Tim and Jeff are both search titans.

Speaking of Tim, he wonders, are tags useful?

Google tests some new layouts for Adwords.

What, you haven't seen the craigslist/GoogleMaps mashup yet?

Become.com (I wrote about it here) launched formally this week.

Ask upgrades its MyJeeves personalized search.

And this ZabaSearch is some odd shit...this one feels like it may turn into a real story...here's the Chron in it...(thanks Xeni)

• Posted by John Battelle at 9:28 PM
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The Most Important Thing About Google Video

...is that it allows those who upload it to charge whatever they want for access to it (and split revenues with Google). Tell me that Google isn't in the marketplace business. Go on, convince me.

The program is in its early stages, but this will certainly be one to watch.

• Posted by John Battelle at 5:26 PM
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Gary Flake, to MSFT

I've pinged Gary and asked if he'll give Searchblog an interview, I've known him for a while, since about 2002 when I started working on the book idea. Gary was chief scientist at Overture, then head of research at Yahoo. This is a major coup for MSFT, certainly. I'm eager to find out what really behind the move. Was it a lack of interesting stuff to work on at Yahoo? A bad fit after the Overture integration? In any case, I hope to have more soon.

Meanwhile, the /. thread is here, MSN blog post is here. Webmasterworld thread here.

Gary's old Yahoo home page.

• Posted by John Battelle at 5:05 PM
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Back...

Wow. Every time I go offline for a week, it reminds me how good it is to...go offline for a week.

While I was gone, a few folks noticed my site over at fmpub.net. It's still early, but this is the new company I have been mentioning from time to time. More on it as things develop - it's very exciting (at least, to me...). Meantime, I've got a lot of catching up to do, I'll summarize last week soon, and be back at it on Monday. Good to be back.

• Posted by John Battelle at 9:08 AM
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Taking Off....

Searchblog will be on vacation through next Friday. I'm taking the family (it's my kids Spring Break) and heading to...the Carribean! A much needed break before redoubling my efforts in the Internet space...

• Posted by John Battelle at 8:32 PM
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Google Launches Q&A Service

More on this when I can, Gary has a write up here.

• Posted by John Battelle at 10:41 AM
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Keyword Prices Up

Fathom's keyword price index is up last month. MediaPost:

PRICES FOR PAID SEARCH LISTINGS rebounded in March, rising 9 percent to an average of $1.75 a click, according to the most recent Fathom Online Keyword Price Index, released today.

The average cost of keywords--which had fallen during the first two months of the year, after rising steadily from September through the holidays--now exceeds last December's $1.70 by about 3 percent. Matt McMahon, Fathom Online's executive vice president-corporate development, attributed the upswing in keyword pricing to seasonal shifts in ad spending.

• Posted by John Battelle at 6:33 AM
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Type in AIG, Get Spitzer

He's running on his record....Apparently gubernatorial candidate and noted white collar crimebuster Elliot Spitzer bought AdWords for "AIG" on Google (he busted them while on watch as NY Atty Gen), but when I tried it, I got an ad for "shortgoogle.com." Huh.

• Posted by John Battelle at 4:05 PM
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Kid Friendly Search

SEW gives an overview and links. Very cool, thanks Danny and Chris!

• Posted by John Battelle at 8:18 AM
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Care About Your Privacy?

Then read this piece over at Cnet on the Patriot Act. A trickle of information is coming out on how our Govt is using Patriot, as some sections of the law are up for renewal. I've written about the Patriot Act in my book as it relates to search, and it's kind of heavy sledding to get to the conclusions which might just be a bit concerning. But here's the drift: If you keep a search history (as I do at Yahoo, A9, and most likely other places I am unaware of), the privacy of that record from Government prying without notice is not presumed anymore. The same goes for any ISP you might use - from Comcast to AOL. As we go from the ephemeral to the eternal, it's best to keep that in mind. From the piece:

Section 215 "has only been used to obtain driver's license records, public accommodations records, apartment-leasing records, credit card records, and subscriber information" maintained by telephone companies or Internet providers, the Justice Department said Tuesday. "The department has not obtained a section 215 order for library or bookstore records, medical records, or gun sale records."

Did ya get that? "'subscriber information' maintained by telephone companies or Internet providers."

The law does not require that you be a suspect, and it provides for secret searches without notification. Does that worry me? Yes, because power festers without the disinfectant of sunlight.

• Posted by John Battelle at 7:43 AM
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Google Keyhole Integration Update

I was going to write up more on Google Maps and its integration of Keyhole, but to see its power, just read this entry from Don Park.

I spoke to John Hanke, the CEO of Keyhole and now GM of the unit within Google. His vision early on was to see his product in the hands of millions of people. I think he's succeeded. I used Google Maps/Keyhole to "walk" up Mount Tam last night. It's just really cool. And it brings a new view of the world into our lives, one I am sure will be enriched by layers of metadata - traffic information, rainfall stats, historical data, user tagged information of all sorts ("Click here to see my Flickr gallery from this vista") etc. Cool. Very cool. But...will it be open? For now, this world is closed to Google, and only Google can determine what data will be layered on top of it. But imagine if the company opened up an API to it? Now that would be Not Evil.

Update: No sooner did I post this than I saw Memorymap, a Flickr/Google Maps mashup. Cool (and thanks, Kevin). And MyGmaps! (Thanks, Philipp)

• Posted by John Battelle at 7:18 AM
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Study: Q1 2005 Beats Q4 2004

Once again news that for online media, the first quarter of this year was better than the last quarter of the year preceding it - by 11% - a significant feat given that Q4 is usually the strongest quarter in any media cycle. MediaPost reports.

• Posted by John Battelle at 7:09 AM
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Yahoo: Toolbar Update, Mac Version (Yeah!)

Yahoo has updated its toolbar with new anti spyware features, but forget that, they now support Mac via Firefox. Yeeeehaw!

• Posted by John Battelle at 7:44 PM
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AlmondNet: Search History + Ads = New model?

This AdWeek story reports that Lycos is teaming up with a company called AlmondNet to track users' search behavior, then serve them high CPM banners as they visit non search sites. Claria has already announced it wants into this game, and I had a very interesting chat with a source today about Yahoo's attempts to do something similar on its own network. The net net: it's hard to do well, and there are major privacy issues.

Of course, one of the major goals of any publisher is turning low CPM impressions into high CPM impressions. If only they knew what their readers' wanted, and could serve them ads which understood that intent in real time. To quote from the AdWeek piece:

AlmondNet has struck deals with undisclosed ISPs and adware companies to collect non-personally identifiable search behavior through cookies. The search data is then used by AlmondNet's Post-Search broker network, which buys low-priced run-of-site inventory from publishers, to display graphical ads tied to previous search behavior.

For example, a user who searched for "health insurance" on Google might later see a banner ad on a weather site reading, "Looking for health insurance? Click here for low-cost options."

"Forty percent of online advertising spending goes to search engines, but people spend less than 5 percent of their time on search engines," said Roy Shkedi, CEO of AlmondNet. "Something doesn't add up."

You know what doesn't add up for me? The "undisclosed ISPs and adware companies." Behavioral networks are nothing new, but clearly this idea is gaining momentum. If it is going to really work, we have to have transparency, period. I want a dashboard for my data, I want to know how it's being used, and i want to edit it at my will. Nothing less will work, in the long run, or should, to my mind. Give that to consumers, and this space will not only heat up, it will take off.

• Posted by John Battelle at 2:14 PM
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Bray In ACM Queue

Tim Bray, now at Sun, is interviewed in this issue of ACM Queue. A fine read, in particular if you like history and present day issues around RSS, RDF, and XML. Tim was one of the first folks I spoke to about search, and I'm very glad I did.

• Posted by John Battelle at 12:37 PM
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Yow.

This is a very clear stat, from "Circulation Dropping" - a site that monitors publishing.

Revenue for newspaper websites, year 2004, aggregate:

$1.19 billion, with nearly half that amount coming from classifieds.

Revenue for google adwords, year 2004:

$3.143 billion;roughly half that amount on google, the other half on third-party websites (the adsense program).

Likelihood of only newspaper classifieds growing 25% this year, given the lower costs and better reach offered by others?

0.

I believe the 25% growth figure is a nod to the growth of paid search. Paints a pretty bleak picture for newspapers' online growth, but I think in fact there is hope. Papers are centers of the community, and even with craigslist and Google, they can make hay there if they watch their costs and leverage their position. Will they overtake the platforms? No. But they can beat craigslist by joining em....

• Posted by John Battelle at 9:00 AM
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Click Fraud Update: Class Action Filed In Arkansas

It was simply a matter of time: From the Dow Jones newswires comes word of a class action lawsuit filed in Arkansas by Lanes Collectibles and several other advertisers. The suit names 11 engines, including Google, Looksmart, Ask, etc. Is this a big deal? Hard to say, yet. I've been looking into this for a while now, and will have more as I can report it.

• Posted by John Battelle at 8:35 AM
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Webbys Move to NYC

I've always been a fan of the Webbys, a somewhat tongue-in-cheek celebration of all that is good on the Web. I am also a fan and friend of Tiffany Shlain, the Webby's creator and creative director. The past few years have been hard on the event, which was scaled back to online only, but this year its back with a vengeance - it will move to New York and be hosted by the Daily Show's Rob Corddry.

I've been a judge of the Webbys for years, and this year is no exception. I've also seen the hard times Tiffany and her team had to endure - including the struggle to get the event out from under the somewhat suffocating embrace of the wrong owner. They managed to do just that last year, and now more independent, the event is once again finding its voice. I very much wish it well, and hope that in the move to NYC, it won't forget its California roots.

• Posted by John Battelle at 7:54 AM
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Google Integrates Keyhole Into Maps

This is cool - and much anticipated. Google has incorporated Keyhole into its mapping application. More soon. ...

• Posted by John Battelle at 6:45 PM
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Google Personal Video

Some news I saw today reminded me of another conversation with Eric, one that had to do with Google and personal video. I asked him what problem Google might tackle next. Here's a tidbit from my upcoming book:

By all means, do tell, I urged him. What might you build next? “We understand that video is the next holy grail,” Schmidt replied. “How many camcorder tapes do you have?”

I answered that I had no idea, but a lot, at least a box full. “If the average reasonably high income person had a hundred each, that’s millions and millions of tapes,” Schmidt said. “That certainly sounds like an unsolved problem.”

So is that it? The future of Google is – indexing your old video collection? Somehow, I figured Schimdt was being a bit disingenuous.

Not exactly. According to Paid Content, today at the National Cable Show Larry Page announced that "the company is about to launch a test of personal video submissions." More: "We don't know what we're going to get," he added after the session. "It's kind of the long tail of video content." Also from Paid Content: Google Guys Go to the National Show.

• Posted by John Battelle at 5:49 PM
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Searchblog Experiments With Y!Q

Thanks to my uber geek buddy Scot at Birdhouse, Searchblog now supports Y!Q on permalink pages. Check it out here, for example. Please let me know if you like it, as I've said before, I really like the idea of testing out new stuff on this site. If readers like it I'll put in on the home page. For more on the Y!Q Publisher program, head here. And thanks, Jeremy, for including me in the Yahoo test program.

• Posted by John Battelle at 5:17 PM
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InfoWeek on Future Search

Good roundup of emerging technologies in this week's InformationWeek.

(thanks, Nathan)

• Posted by John Battelle at 3:45 PM
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Google Current

Back in 2001 I met with Eric Schmidt and suggested that Google Zeitgiest could be turned into a killer media company. Well, I very much doubt that had anything to do with the news today that Zeitgeist is powering Al Gore's new Current cable channel, but I'm pleased just the same. Gore's channel will have Google segments built from search data. Very cool.

From Search Engine Journal's coverage:

“Google Current,” built using samplings of popular Google search data, including from Google Zeitgeist, complements the free-flowing pod format with news updates each half-hour. Thirty seconds to three minutes in length, these segments buck conventional news practices by reporting not on what media editors decide is “news,” but on the topics people are actually searching for right now. So news isn’t what the network thinks you should know, but what the world is searching to learn.

Reuters story.

• Posted by John Battelle at 3:28 PM
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Amazon Buys BookSurge

So why do I care? I'm fascinated with Google Print, and also with companies like QOOP, who provide print on demand (they do the print edition of Searchblog, at left).

To my mind, there really is no reason why Google can't become the world's largest bookseller, simply by adding a "Print, Ship, and Bill me" button to any book they have in the Google Print database. Given that Amazon has already done a massive book scanning effort of its own with Search Inside the Book, the purchase of BookSurge is interesting.

Link to the InternetNews story.

• Posted by John Battelle at 10:48 AM
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Google Video From UofW

A University of Washington video "Behind the Scenes at Google." Found on /.

• Posted by John Battelle at 10:38 AM
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Broadbandwagon

Om Malik has new stats on broadband adoption in 2004. The more bband, the better for all of us...

• Posted by John Battelle at 10:35 AM
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Yahoo Launches FareChase Hotel Beta

Yahoo has launched a hotels extension of its recently acquired FareChase travel search engine.

• Posted by John Battelle at 9:08 AM
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Levy on Google

Steven gives an overview of where the company is now in Newsweek. Intersting quote about ads in Google News from Eric:

In order to let the products develop organically, sometimes Google forgoes revenues in the short term. "It takes years to become profitable in terms of total dollars invested, but we don't even think about it," he adds. "When we started Google News, we forgot to put ads in it. It's not deliberate. We actually forgot."

• Posted by John Battelle at 11:35 AM
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Yahoo's New Index

Yahoo's search team announced a couple of days agothat they were implementing an index update. Why is this noteworthy? It's a first - from what I can tell, the first time an engine has given the ecology of webmasters and publishers a heads up that a change was coming. Cool.

• Posted by John Battelle at 1:09 PM
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Battelle the Grump

OK, some of you have given me shit for having no sense of humor regarding Google's April's Fool post. Sorry. It was funny, OK? FUNNY. But...well, I guess I'm overanalyzing. I'll be on vacation week after next, and I promise, I'll come back with my priorities straight.

Meantime, Yahoo's Slacker spoof was also funny. I liked this line, clearly a dig at Google Print:

Well, scanners are cheap these days. Really cheap. When you combine a few $60 scanners with some willing Ph.D interns, we expect the entire book scanning project to take no more than 4 weeks and $6,000.

• Posted by John Battelle at 4:37 PM
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Google Gulp Pokes Fun at PR Issues

Google has a tradition of April Fool's jokes, my favorite is PigeonRank. This year it's the "Google Gulp," a tongue-in-cheek tour through Google's product development process, with jabs (or shout outs, hard to say) at Schmidt, Urs Hoelzle, Stanford PhDs, and the rave culture. In short, Google Gulp is a fantasy drink which makes people smarter. (Maybe even as smart as the people at Google, one dares to dream...).

The descriptive text for this spoof reads like a exorcism-by-humor for some of Google's most vexing PR issues - from terminal Beta to privacy. Read through it, it speaks volumes on the culture. Some of the lines read as if the founders themselves were involved in the creative process. To wit:

...any piece of information's usefulness derives, to a depressing degree, from the cognitive ability of the user who's using it.

...to comprehend the long version of this answer, you'd need a PhD (from Stanford, natch).

...You mean we should cripple a perfectly useful feature just because of a little bad PR?

.... At any rate, you should be aware that by popping the seal on the twist-off Gulp cap, you send a wireless signal to Google's servers indicating your irrevocable acceptance of the Google Gulp Terms and Conditions, which do include the possibility, however remote, of hideous genetic mutation resulting from your consumption of this product

....This "limited release" beta product is available to anyone who turns in a used Google Gulp bottle cap at any local retailer. If you don't have any Gulp caps, ask a friend to give you one.

....We'll commit when we're ready, okay? Besides, what's so great about taking things out of beta? It ruins all the romance, the challenge, the possibilities, the right to explore. Carpe diem, ya know? Maybe we're jaded, but we've seen all these other companies leap headlong into 1.0, thinking their product is exactly what they've been dreaming of all their lives, that everything is perfect and hunky-dory – and the next thing you know some vanilla copycat release from Redmond is kicking their butt, the Board is holding emergency meetings and the CEO is on CNBC blathering sweatily about "a new direction" and "getting back to basics." No thanks, man. We like our freedom.

The fine print on privacy, while all in good fun, kind of weirds me out:

Google Gulp and Your Privacy
From time to time, in order to improve Google Gulp's usefulness for our users, Google Gulp will send packets of data related to your usage of this product from a wireless transmitter embedded in the base of your Google Gulp bottle to the GulpPlex™, a heavily guarded, massively parallel server farm whose location is known only to Eric Schmidt, who carries its GPS coordinates on a 64-bit-encrypted smart card locked in a stainless-steel briefcase handcuffed to his right wrist. No personally identifiable information of any kind related to your consumption of Google Gulp or any other current or future Google Foods product will ever be given, sold, bartered, auctioned off, tossed into a late-night poker pot, or otherwise transferred in any way to any untrustworthy third party, ever, we swear. See our Privacy Policy.

• Posted by John Battelle at 10:30 AM
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OJR on Yahoo News

A nice profile, and Mark even quotes me. Net net: Yahoo News is going Web 2.0.

• Posted by John Battelle at 9:51 AM
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