John Battelle's Searchblog

In my recent B 2.0 column, I give MSFT credit for pushing a new form of video advertising into the mainstream, and claim that this TV-type advertising will support free video consumption on the web. Neat then to see that Yahoo will expand its free video again, and has killed its video subscription service.

I've written about this before, in Business 2.0, pointing out that MSFT and Google - in some ways - share similar cultures. But I really doubt this will happen, regardless of the rumours spurred by reports in the NYT. Of course MSFT wishes it had Google, and of course Google respects MSFT. But I just don't see them doing it. If they do, well, it'd be the biggest thing to hit the internet since AOLTW. Enough said.

Here is Beatrix's first photo album.

So things will be a bit quiet, at least until I add a link with pictures of Baby #3...

"We're all Linux users," he points out at the OSCOM conference this week. Huh? Well, we all use Google, a Linux application running over the net. His point is important: traditional notions of the application and operating system, once held fast to our individual computers, are in flux, and now the best applications run across the network (ie, iTunes, iPhoto, Google). I'd add that most of the best network applications are media applications, interestingly. Here's more on the idea from Wired News.

Neilsen rechecked their figures, and stands by them, this WSJ Page One piece reports (sub req'd). The upshot: Young men are abandoning network TV.

First a piece in Fortune predicting a turnaround, mainly due to cost cutting and the rising tide of online advertising, then this piece in the Times today. It again points to the rising tide, and claims AOL may have an ace up its sleeve - a positive surprise in the form of profit growh, due in large part to its relationship with Google and its ability to sell contextual positioning of video to big ticket advertisers like carmakers. About time, I'd say, and encouraging news. If AOL has a big Q4, there may yet be pop to the parent company's stock. A downside: As with Yahoo and Overture, AOL may become too dependent on Google for its revenues/margins.

I've long been waiting for something to boil over in the area where politics meets the architecture of search engines. I'm not sure this is it, but it certainly points the way. Someone over at the DNC noticed that the White House website was purposefully blocking various public documents from being crawled by search engines. This usually is standard stuff - a file that webmasters keep called robots.txt instructs spiders to ignore various pages, usually because those pages are internally-focused or the company wishes to keep them private. However, White House-posted documents are clearly in the public record. A quick review of the White House's .txt file shows that something else is going on. A lot of files about Iraq are in the "disallow" category. It's pretty easy to assume an intention: Keep past statements about Iraq out of the public consciousness, especially ones that are now - er - out of touch with current reality (ie, it'll be an easy peace! And inexpensive!). If you believe, as I do, that search engines are becoming a powerful proxy for what the public knows, then this action by the White House extends spin to the level of public records. It's a fascinating move - clearly they knew they could not expunge the documents from the site, that would be too obvious, and it would mean they had something to hide. But...they seem to be trying to keep those embarassing public documents from being found via the tool most casual (or intentional) searchers use first (and sometimes only) - the search engine. Thanks to Dan Gilmor, who first posted this. Stay tuned, this one might turn into something.

I had a good conversation with the CEO of Intelliseek today. His company specializes in mining business intelligence from the roar of commentary and speculation in blogs, usenet, and various other opinion sites. The company also can probe internal user behavior (ie mine data on how users use a particular site) to gain analytical insights. The upshot: a much higher velocity feedback loop between producers and consumers. Examples: Consumer feedback on movie trailers, new cars, mutual funds, etc. can quickly be rolled into revisions, new features, or competitive advantage. All this from intelligently searching through public webspace. I came away impressed. Watch this company.

I've been thinking a bit more about the Sprinks deal, mainly through the lens of what's happening to Google's world. It's simple, but true: When Yahoo switches over to its own internal search technology (which will happen soon - probably in the next two or three quarters), Google will lose a shitload of distribution. Seen in this light, it only makes sense to buy more through About.com, which is the fourth or fifth largest content site on the Web. If the IPO timing rumours are true, it would make no sense for Google to go public, then get clobbered when the other Yahoo shoe drops. Hence, the Sprinks deal is less about Sprinks, and far more about getting About.com's distribution. The original press release and other coverage shows this was all about higher margins for Primedia, and gaining distribution for Google. Google's own AdSense/AdWords will be used across the About/Primedia properties, not Sprinks. Sprinks itself will probably be kept on life support for a while, then killed/replaced with Google products. In this DirectNews article covering the deal, Kevin Lee put it well: "I don't see it as a technology play. They made a case to Primedia that the cash flow would be higher with them than their own internal property." Primedia, which is under significant debt burden and must focus on its core magazine business, is driven by a need to simplify its business and add to its margins. Google needs distribution to cover its anticipated losses from Yahoo's future moves. Voila, a perfect union.

Not surprising, and in the works for sometime, Primedia sold Sprinks to Google Thursday of last week. My posting software was wacky for a few days, so I'm posting this late, I'll have more on this if I talk to the parties involved, probably later this week. Side note: This past week, Kelly Conlin, my old boss at IDG, took over at Primedia. Saw him in NY, and he looks happy. It was good to reconnect.

The Google IPO story last week got the Journal's attention (as this sub-required article shows) and a later follow on by the "Real Time" online column does a decent job of bringing folks up to speed. The main point that is worth watching - the Journal now understands that Amazon, EBay, and Interactive Corp. are all search driven businesses. That marks progress for the "Search is the new interface for the Net" meme.

Yesterday I meant to note Gary's latest piece of wonderful writing, The Great Library of Amazonia. It's in the upcoming issue of Wired, and it relates a key insight that authors really grok (thanks Steven Johnson) - in the age of Google, books are increasingly valuable as resources for contextualized knowledge. Books are highly processed, extremely linked texts, but their power has been largely absent from mainstream search engines. Chalk one up for Amazon Book Search, which was first to bring this power to search. I imagine it's driving folks at Google and Yahoo nuts.

What a surprise (see my rant below). What *is* surprising is for Ad Age to hype the fact. SURVEY: NETWORK TV DOES WORST JOB OF PROVING ADVERTISING ROI

I was in LA Friday, and offline, but even there folks were buzzing about the FT.com report on the Google IPO, which claimed that Google was close to going public, and was seriously considering WR Hambrecht's auction process as its path to the public markets (caveat: The Hambrechts are friends, so I am inclined to support the auction process). Two quick thoughts: First, the reporting on this is extremely thin, with one unnamed source in the FT piece spawning a media feeding frenzy (105 articles on Google News within 24 hours), none of which had any more information, as far as I could tell, save this WashPost piece that quotes Andy Bechtolsheim, one of Google's first investors. There's no question Google is and has been talking to investment banks, it'd be irresponsible for them not to be, and they've been doing it for months. You have to wonder if that one source was an investment banker, looking to prod Google into action.
Secondly, it's kind of fun to note that for whatever reason, the Google IPO news leads Google News itself, at least today, thanks probably to the frenzied linking around the story from the blogosphere.

While I was in NY this week talking to media types this article was published in the NYT, asking why the new network shows (such as The Next Joe Millionaire et al) were not drawing in the young viewers they were designed to snare. "It's a mystery" seemed to be the theme of the article, which went on to blame everything from Iraq (!) to complicated television hardware. Please! Doesn't anyone at the Times realize these folks are online, and on cell phones, or simply not interested anymore? If a show sucks, or seems to suck, or - particularly - if their friends are not *talking about it*, they will tune it out, or watch The Daily Show on TiVo, or whatever.

The article has a built in presumption that whatever is heavily hyped by a network will certainly draw its appointed Neilsen rating. After all, they hyped the new shows during the baseball playoffs, and those had great ratings! What went wrong? Steve Outing points (in E-Media Tidbits) to the lack of interactivity in these shows, but that's only part of it. It's also that the networks have failed two basic tests of making good media in the Internet age - connecting with a built in community (as all great magazines, sites, and blogs do), and promoting through trusted channels. The only real promotion Fox does for its shows is...during other Fox shows. And the only thing they are selling is the same kind of television experience as everyone else - titilation and escape. That's not exactly a diverse ecology, and audience members are wising up.

It's interesting to note that "hits" like Queer Eye or Trading Spaces have devoted audiences in the hundreds of thousands - audiences that look remarkably like magazine readerships. Hmmmm. More on this to come.

The favorite topic of many a wag in the Valley, the Google IPO has once again been revived, this time by Barrons, and Eric Savitz, no less, The Standard's old EE. Eric is conservative in his reporting of the numbers (I've heard estimates of a hell of a lot more profit than $100 million this year, and more revenues than $700 million), but in any case it's a lot. Speculation about the triggering of section 12(g) of the 1934 SEC Act (more than 500 shareholders = public filing requirements similar to an IPO) has been rife for nearly a year, given the number of Google employees - I recall the same issues being raised at Wired and The Standard (not that we had to worry in the end!). So, as Eric concludes, we finally have a time horizon for The IPO That Will Cure Cancer, Save The World, and Tie Your Shoes For You, Spring 2004.

Speaking of Tara, here's a good summary of the best tips in her book Google Hacks. Worth anyone reading who uses Google quite a bit. 20 Great Google Secrets.

Saw this thanks to a recent Research Buzz (Thanks Tara)...this is one man's obsession - the Rest of the Web, that huge resource of information that is not digital or not formatted to be crawled....it's called the Deep Web Research Subject Tracer™ Information Blog

Many thought (including me) that MSFT would boot Overture as soon as they could once Yahoo bought the company, but not many thought it would take another two years to happen.
This is clearly a marriage of convenience, but it points to two realities: one, it creates a timeline: Microsoft now has two years to get its own Adwords/Overture type product ready for market (probably to coincide with the introduction of their algorithmic search ), and two, any predictions that Microsoft might buy Google are now looking increasingly unrealistic.

The NYT's piece today on TiVo once again questions the company's prospects, and lays the blame for its possible demise on cable obivating the company's hardware business by incorporating TiVo-like features into set top boxes. But as usual the piece ignores the implications of what happens to consumer choice and the future of ideas (in the Lessig sense) if we allow cable companies to control what features are available on PVRs. Not only do we lose the freedom to tinker, we also push intelligence, such that it is, into the cable companies' systems, and away from the edges. Sigh. Time for Apple to step in?

While on the plane, I finished reading an as yet published story by Cory Doctorow, who was kind enough to send it my way. Cory is one of the great projectors/predictors of tech/culture collision, and in this tale, titled "Human Readable," Cory use the inherent clash between engineers - who implicitly trust that all human problems can be solved by elegant code - and humanists - who believe that trusting in code alone is a recipe for abuse, and possibly worse. This tension is certainly playing out in the world of search - with most of the paranoia around Google and other search engines driven - in essence - by seemingly cold, soulless and maddeningly opaque code. Worthy of note: Cory's first novel, Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom, takes Page Rank to the next level and beyond. A great read.

Finally we've got this thing up and running. I'm in New York, seeing old friends, interviewing folks for the book. In some cases they are one and the same.
I suppose this first post should outline the goals of this blog, but to be honest, that feels far too forced. Suffice that here I'll post this and that which I find noteworthy or interesting, in particular as it relates to search, the subject of my first book, and secondarily as it relates to the warp and weft of traditional media as it intersects with technology.